The Biden administration believes that Iran’s sale of deadly drones to Russia to aid in its invasion of Ukraine means that country could “contribute to widespread war crimes”.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan made the accusation against Iran Monday in front of reporters covering President Joe Biden’s visit to Mexico.
Although it did not signal a change in policy, the statement marked some of the sharpest US rhetoric against Iran since Tehran began supplying arms to Russia to support its war in Ukraine. which has been going on for almost a year.
The accusation comes against a backdrop of US and European partners seeking to further ostracize the two nations in the public eye, facing challenges to physically stop the arms transfers on which Russia increasingly depends.
Mr Sullivan said that Iran had chosen “to take a route where its weapons are used to kill civilians in Ukraine and to try to plunge cities into cold and dark, which from our point of view view, puts Iran in a position where it could contribute to widespread war crimes”.
The national security adviser argued that European and American sanctions against Iran, put in place after the United States discovered Iran’s arms sales to Russia last year, constituted examples of how his country was trying to “make these transactions more difficult”. But he felt that the fact that they were carried out physically “complicated the task of banning them”.
State Department spokesman Ned Price said Monday that the United States is already providing money, expertise and other forms of logistical support to Ukrainian and international investigators investigating allegations of war crimes. He said these investigations may well extend beyond Russia’s actions.
“If during this term we come to the conclusion that the Iranian government as a whole or senior Iranian officials are complicit or responsible for war crimes, we will also work to hold them to account,” he told reporters.