Iran has sought to acquire advanced Russian drones developed from the same Iranian weapons technology Tehran originally supplied to Moscow, with the aircraft intended for use in its war against Israel and the United States, the Financial Times reported.
Western security officials and a person close to the Kremlin told the newspaper that Tehran this year requested advanced Geran drones from Moscow. The Geran family is based on Iran’s Shahed drones, which Russia began producing domestically in 2023 before introducing increasingly sophisticated versions.
Geran-5
The latest Russian models, the jet-powered Geran-4 and Geran-5, have struck Ukrainian cities in recent weeks. They have proved significantly more capable of evading air defenses than their propeller-driven predecessors, presenting Ukraine with a new and increasingly difficult threat.
One such drone recently struck the headquarters of Ukraine’s Security Service, in what was described as the first direct drone attack on a government building in Kyiv. Another came close to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s aircraft as it was preparing to take off from Moldova. Hundreds more have struck warehouses and disrupted operations at Ukrainian ports.
On Thursday, one of the drones crashed into a gas station in Kyiv’s Holosiivskyi district. Two people were killed the following day after two additional gas stations were hit in attacks that Zelensky described as being “terrorist in nature.”
Ukraine’s air force said Russian drone launches reached a record 2,800 in August. The campaign has unfolded alongside Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries and commercial storage facilities.
Russia’s success in developing the weapons marks a notable shift for a military whose battlefield gains since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine have come at enormous human and material cost, including an estimated 1.5 million troops killed or wounded and extensive losses of Soviet-era equipment.
Ukraine has become known for rapid innovation in domestically produced defense technology, but experts say Russia’s latest drones demonstrate that Moscow is also capable of developing, refining and deploying new weapons on a large scale.
The first-generation Geran-1 carries a warhead weighing up to 20 kilograms, has a maximum speed of about 185 km/h and uses relatively basic guidance systems.
The Geran-5, by contrast, is jet-powered and was reportedly first used by Russia in January. It can reach speeds of up to 600 km/h while carrying a 90-kilogram warhead over a range of about 1,000 kilometers.
Its design resembles a cruise missile, and it is equipped with thermal cameras as well as artificial intelligence-powered target-recognition systems.
The reported Iranian request would effectively reverse the original flow of drone technology between the two countries: Tehran supplied the Shahed platform to Russia, Moscow adapted and mass-produced it, and Iran is now seeking access to the more advanced versions that emerged from Russia’s wartime development program.