Expert warns Iran government not to walk into ‘trap laid in Ukraine’

“Iran’s government should be very watchful not to walk into the trap they have laid for it and not support Russia in the Ukraine war,” Diako Hosseini told Khabar Online news outlet on Tuesday.

“Some intellectual currents in America would like Iran to enter the battlefield alongside Russia, or pretend that that has happened, because Iran would be more vulnerable under such circumstances,” Hosseini added.

“Some intellectual currents in Russia, too, would like to portray Iran as their ally in the Ukraine war, because Russia would thus be able to [both] break its political isolation and split the costs of war with Iran,” said the expert.

Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, implying that its neighbor posed a threat to the Russian state and saying the invasion would be meant to “de-Nazify” Ukraine. It has since annexed four Ukrainian regions.

Recently, Kiev has been claiming that drones supplied by the Islamic Republic to Russia have been used by Russian forces to attack civilian sites. While Iran initially denied that it had provided drones to Russia, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian on November 5 acknowledged the provision of a limited number of drones to Russia but said they had been transferred before the war.

On Sunday, US Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley rejected that account, saying Iran had provided “dozens just this summer” and that it had “military personnel in occupied Ukraine helping Russia use them against Ukrainian civilians.”

Iran says it has been pursuing the policy of active neutrality in the Ukraine war.