Four sources familiar with knowledge of the situation told CNN that Russia has been taking some of the US and NATO-supplied weapons and equipment that has been left on the battlefield in Ukraine and delivering it to Iran, where the US believes Teheran would attempt to reverse-engineer the systems.
Russian forces have taken possession of smaller, shoulder-fired weapons equipment, such as Javelin anti-tank and Stinger anti-aircraft systems that Ukrainian forces have occasionally been forced to leave behind on the battlefield, according to US, NATO, and other Western officials over the past year, the sources told CNN.
According to sources, in many of those instances, Russia has flown the machinery to Iran for disassembly and analysis, perhaps so that the Iranian military can try to produce its own version of the weapons. According to the sources, Russia believes that by continuing to give Iran captured Western weapons, Tehran will continue to support Moscow's conflict in Ukraine.
US officials don't think the problem is pervasive or systematic, and the Ukrainian military has made it a practice since the start of the conflict to inform the Pentagon of any losses of equipment supplied by the US to Russian forces, according to sources. Yet, US officials concede that it is challenging to follow the situation.
It's unclear whether Iran has successfully reverse-engineered any US weaponry stolen in Ukraine, but Tehran has demonstrated exceptional skill in creating weapon systems based on previously taken US hardware.
A key weapon in Iran’s inventory, the Toophan anti-tank guided missile, was reverse engineered from the American BGM-71 TOW missile in the 1970s. The Iranians also intercepted a US-made drone in 2011, a Lockheed Martin RQ-170 “Sentinel”, and reverse-engineered it to create a new drone that crossed into Israeli airspace in 2018 before being shot down.
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