https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/06/politics/iran-transfers-ballistic-missiles-russia/index.html
Iran recently transferred short-range ballistic missiles to Russia to use in the war against Ukraine, according to two sources familiar with the intelligence, completing a delivery that US and Western officials had warned was in the works for almost a year.
Putin begging for weapons from everyone, but only receiving garbage from North Korea and Iran. (While Zelenskyy receives quality tech from Europe and US, and Ukrainians impress with drones.) Heartwarming.
desperate scraping at the bottom of the barrel intensifies
Partly. I mean most of their resources are owned by the oligarchy and most of their population is being drafted to be fodder. So they probably don't have the resources to start up all new manufacturing of something that high tech right now which takes a while to build the tooling.
But the other issue is there used to be a treaty against making short range and tactical nukes since those are only good for actual use not as a deterrent. Trump backed out of it so the weapons manufacturers could make a new shitload of money from the US taxpayers designing them. Even though the US has very little use for them itself. And of course Russia backed out without the US being in it. But Russia probably hasn't gotten too far in making them yet. But Iran doesn't really have the tech to make long range strategic missiles for nukes, so they've probably been making short range ones for a while now to threaten their neighbors with.
Honestly I don't understand why Iran hasn't felt some very real consequences for its support of Russia yet. Like, why do the factories producing Shahed still exist?
I posted a similar question a while back about the possibly of attacking Iran. I was excoriated for my stupidity, and was schooled on the extraordinary difficulties of such an attack, as well as the strong military Iran has and its geographical protections.