{"id":275167,"date":"2026-09-02T15:56:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T15:56:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/275167\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T15:56:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T15:56:17","slug":"russia-secretly-helping-iran-develop-supersonic-cruise-missiles-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/275167\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia secretly helping Iran develop supersonic cruise missiles \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia<\/a> has been secretly helping Iran develop advanced supersonic cruise missiles in one of the most significant known transfers of strategic military technology from Moscow to Tehran<\/a>, leaked documents show.<\/p>\n

The multiyear covert programme, code-named C430L, has enlisted some of Russia\u2019s most experienced missile specialists to help Iran develop a new class of weapon capable of threatening US aircraft carriers and other warships in the Middle East<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The programme, which began in 2023 and continued into the US-Israeli war against Iran, was uncovered through leaked Russian correspondence, travel records and analysis of military patents.<\/p>\n

The main purpose of C430L is to help Iran to develop a ramjet propulsion system, an engine that allows a cruise missile to sustain flight at several times the speed of sound. Missile and military experts said the technology was almost certainly intended for anti-ship and land-attack cruise missiles.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the transfer of a highly strategically sensitive military technology from Russia that the Iranians have wanted to acquire for decades,\u201d said Fabian Hinz, an expert on Iranian missiles and senior analyst with Conflict Armament Research, a UK-based weapons-tracing organisation.<\/p>\n

\u201cA programme like this would require political clearance from the very top in Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n

Supersonic cruise missiles combine speed with the ability to fly at low altitude, shortening the time available for sophisticated air and missile defences to detect and engage them. That is especially relevant for Iran in the Gulf, where the US and its regional allies operate advanced land- and sea-based defensive systems.<\/p>\n

\"IranianIranian missiles on display at the Azadi square in Tehran, Iran. Photograph: EPA <\/p>\n

Iran has built and flight-tested the ramjet propulsion system, although there is no evidence that a Russian-assisted supersonic cruise missile has yet been deployed.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the Iranians, this would give them a qualitatively new strategic weapon system that could threaten US Navy vessels,\u201d said Jim Lamson, a former Iran-focused military analyst with the CIA now at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.<\/p>\n

The leaked correspondence shows that talks over the programme continued into this summer.<\/p>\n

It is part of the increasingly close strategic military relationship between Russia and Iran. Tehran supplied Moscow with Shahed attack drones that became an important part of Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine, and helped Moscow establish their production inside Russia.<\/p>\n

Ukraine and western officials have also accused Russia of providing Iran with battlefield assistance during its war with the US and Israel, including satellite imagery, drone support and weapons components.<\/p>\n

The C430L programme represents a deeper form of co-operation, with Moscow helping Tehran acquire the know-how to develop an advanced strategic weapon system of its own.<\/p>\n

The secret ramjet programme \u201cshows Russia is trying to broaden the Ukraine war and draw the US into different theatres\u201d, said Nicole Grajewski, a professor at Sciences Po University in Paris. \u201cRussia doesn\u2019t care as much about the red lines in the region.\u201d<\/p>\n

The supersonic missile assistance programme was arranged by Rosoboronexport, Russia\u2019s state arms exporter, which co-ordinated the project with NPO Mashinostroyenia. <\/p>\n

The US sanctioned NPO Mashinostroyenia in 2014, describing it as a significant Russian rocketry company responsible for cruise missile systems launched from ships, submarines and ground platforms, as well as work supporting Russia\u2019s strategic nuclear forces, including intercontinental ballistic missiles.<\/p>\n

Leaked travel records show Russian arms export officials and several senior NPO Mashinostroyenia engineers made repeated trips to Iran before the C430L contract was formally signed with Iran\u2019s ministry of defence and Armed Forces Logistics in November 2023.<\/p>\n

By 2025, NPO Mashinostroyenia had received a large cache of Iranian technical material relating to the ramjet propulsion system. Russian engineers then analysed data from an Iranian flight test and sent Tehran a detailed set of questions about how the system had performed.<\/p>\n

They asked about changes to its fuel system, combustion stability, air intake and engine nozzle. The engineers also wanted to know whether the ramjet had continued operating after the telemetry supplied by Iran \u2013 data showing how the engine was performing in flight \u2013 ended less than a minute into the test.<\/p>\n

\"AA mural along a street in downtown Tehran. Photograph: Atta Kenare\/AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n

The exchange shows NPO engineers working through the performance of a system Iran had already built and tested, using Russian experience to identify problems and help improve the design.<\/p>\n

In April 2025, Rosoboronexport proposed sending a delegation of about two dozen Russian specialists to Iran for technical consultations under C430L. The same correspondence asked Tehran to answer the engineers\u2019 questions about the flight-test telemetry before the proposed trip, linking the mission to the technical analysis of Iran\u2019s propulsion system.<\/p>\n

The Kremlin, Rosoboronexport and NPO Mashinostroyenia did not respond to requests for comment. The Iranian government, contacted through its London embassy, did not respond to questions.<\/p>\n

Vladimir Putin, Russia\u2019s president, told his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian on Tuesday that Moscow was \u201ctrying to give you the help you need in this difficult period\u201d during the war with the US and \u201csupplying you with the goods you need\u201d, without elaborating.<\/p>\n

C430L was already under way when Putin in 2024 threatened to retaliate against western transfers of advanced long-range missiles to Ukraine by \u201csupplying our weapons of the same class into regions of the world where strikes will be carried out on sensitive sites of those countries who are doing the same to Russia\u201d.<\/p>\n

The C430L programme forms part of a wider pattern of covert technological assistance that Iran sought from Russia and China as it strengthened its military capabilities in recent years.<\/p>\n

The Financial Times revealed earlier this year that Moscow had agreed to supply Tehran with \u201cVerba\u201d man-portable air-defence systems, while the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps secretly acquired a high-resolution Chinese satellite that it later used to surveil US military bases across the Middle East around the time of Iranian retaliatory missile and drone attacks this year.<\/p>\n

The US subsequently sanctioned the Chinese supplier, Earth Eye, saying it had provided satellite imagery to Iran during the war and that such imagery enabled Iranian military strikes against US forces.<\/p>\n

\"AnAn Iskander-M missile launcher at Kubinka military training ground in Moscow, Russia. Photograph: Pavel Pavlov\/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images \"AA mural along a street in downtown Tehran. Photograph: Atta Kenare\/AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n

\u2013 Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russia has been secretly helping Iran develop advanced supersonic cruise missiles in one of the most significant known…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[18666,84,75119,75120,43332,36017,34,37,42,101,2081],"class_list":["post-275167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-armed-conflict","tag-attack","tag-confilict","tag-conflicts-general","tag-daily-life","tag-general-view","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-strait-of-hormuz","tag-strikes"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117202268314785369","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}