Ripping Up Ties With Tehran Would Only Wind Up Hurting Ukraine’s Economy, Expert Says

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba announced Tuesday that he would ask President Zelensky to sever diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic over Tehran’s alleged delivery of advanced strike drones to Russia. Iran’s Foreign Ministry dismissed Kuleba’s claims as “groundless.”

A Ukrainian decision to cut off relations with Iran would have virtually no impact on the Middle Eastern nation, and only cause hefty economic losses for Ukraine, Iranian journalist and Russia expert Ruhollah Modaber told Sputnik.

Characterizing Kiev’s threats to sever ties as a reflection of the nation’s status as an American puppet, Modaber stressed that “in the international system, Iran is a strong country,” and that “those who terminate relations with it end up facing losses themselves.”

“Iran is considered a powerful pole within the new international system, and instead of submitting to policies dictated by the White House, the Ukrainian government should act based on real circumstances. It must take into account, first and foremost, that creating tension in foreign policy will not benefit itself. The unilateral termination of diplomatic relations between Ukraine and Iran will not cause financial damage to Iran,” the observer said.

According to Iranian customs data, trade between Iran and Ukraine over the last 10 months of 2021 amounted to $162.5 million, with Ukraine selling $111.7 million worth of goods to the Islamic Republic, and Iran exporting $50.8 million-worth of goods to the Eastern European nation. Observatory of Economic Complexity figures show that a whopping 95 percent of Ukrainian exports to Iran in 2020 consisted of corn and seed oils, while Iran’s major exports included fruits and vegetables, nuts, medicaments and styrene polymers.

Dismissing claims made by Kuleba and others on the alleged transfer of Iranian-made military hardware to Russia as yet another element in the West’s “anti-Iranian project,” Modaber emphasized that the reality is that “Iran has always been against war, and believes that the expansion of NATO toward Russia caused this whole crisis.”

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani dismissed Kiev’s allegations about the supply of ‘Iranian-made drones’ to Moscow on Tuesday, saying that “such baseless claims, made on the basis of false information and ill-intentioned presumptions, are part of the targeted and political propaganda campaign being waged by the media of some countries against the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Kanaani stressed that Tehran is ready for talks with Kiev to dispel its concerns, and reiterated Iran’s neutrality in the Ukrainian crisis, including multiple meetings with both Russian and Ukrainian officials aimed at stopping the fighting.

In a separate statement Tuesday, Kanaani also slammed the European Union over plans to slap new sanctions against Iran over the drone claims, saying it was “deeply regrettable that certain political motivations as well as rel[iance] on baseless, distorted information and fabricated claims by the enemies of the Iranian nation and the well-known media affiliated with them are the basis of such a wrong and unconstructive decision.”

Vowing that Iran would take reciprocal sanctions against the relevant European individuals and institutions, the official reiterated that the Islamic Republic “already considers that European Union and its members as the great violators of human rights due to their inaction on and cooperation regarding the illegal maximum sanctions of the United States.”

Sporadic reports on secret Iranian deliveries of advanced drones to Russia began this summer in US, Israeli, Ukrainian and Russian media, mushrooming dramatically earlier this month after Moscow began a large-scale campaign of missile and drone strikes against military and energy infrastructure targets across Ukraine in response to the attack on the Crimean Bridge and other sabotage operations by Kiev. Moscow has dismissed claims that it’s using Iranian drones, with presidential spokesman Dmitri Peskov saying Tuesday that the Kremlin has no information to the contrary. “The hardware that is used is Russian. You know that. It has Russian names. You can address all other questions to the Defense Ministry,” he said.

The speculation about the use of Iranian drones in Ukraine comes amid the dramatic advances witnessed in recent years in the Islamic Republic’s drone technology, with the Middle Eastern nation fielding nearly three dozen different varieties of attack, reconnaissance and suicide strike drones, and demonstrating their effective use in drills and strikes against terrorist targets in neighboring Iraq.