As Senator Ted Cruz clarified, the initiative involves the introduction of sanctions against Moscow and TehranWASHINGTON, May 18.
/tass/. US Senator Ted Cruz (Republican from Texas) intends to introduce a bill aimed at countering military-technical cooperation between Russia and Iran by imposing sanctions. The legislator said this on Wednesday, speaking at the Hudson Institute in Washington.
"Cooperation between Russia and Iran is large-scale, it is deepening. The administration of [US President Joe] Biden is not even trying to counteract this," the senator argued.
"That's why I'm working now to ensure support for the bill <...>, which will oblige the Biden administration to oppose cooperation between Iran and Russia in a number of areas," Cruz said. He explained that the legislative initiative presupposes "the application of existing sanctions concerning Ukraine against banks, oil tankers, aircraft, airports, ships and shipyards," which Russia and Iran allegedly use in military-technical cooperation.
In addition, as the senator noted, the bill is aimed at "blocking billions of dollars that Iran has abroad." According to Cruz, we are talking about the fact that Tehran will not get access to these funds in the event of the conclusion of "another deal on the atom."
John Kirby, Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the White House National Security Council, said this week that the US administration will impose new sanctions in the coming days against those involved in military-technical cooperation between Russia and Iran. According to Kirby, Iran supplies Russia mainly with unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as artillery shells and ammunition for tanks. He claimed that Iran wants to buy attack helicopters, radars and Yak-130 combat training aircraft and other military equipment worth billions of dollars from the Russian Federation.
Moscow and Tehran have repeatedly rejected versions about the supply of Iranian drones to Russia for their use in Ukraine. The press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov called such messages stuffing and stressed that the Russian army uses aircraft of domestic production. In November 2022, the Iranian Foreign Minister said that the republic had supplied drones to Russia, but in small quantities and a few months before the start of a special military operation in Ukraine.