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The EU has agreed to sanction Iran over the drones it has supplied to Russia.
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Three people and an entity connected to the drones will be sanctioned, the Czech EU presidency said.
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Russia has not officially admitted using the drones, which have struck civilian areas in Ukraine.
The European Union has agreed to hit Iran with sanctions over its supplying drones to Russia in the war with Ukraine, a top EU body said Thursday.
The decision came “in record time” after three days of EU discussion, according to a pair of tweets from the Czech Presidency of the EU Council.
Three individuals and “one entity responsible for drone deliveries” will have their assets frozen, the tweets said.
“After three days of talks, EU ambassadors agreed on measures against entities supplying Iranian drones that hit Ukraine,” the Czech Presidency of the EU Council wrote in a tweet.
Another four Iranian entities could also receive EU sanctions, it also said.
Russia has not officially admitted to using drones manufactured in Iran in its invasion of Ukraine, but their use has been documented in numerous attacks this fall.
Iran denies supplying the drones, but Nabila Massrali, a spokesperson for the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, said the bloc has evidence they originate in Iran, Deutsche Welle reported.
Swarms of Iran-made Shahed-136 drones — known as “kamikaze” or “suicide drones” as they are loitering munitions destroyed in the attack — have been used in bombardments of Kyiv and several other cities.
On Monday, the US agreed with French and British officials’ view that Iran’s actions with the drones violate a UN Security Council directive that bars the country from transferring some military technology, the BBC reported.
The Czech Presidency did not name the figures to be sanctioned, but a draft sanctions list obtained by The Guardian before the bloc’s decision said Shahed Aviation Industries, which developed the Shahed-series drones, would be targeted.
The draft sanctions list also named top generals Maj Gen Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, Gen Sayed Hojatollah Qureishi, and Brig Gen Saeed Aghajani.
The sanctions are largely symbolic and would freeze any assets held in the EU by the figures targeted, The Guardian reported.
Iran is already under a wide swathe of UN and EU sanctions imposed over the last decades, relating to human rights and the development of nuclear military capabilities. The most recent agreement by the EU aimed at key figures in Iran’s Morality Police who killed protester Mahsa Amini.
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