He said they were using the base near the eastern city of Hamedan with the authorization of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.
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Russian military experts say the deployment of Russian bombers at the Iranian base sharply cuts the distance to targets in Syria, allowing them to carry a bigger load of bombs.
Hamadan is much closer to positions of the Daesh extremist group than the base Russian Federation had previously been using, Khmeimim, in coastal northern Syria.
“The fact that we cooperate with Russian Federation as an ally on regional issues like Syria doesn’t mean that we have given a base to Russian Federation militarywise”, the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Mr. Larijani as saying.
Aleppo is one of the bastions of the rebellion to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose army is backed on the ground by Shi’ite Muslim militias from neighboring countries and from the skies by Russian air strikes.
A wiser United States would also think of Russian Federation itself, which has the label of adversary firmly affixed to it, in realist terms in which that label would not prevent the United States from exploring and exploiting areas of parallel interests.
Russia’s use of an Iranian air base to bomb targets in Syria sends a message to Washington as it weighs a military partnership with Moscow: Join us or we’ll look to your enemies.
Secretary of State John Kerry phoned his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, after the first strikes Tuesday to express US concerns and also to try again to get Russia to use its influence with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to arrange a ceasefire that would ease the siege of Aleppo.
Officials in Iran have acknowledged that Russian warplanes are using an Iranian air base but only for refueling purposes and insist that no Russian troops are stationed on Iranian soil.
The minister also called on the USA not to “nitpick about what is happening in terms of the remaining restrictions on trade and ties with Iran”.
Meanwhile, Syrian opposition activists said a wave of airstrikes on rebel-held parts of the northern city of Aleppo killed at least 15 civilians and wounded many others.
On Tuesday, almost 20 civilians were reported killed in airstrikes in eastern districts.
Moscow first used Iran as a base from which to launch air strikes in Syria on Tuesday, deepening its involvement in the five-year-old Syrian civil war and angering the United States.
Iran’s constitution bars foreign militaries from having bases in the country, and Ali Larijani, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, was quick Wednesday to say Russian Federation does not have a permanent presence in the country, likely to try to assuage such domestic concerns. His comments were geared at easing domestic concerns over the strikes.
Hossein Kanani Moghadam, a former commander in Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard, also echoed that point.
“No supplying, selling or transferring of warplanes to Iran has occurred”, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
The airstrikes were carried out by long-range Tupolev-22M3 bombers from Hamadan air base, according to the Russian Defense Ministry’s website. “In reality, there is no violation at all”, Pushkov said, adding that these statements were clearly “determined by the United States bid to have all under their control and determine the course of events in Syria”. “We assured safety of flight as those bombers passed through the area and toward their target and then when they passed out again”, he said.
Russia’s move follows recent visits to Moscow by several Sunni Gulf leaders, who will likely pointedly question President Vladmir Putin’s decision, said Theodore Karasik, a senior adviser for the Washington-based group Gulf State Analytics.
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The announcement from Russian Federation marks the first significant stationing of its troops there since World War II.
