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Shortly after the U.S. and its Western allies vowed to keep sending weapons of death to Ukraine to keep bloodying the killing fields, their top diplomats demanded that Iran stop providing the Kremlin with drones and other weapons.
The meeting was held for two days in Münster, Germany. The G7 includes the U.S., EU, U.K., Japan, Italy, Germany, France, and Canada and was meant to show a united front in support for Ukraine. (See “PROTESTS BREAK OUT IN GERMANY OVER ENERGY PRICES, WAR” and “GERMANY ON HIGH ALERT: NORD STREAM PIPELINE AND NOW RAILWAY SABOTAGE?”.)
The foreign ministers issued a 3,500-word statement that included a 500-word section that focused on Iran, arguing that Tehran’s continued effort to provide Russia with drones in its war with Ukraine would breach a section of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
“We will continue to impose economic costs on Russia and on other countries, individuals, or entities providing military support for Moscow’s war of aggression,” the group said in a statement.
Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Iran’s foreign minister, said Saturday that Tehran provided Russia with a “limited number of drones” before the war in Ukraine, Iran International reported. He said Iran has “not provided any weapons to Russia for the war in Ukraine.”
He also denied providing Russia with missiles and said if Ukraine has “any documents on Russia’s use of Iranian drones in Ukraine, they should provide them to us.”
Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian foreign minister, held up what he said was debris from an Iranian-made drone that was used in an attack on Kyiv.
Russia has also denied the claim that Iran has provided weapons during the conflict.
The war in Ukraine is becoming a war of attrition and military analysts believe that Russia is training its forces for a major winter offensive. Vast swaths of Ukraine—including Kyiv—have had blackouts, which have been blamed on these drone attacks. Kyiv said it shot down 300 Iranian drones.
Abdollahian told reporters that he spoke with Kuleba and they agreed to let Iran review any evidence tying these drones to Tehran.
“Of course, if it is proven that Russia used Iranian drones in the war against Ukraine, we will not remain indifferent to this issue,” he said.
TRENDPOST: The New York Times noted that “friction” between Iran and G7 countries have been intensified after Tehran’s crackdown on protests over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in “morality police” custody in September for allegedly not abiding by the country’s dress code. (See “IRANIAN PROTESTS CONTINUE TO ESCALATE.”)
“We condemn the brutal and disproportionate use of force against “peaceful protesters,” the ministers said in a statement. “We advocate the right of all Iranians to access information, and we deplore the Iranian government’s erosion of civil space, and independent journalism, its targeting of human rights defenders, including by shutting down the internet and social media.”
We’ve pointed out the hypocrisy that the West is calling out Tehran, given the way Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cracked down on peaceful trucker protests. We’ve also noted that Iran called on France to stop aggressive tactics taken by police in Paris after cost-of-living protests emerged in Paris.
The paper said the diplomats present at the G7 meeting expressed support for the “fundamental aspiration of Iran for a future where human rights are respected and protected.”
Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state who has no problem working for an administration that forced Americans to shut down businesses and get vaccinated, praised these Iranian protesters as those intent on being free. He said their passion will not be “extinguished even by the fiercest repression.”
It is also a joke that the G7 blamed Iran for shutting down social media and “independent journalism.” There is no independent journalism in the U.S. There is the corporate media that plays to Democrats and the corporate media that plays to Republicans. They stay in their own lanes to ensure that friendly politicians come on their shows and advertisers keep buying ad space. Any opinion outside the mainstream is completely ignored.
TRENDPOST: Russian President Vladimir Putin has been a vocal critic of the West’s effort to get other countries to buy into its particular worldview. Putin said at a conference earlier this month that the West claims “that its culture and worldview should be universal.”
“Even if they don’t say so directly, they behave this way. In fact, their approach insists that these values be unconditionally accepted by all other participants in international communication,” he said.
Putin did not forget that it was the U.S.—under President Donald Trump—that assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in a drone strike just outside the Baghdad airport in Iraq.
“They are not shy about anything,” he said. “They killed Soleimani, an Iranian general… You can judge Soleimani however you want, but this is an official in another state. They killed him on a territory of a third country and said, ‘Yes, we killed him.’”
The U.S. announced Friday that it will send another $400 million in “security aid” to Ukraine and, for the first time, include 90 T-72 Soviet-era tanks that are held in the Czech Republic. The U.S. will pay to update 45 of the tanks and the Netherlands will pay for the other half. The U.S. has now committed more than $18.9 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden Administration.