The Senate Foreign Affairs Committee has approved a legislative initiative that imposes sanctions on Iran's unmanned aerial vehicle industry and those who will assist it. It is a bipartisan initiative led by Committee Chairman Bob Menendez of the Democratic Party, and Republican Sen. Jim Rish.
The initiative expands an existing U.S. law that imposes sanctions on anyone who aids the Iranian arms industry, and also includes the entire unmanned aerial vehicle industry.
"Iran is making unbridled use of armed UAVs and exporting them to its affiliates and terrorist organizations in the Middle East, in a manner that poses a significant threat to U.S. national security and our allies," Menendez said.
"Significant threat to US national security and our allies," Menendez (Archive), Photo: Reuters
"Iranian use of these tools has already been reflected in attacks on Israeli ships, Houthi rebels' attacks on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and Iranian - backed militia operations against American targets in Iraq."
Senator Rish added that "unmanned aerial vehicles have quickly become the weapon of choice for the Iranians. Since the Biden administration began negotiations on the nuclear deal, Iran has carried out UAV attacks aimed at the Prime Minister of Iraq, our allies in the Persian Gulf and Israel and against American forces and diplomats. "
Iran is investing a lot of effort in developing military capabilities based on drones and drones, as a cheap and effective replacement for manned aircraft based airplanes. To create a burden on interception systems and thus succeed in infiltrating some of them and hitting targets.In light of this, there is concern in Israel about Iran's developing capabilities in the field.
"UAVs have become the Iranians' favorite weapon." Rish (archive), Photo: Reuters
The Iranians have had several successes in UAV attacks, some of which were carried out by the Houthi rebels in Yemen, which are five from Iran, and by Shiite militias in Iraq. On several occasions, Israeli-owned cargo ships cruising the Persian Gulf were attacked and damaged.
The biggest attack took place in 2019, when aircraft leaving Yemen managed to inflict heavy damage on two huge facilities of Aramco, Saudi Arabia's national oil company.
The severe damage forced Saudi Arabia to significantly reduce its oil production until it overcame the damage.
Iranian UAV (Archive),
Iran has also made several attempts to infiltrate UAVs into Israeli territory, but so far without success. In March, two unmanned Iranian aircraft were intercepted over Iraq by US Air Force fighter jets, and the defense establishment estimates that they were armed and made their way to Israel on In order to harm its goals.
Shortly after this incident, a huge hangar was attacked in the western Iranian city of Karmansha, which stored hundreds of unmanned aircraft.
According to foreign reports, Israel was responsible for the attack, which killed at least 100 UAVs and drones - and according to other versions several hundred.
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