Dozens of US lawmakers have written to President Joe Biden to express concerns about reports that Iranian-made drones recovered in Ukraine contain parts manufactured in the United States.
In addition to President Biden, the letter was also addressed to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and was signed by about 60 members of the US House of Representatives.
The letter is in line with earlier efforts by Western countries seeking to restrict the Islamic Republic’s access to parts used in building drones that Russia uses to attack Ukraine.
Voicing their deep concern, the lawmakers urge the Biden administration “to develop a coordinated, whole-of-government approach to interrupt Iran’s supply chains, shut down shell companies used by adversaries to evade sanctions, and pressure allies to crack down on unscrupulous distributors in Europe and Asia.”
They also called for “a timely briefing on any progress that has been made and plans going forward” about Washington’s efforts to curb the supply of drone parts.
“Iran has provided hundreds of drones to Russia since August 2022. The Shahed-136 and Shahed-131, one-way attack unmanned aerial vehicles also known as “suicide drones,” have terrorized Ukrainian civilians since their introduction into the conflict. Iran has also delivered to Russia the Mohajer-6, a surveillance drone capable of conducting precision air-to-ground strikes,” the letter read.
Conflict Armament Research investigations revealed that processors built by Dallas-based technology company Texas Instruments as well as engines made by Austrian firm owned by Canada’s Bombardier Recreational Products have been used in the drones.
Many parts are considered dual-use components and relatively easy to buy, without any approval needed.
The representatives referred to the report by Conflict Armament Research that studied more than 500 components from Iranian-made drones and unexploded precision-guided munitions that were recovered in Ukraine, determining that “82 percent of their parts were manufactured by companies based in the United States.” Ukrainian intelligence services have estimated that 75 percent of the components of Iranian-made drones deployed in the conflict are US-made.
The signatories also mentioned the punitive measures taken by the Office of Foreign Assets Control on firms involved in the production and delivery of Iranian drones to Russia, describing the sanctions as “a small but promising first step in what must become a concentrated, sustained effort.”
“Just as the United States and its international allies rallied to implement a comprehensive sanctions regime to combat Iran’s ballistic missile program, it must do the same to degrade the regime’s precision-strike capabilities,” they urged.
They said Tehran’s fleet of drones have far-reaching implications beyond the war against Ukraine as such weapons “provide Iran and its proxies with yet another tool to project power in the region, threatening our troops, key allies, and freedom of navigation.”
Stressing the necessity of immediate action, they said the US should move not only to disrupt Iran’s burgeoning relationship with Russia, but also to blunt Iran’s ability to undermine international law, project power across the Middle East, and threaten US servicemembers.
Since December, Biden has launched a task force – comprised of different departments including Justice, Treasury, Defense, Commerce and State are involved in the task force -- to see how US and western components are ending up in Iranian drones.
In January, the Quebec-based company Bombardier Recreational Products (BRP), best known for water-skis and snowmobiles, passed to the Canadian government its internal report on how its engines ended up in Iranian-made drones used by Russia in Ukraine. The BRP said it has established through a “thorough investigation” that an engine found in a downed Mohajer-6 drone had not been sold directly to either Iran or Russia. Bombardier ended supplies of the engines to Iran in 2019, although the Mahtabal company in Tehran still markets itself as official representative for Rotax engines.
Earlier in the day, the adviser to Iran’s minister of intelligence claimed that 90 countries are "customers" of Iranian drones, and China is in the "queue" to receive 15,000 of these drones. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that an Iranian delegation has travelled to Russia to build a factory capable of producing six thousand UAVs designed by Tehran to be used in the war against Ukraine.
Condemning violations of human rights and state-sponsored terrorism by the Iranian Government, the bipartisan group of Representatives submitted a resolution on Tuesday, which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. The motion was introduced by California's Republican lawmaker Tom McClintock and is cosponsored by 165 other representatives.
The resolution “calls on relevant United States Government agencies to work with European allies, including those in the Balkans where Iran has expanded its presence, to hold Iran accountable for breaching diplomatic privileges, and to call on nations to prevent the malign activities of the Iranian regime’s diplomatic missions, with the goal of closing them down and expelling its agents."
It also emphasizes that Washington “stands with the people of Iran who are legitimately defending their rights for freedom against repression, and condemns the brutal killing of Iranian protesters by the Iranian regime; and recognizes the rights of the Iranian people and their struggle to establish a democratic, secular, and nonnuclear Republic of Iran.”
The resolution mentions the popular antigovernment protests in 2017, which resulted in at least 25 deaths and 4,000 arrests, and the protests in November 2019, when about 1,500 people were killed during less than two weeks of unrest, as well as the current wave of protests ignited by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman who was arrested in mid-September 2022 by the morality police that enforce the regime’s mandatory dress code laws.
Noting that women and youth have led the 2022 protests in Iran to demand social freedom and political change, the resolution describes the uprising as “rooted in the more than four decades of organized resistance against the Iranian dictatorship.” The ongoing unrest have been most recently led by women who have endured torture, sexual and gender-based violence, and death.
It also mentions executions and death sentences in recent months and calls for measures to force the government to cease such repression.
In the 116th Congress, the House of Representatives passed House Resolution 752, "Supporting the rights of the people of Iran to free expression, condemning the Iranian regime for its crackdown on legitimate protests, and for other purposes,” it adds, urging the Administration to work to convene emergency sessions of the United Nations Security Council and to work with United States partners and allies to condemn the ongoing human rights violations perpetrated by the Iranian regime and establish a mechanism by which the United Nations Security Council can monitor such violations.
