(Washington) Russia would consider helping Iran with its missile program and supplying it with fighter jets, CIA chief William Burns said on Sunday, worrying about a “dangerous” escalation in the military cooperation between Tehran and Moscow.
“What we are also seeing are signs that Russia is offering to help the Iranians with their missile program and also considering the possibility of getting Iran fighter jets,” Bill Burns said in a rare interview broadcast on CBS.
This military cooperation is accelerating “in a direction which is very dangerous insofar as we know that the Iranians have already supplied hundreds of armed drones to the Russians, which they use to make Ukrainian civilians suffer” and infrastructure, he said.
“We also know that they [les Iraniens] provided ammunition for artillery and tanks,” added the US intelligence boss.
“This poses obvious risks not only for the people of Ukraine […]but also for our friends and partners across the Middle East”, he said, speaking of military cooperation which is strengthening at “a worrying rate”.
“We believe that Russia could provide fighter jets” to Tehran, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Friday.
PHOTO EVELYN HOCKSTEIN, REUTERS
White House National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby
Asked also about the progress of the Iranian nuclear program, William Burns assured that the United States “did not think that the supreme leader in Iran had yet made the decision to resume the militarization of the program [nucléaire]which according to our estimates was suspended or terminated at the end of 2003”.
However, he said, the uranium enrichment program “is progressing so fast that it would only take them a few weeks to reach 90%, if they decided to cross that line”.
The International Atomic Energy Agency recently indicated that it was in discussions with Iran after the publication of a dispatch from the news agency Bloomberg indicating, on the basis of two diplomatic sources, that IAEA inspectors had detected levels of enrichment at 84%, just below the 90% needed to produce an atomic bomb.
Mr. Burns also expressed concern about the acceleration of Iran’s missile program.
Negotiations to revive the agreement reached in 2015 to limit Iran’s atomic activities in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions have stalled.
The agreement, known by the acronym of JCPOA, has been moribund since the withdrawal of the United States decided in 2018 by President Donald Trump.
The Islamic Republic has gradually freed itself from its commitments and now officially produces uranium enriched to 60%, a threshold well above that of 3.67% set by the pact.