The interior of an apartment in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv destroyed by an Iranian-manufactured drone. Photo: Reuters/Valentyn Ogirenko

An Iranian defense ministry chief has boasted about the Islamic Republic’s export of weapons to its allies, describing the deliveries of arms as a “game changer.”

In an interview on Monday with the IRNA news agency, the Iranian regime’s official mouthpiece, Brig-Gen. Hamzeh Ghalandari asserted that the outside world was surprised to see that “a country that was completely in trouble in all areas and was banned from accessing any technology has now reached a place where it moves on the edge of technology and its weapons are, as media outlets say, a ‘game changer.’”

Iran’s main military ally, Russia, has used drones manufactured by the Tehran regime to deadly effect in its invasion of Ukraine. Last October, Ukrainian intelligence sources claimed that Russia had ordered more than 2,400 drones from Iran, while officers from the regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) were reported to have visited Russian-occupied Crimea to train Russian military personnel in the use of the drones. The drones include the Shahed-129, the Shahed-136 and the Mojaher-6. Russia has reportedly modified the Shahed-131 drone to cause maximum damage to Ukrainian targets.

Iran also supplies weapons and financial assistance to its satellite terrorist groups in the region, among them Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and the Lebanese Shi’a group Hezbollah. Israel launched a fresh round of strikes against PIJ positions in Gaza on Tuesday, following last week’s volley of rockets fired against Israeli targets.

While Ghalandari did not mention Russia or any of the other countries receiving Iranian weapons by name, he said that the supply of weapons was an economic and ideological necessity.

“Although the economic benefits of arms exports cannot be ignored, based on its religious and revolutionary ideals, the Islamic Republic of Iran does not merely pursue commercial and trade gains as other global arms exporters tend to do,” he said.

A 13 year-long UN imposed embargo on Iranian arms exports was lifted in Oct. 2020, despite protests from the US. In the aftermath, several countries approached Iran with a view to renovating their militaries, Ghalandari said.

Separately, Ukraine’s air force spokesperson said on Tuesday that Iran was likely to move parts of its drone production to Belarus, Russia’s ally, in order to avoid a further round of western sanctions.

“It is necessary to see whether it will be production or the tweaking of finished products,” Yuri Ignat told the broadcaster Radio Liberty. “Perhaps Iran wants to avoid responsibility for the supply of weapons, to avoid sanctions and pressure from other countries. And it can shift the production to Belarus, as it were, and thus close the issue.”