The resolution also mentions efforts by the international community against the crackdown on dissent in Iran, saying that on November 24, 2022, the United Nations Human Rights Council established a fact-finding mission to conduct an independent investigation into the ongoing deadly violence related to the protests in Iran that began on September 16, 2022. It also mentioned the resolution adopted by United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on December 14, 2022, to expel Iran from the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) for the remainder of its 4-year term ending in 2026.
Enumerating other actions by the US against the human rights violations by the clerical regime, the House resolution referred to the Department of State’s 2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, released on April 13, 2022, which cites that “Iran’s government and its agents reportedly committed arbitrary or unlawful killings, most commonly executions for crimes not meeting the international legal standard of ‘most serious crimes’ or for crimes committed by juvenile offenders, as well as executions after trials without due process.”
“On October 25, 2021, the United Nations Special Rapporteur (UNSR) on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Javaid Rehman, told the United Nations General Assembly that almost all executions in the country constituted an arbitrary deprivation of life, noting the extensive, vague and arbitrary grounds in Iran for imposing the death sentence, which quickly can turn this punishment into a political tool,” read the resolution.
The resolution also condemns the Iranian regime’s arbitrary and brutal suppression of “ethnic and religious minorities, including Iranian Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs, Christians, Jews, Baha’is, Zoroastrians, and even Sunni Muslims,” noting that it deprived them of their basic human rights, and has in many cases executed them.
I had asked him about American-made electronic components found in Iranian drones used by Russia. “Please share the link with my press secretary,” said the Senator. I did share the link and I was less surprised that Young, who is the champion of export control and technology theft and procurement by US adversaries like China, admitted he did not know if and how the Islamic Republic obtained those American made electronics.
It’s a cat and mouse game and the US government has been chasing Iran for years, if not decades.
Sanctions only work if you know the trade route, the methodologies for financial transactions between the parties involved and how often and how tight those sanctions are being enforced. In the case of the Islamic Republic, its military procurement program has permeated every continent in the globe. The Islamic republic is good at cheating the system and they tap into the international network of smugglers, spies and black-market profiteers.
Periodically, the US imposes sanctions on individuals and companies but the cat and mouse game goes on.
Tehran offer good money for weapons procurement at Iranian people’s expense, which could be spent on schools, shelters and food. Instead, they fill the pockets of criminals around the world.
Popular Mechanics published a podcast recently titled: The secret war to take out Iran’s fleet of F-14s quoting a US prosecutor on the specific and curious case of a Pakistani citizen called Arif Dourani who purchased F-14 parts for Iran for many years.
He set up a restaurant in Mexico near the US border, hired American companies to find parts and refurbish them. Some of those companies were established by former US government employees including a retired US Department of Defense intelligence officer. They found parts for Dourani through auctions held by US military surplus and then sent the parts to Iran through different countries.
Iran continued to purchase F14 parts indirectly from the US military even after the US government sanctioned it. Former US prosecutor, William Cole, told Popular Mechanics that Dourani has made twenty-fold profits on his sales to Iran, paid by the Iranian people.
The case of Iran’s F-14s became so embarrassing for the US military that in 2005 they retired the entire fleet and, just to make sure that Iranians can never get their hands on their parts, they decided to shred their F14s into pieces. But as of 2023, Iran is still flying them, albeit in a precarious state.
In the case of American made electronics used in Iranian drones, it is one thing to purchase parts, it is totally another thing to be able to put parts made from different companies together and make it actually work.
This brings us to the second asset that the regime in Iran is exploiting: The abilities and know-how of Iranian engineers, specifically those who studied at Sharif University, Tehran Polytechnic, Isfahan university of technology and the university of science and technology (Elm va Sanat Tehran), which according to UK based QS university rankings, are among the top 200 universities in electronics in the world.
Iranian people are smart, and they have a history of reverse engineering products and mixing and matching components from different vendors. Anyone who has ever visited Paytakht Mall in Tehran which used to be one of the centers to purchase home computers, knows that due to sanctions, Western companies did not sell to Iranian companies, so the skillful merchants learned to purchase components from Malaysia or Singapore and learned to put together systems tailored to customer needs for reasonable prices. Instead of spending a fortune on DELL or COMPAQ, they would find you a processor that matched a motherboard with another sound card and VGA from three different vendors. You had a home computer that scored as high if not higher than the original home computers! If merchants in Paytakht mall can get around US sanctions like that, so can the IRGC.
US sanctions might deprive the Islamic Republic of military grade technology, but the regime has learned the value of dual use civilian technologies. Iran does not have a military industrial complex and companies that can rival Northorp Grumman, Lockheed Martin or General Dynamics but, throw money at experiments with civilian technologies that students in top universities have access to and you might be surprised to learn the extent of human innovation at your own peril.
Iran’s Joint Chief of Staff’s interview with Isca News last year includes some revealing anecdotes about how Iran developed its first generation of drones in 1983. He said: “Student volunteers from Sharif and Isfahan universitiesbrought a toy plane bought as a present for a child and then they mounted a camera on it. "According to analysis published by Institute for science and international security, most of the electronics used in Shahed drones used by Russia in Ukraine are off the shelf components. Shahid drones are running with internal combustion engines but students at Sharif university developed hybrid electric drones several years ago.
The US government doesn't seem to know much about how these components have found their way into Iran, nor US-based producers of these components. Hence, the creation of a task force at the behest of the White House to investigate. Perhaps the task force can identify the methodology for the IRGC to obtain these parts, some of which are sold online. Even if they do, as an old Persian saying goes: The bed is wet, and the baby is gone!