Russian missile experts visited Iran amid its tit-for-tat clash with Israel: records
Several senior Russian missile specialists have visited Iran over the past year as the Islamic Republic has deepened its defense cooperation with Moscow, a Reuters review of travel records and employment data indicates.
The seven weapons experts were booked to travel from Moscow to Tehran aboard two flights on April 24 and September 17 last year, according to documents detailing the two group bookings as well as the passenger manifest for the second flight.
The booking records include the menâs passport numbers, with six of the seven having the prefix â20â.
That denotes a passport used for official state business, issued to government officials on foreign work trips and military personnel stationed abroad, according to an edict published by the Russian government and a document on the Russian foreign ministryâs website.
Reuters was unable to determine what the seven were doing in Iran.
A senior Iranian defense ministry official said Russian missile experts had made multiple visits to Iranian missile production sites last year, including two underground facilities, with some of the visits taking place in September.
The official, who requested anonymity to discuss security matters, didnât identify the sites.
A Western defense official, who monitors Iranâs defense cooperation with Russia and also requested anonymity, said an unspecified number of Russian missile experts visited an Iranian missile base, about 15 km (9 miles) west of the port of Amirabad on Iranâs Caspian Sea coast, in September.
Reuters couldnât establish if the visitors referred to by the officials included the Russians on the two flights.
The seven Russians identified by Reuters all have senior military backgrounds, with two ranked colonel and two lieutenant-colonel, according to a review of Russian databases containing information about citizensâ jobs or places of work, including tax, phone and vehicle records.
Two are experts in air-defense missile systems, three specialize in artillery and rocketry, while one has a background in advanced weapons development and another has worked at a missile-testing range, the records showed.
Reuters was unable to establish whether all are still working in those roles as the employment data ranged from 2021 to 2024.
Their flights to Tehran came at a precarious time for Iran, which found itself drawn into a tit-for-tat battle with arch-foe Israel that saw both sides mount military strikes on each other in April and October.
Reuters contacted all the men by phone: five of them denied they had been to Iran, denied they worked for the military or both, while one declined to comment and one hung up.
Iranâs defense and foreign ministries declined to comment for this article, as did the public relations office of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite force that oversees Iranâs ballistic missile program.
The Russian defense ministry didnât respond to a request for comment.
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