Tehran-Iran’s defense minister criticized Russian Federation on Monday for having “kind of show-off and ungentlemanly” attitude for publicizing that it used an Iranian air base to launch airstrikes on Syria, the first sign of government dissent over the unprecedented stationing of foreign troops in the Islamic Republic.
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Iran’s defence minister said Russian Federation had been “inconsiderate” and was “showing off” by revealing its use of an Iranian airbase for bombing missions into Syria, in a televised interview late on Sunday.
Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan had said that Russian Federation would be allowed to use the Nojeh base “for as long as they need”. Some Iranian lawmakers called the move a breach of Iran’s constitution which forbids “the establishment of any kind of foreign military base in Iran, even for peaceful purposes”. He said there was “no written agreement” between the two countries and the “operational cooperation” was temporary and limited to refueling.
Dehghan’s comments made on Monday contradicts what the minister said last Saturday about the Russian use of the base and his hints that Russia would be permitted to use other bases when needed.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner told a briefing the United States was closely monitoring the cooperation between Russian Federation and Iran and “it’s not clear to us. whether their (Moscow’s) use of this air base has definitively stopped”.
In his first press conference, Qassemi said: “Russia has no base in Iran and is not stationed here”. “They came, they went and they finished it”.
Russian Ministry of Defense: “Our planes return from Iranian air base after coping with tasks”.
“It’s their elections. Everybody gets squeamish around election time”, he added.
Larijani said Dehghan “should have observed the ethics of governing”.
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The US State Department on Monday said that it was unclear if Moscow’s use of the airbase had “definitively stopped”.
