According to investigations by the Financial Times, Russia has secretly helped Iran with technology for the development of advanced supersonic missiles.
The technological assistance is said to have been under way since 2023 under the codename C430L, but there is no evidence that Iran actually possesses supersonic missiles developed with Russia’s help.
The main purpose of the programme is said to be to help the Iranians with a propulsion system that would allow a missile to fly for several hours at speeds above the speed of sound.
Fabian Hinz, an expert on Iranian missiles and senior analyst at Conflict Armament Research, a British organisation that tracks weapons, said: «This is the transfer of a highly strategically sensitive military technology from Russia that the Iranians have wanted to acquire for several decades.
«A programme like this would require political approval from the very top in Russia.»
The term «supersonic» simply means faster than the speed of sound and is used in a military context for speeds of up to approximately five times the speed of sound, while the term «hypersonic» is used for even faster missiles.
If the Financial Times’ information is true, it is therefore not Russia’s most advanced missile technology that is being transferred to Iran.
Nevertheless, such weapons in the hands of the mullahs would present the United States’ advanced missile defences with a more difficult task, and thereby take the conflict between the two countries to a qualitatively new level.
The question is whether Russia considers it expedient to give the United States more to deal with in the Middle East, so that it can itself face less resistance in Ukraine.
