Iran on Wednesday threatened to retaliate against sanctions that were imposed on it on by the U.S., Germany, UK and France after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken revealed that it had transferred ballistic missiles to Russia, to use in the war against Ukraine.
Blinken said Washington had privately warned Iran that providing ballistic missiles to Russia would be "a dramatic escalation.
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Vladimir Putin, Ali Khamenei (Photo: Reuters/ AP)
(Photo: Alexei Nikolsky, / AP, AFP)
"This development and the growing cooperation between Russia and Iran threatens European security and demonstrates how Iran's destabilizing influence reaches far beyond the Middle East," he said ahead of his visit to Kyiv with British Foreign Secretary David Lammy on Wednesday.
Iran said the claim was propaganda meant to distract from the military assistance provided to Israel by the West calling the sanctions "economic terrorism" and threatening "appropriate and proportionate action."
The Kremlin also denied that missiles from Iran were given to Russia calling the claims "baseless."
Blinken and Lammy arrived in Kyiv on Wednesday for a series of meetings with senior Ukrainian government officials at a critical juncture in the war against Russia.
Blinken has said he wants to hear directly from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and others what Kyiv's goals in the war are and what Washington can do to help it achieve them.
Zelensky is likely to renew appeals to his allies to allow Ukraine to fire Western missiles including long-range U.S. ATACMS and British Storm Shadows deep into Russian territory to limit Moscow's ability to launch attacks.
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Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukrainian incursion into Russia
(Photo: Dmitry Serebryakov / AP, Reuters )
Blinken and Lammy are expected to push Ukraine for more information on its strategic aims as they consider whether to give the go-ahead, according to Western sources.
There is nervousness in Washington and some European capitals that doing so would provoke Russia towards a direct conflict with the West, while officials also recognize that Ukraine needs more help if it is to swing the war in its favor.
Overnight, U.S. President Joe Biden suggested that there was room for compromise. Biden said his administration was "working that out now" when asked if the United States would lift restrictions on Ukraine's use of long-range weapons in its war against Russia.