Russia refuses to follow UN curbs on missile technology for Iran

Without indicating whether it now intended to back Tehran’s missile development, Russia said it need not comply with U.N. Security Council sanctions once they expire on Wednesday.

“Supplies to and from Iran of products falling under the Missile Technology Control Regime no longer require prior approval by the U.N. Security Council,” Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

The limitations were laid forth in Resolution 2231 of 2015, which supported an agreement in which Britain, China, the European Union, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States lifted sanctions against Iran in exchange for Tehran limiting its nuclear programme.

The JCPOA was abandoned by then-President Donald Trump in 2018, leaving only unilateral U.S. sanctions in place. As a result, Iran accelerated its nuclear programme, which it claims is only for peaceful purposes.

As the agreement fell apart, U.N. sanctions meant to stop the theocratic state from building long-range nuclear-capable ballistic missiles resumed. But on Wednesday, these will eventually run out.

Since its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and subsequent isolation by the West, Russia has gotten closer to Iran. It is thought that Iran produced many of the hundreds of one-way attack drones that it has employed to bomb Ukraine in the past year.

After the U.N. restrictions expire, the EU declared on Tuesday that it intended to join the U.S. in maintaining sanctions against Iran’s ballistic missile project.

Russia pushed the European Union and the U.S. to drop their sanctions, which it said were “an effort to settle political scores with Tehran” and had no implications for “other countries that treat international law and their obligations with due respect”.

(With agency inputs)

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