Iran said on Monday that Russian Federation has stopped using its Hamedan air base for carrying out air strikes at Islamic State strongholds in Syria.
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He emphasized that Iran had allowed Russian Federation to use the airbase only for refueling as part of collaboration against terrorists in Syria, and not allocated it as a “classical military base”.
The use of Hamedan significantly shortened flight-times for Russian warplanes, allowing them to carry increased firepower.
“The Russians went public with this without assuring adequate sensitivities to Iran’s internal dynamics, in order to perhaps score a point and boost their prestige”, Behrooz said. Previously, long-range bombers had used bases in Russian Federation to strike targets in Syria.
He also underlined that Syria’s air support behind the recent operations in Aleppo was conducted according to request from Iranian advisors.
Any further use of Hamedan base by Russian aircraft would take place “in line with mutual accords on the fight against terrorism and taking into account the situation in Syria”, he said in a statement.
The U.S. State Department, which last week called the move “unfortunate but not surprising” and said it was studying if it violated a U.N. Security Council resolution that bars supply, sale and transfer of combat aircraft to Iran, said that it was unclear if Moscow’s use of the base had “definitively stopped”. Earlier in the day, the Iranian government said Russian Federation has stopped using the base for military operation in Syria.
The Russian ambassador to Tehran, Levan Dzhagaryan, said yesterday all Russian planes have left Iran’s air base in Hamedan but that nothing prevents them from using it again in the future.
On Monday, the Iranian defense minister, Brig.
The arrangement had raised eyebrows in Washington, triggering a spat with Moscow over a United Nations resolution, because it was the first such operation by a major power since Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Its announcement likely will force a response from Iran’s Sunni-ruled Mideast neighbors, which host American military personnel.
Russian Federation airpower has helped various Iran-backed troops fighting by the side of Syria regime, including units of elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp, the Shiite Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Iraqi Shiite militia. That system is created to be the local equivalent of the S-300 – perhaps an Iranian signal back to Moscow that it’s capable of defending itself without the Russian missile system.
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“Our forces have retaken the internal security building used as a prison by the Islamic State (IS)” group, as well as a courthouse, the Al-Naga district and Dubai Street, the operations centre for fighters loyal to the Government of National Accord (GNA) said.
