The Individuals’s Mojahedin Group of Iran (MEK), an exiled Iranian resistance group, supplied a report back to Fox Information Digital presenting proof of a top-secret unmanned aerial car (UAV) web site within the Islamic Republic of Iran, north of Qom Metropolis within the Ganjine area.
In response to the report, members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are skilled to make use of “every kind of drones” on the base, together with the Mohajer collection, manufactured by Qods Aviation Trade. Workers of Qods Aviation Trade additionally reportedly use the positioning to coach small teams of Iranian proxy operatives of Hezbollah, in addition to members of Iranian proxy teams from Syria, Yemen and Iraq, to make use of the Mohajer-4 drone platform.
The Nationwide Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), based mostly on data from the MEK, instructed Fox Information Digital that the positioning is a proving floor for Mohajer-4, Mohajer-6, and Mohajer-10 drones.
Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of NCRI’s Washington, D.C., workplace, instructed Fox Information Digital that “seven months into the regional battle, it has change into evident that the regime in Tehran is the proverbial ‘head of the snake’ of belligerence and terror export within the Center East. As such, Western governments should train firmness as an alternative of lodging and engagement in coping with Tehran and maintain it to account for its malign actions.”
UNIVERSITY OF TEHRAN PROFESSOR SAYS PROTESTERS AT US COLLEGES WILL SUPPORT IRAN IN AMERICAN CONFLICT
Qods Aviation Trade is listed on the Treasury Division’s Specifically Designated Nationals and Blocked Individuals Listing, as is its new moniker, Mild Airplanes Design and Manufacturing Industries.
The most recent drone in its arsenal, the Mohajer-10, can carry a payload of 300 kilograms for a variety of two,000 kilometers, in response to Breaking Protection. Launched in August 2023, the drone has a 450-liter gasoline tank and may keep airborne for twenty-four hours. In a photograph of the brand new drone shared on an Iranian tv station, textual content in each Hebrew and Persian suggested viewers to “put together your shelters,” Reuters reported.
Brett Velicovich, a U.S. Military veteran and creator of “Drone Warrior: An Elite Soldier’s Inside Account of the Hunt for America’s Most Harmful Enemies,” mentioned that the schematics for lethal Mohajer- and Shahed-series drones are being exported to Iranian proxies all over the world. “One or two guys can launch one among these drones from the center of a area…they usually have the potential to conduct simply as highly effective a strike as main nation states may earlier than,” Velicovich mentioned.
Velicovich added this enables Iran to “sow chaos and discord” whereas additionally “having believable deniability.” He claims the regime “need to use these long-range drone methods to point out that they one way or the other have management over the Center East and the area.”
Drones have performed a task within the escalations happening abroad following Oct. 7. America Institute of Peace notes that “U.S. forces deployed throughout the Center East had been attacked greater than 160 occasions by pro-Iranian militias” between October 2023 and February 2024.
A kind of strikes was lethal. On Jan. 28, an Iranian proxy used a drone to kill three U.S. service members in Jordan. Nationwide Safety Council spokesperson John Kirby said that the Islamic Resistance in Iraq was behind the assault. He didn’t state which of the Iranian proxy teams below the resistance umbrella bore duty. The Pentagon said it couldn’t present solutions to Fox Information Digital’s request for details about the group behind the assault or the kind of drone that was used. United States Central Command instructed Fox Information Digital that it doesn’t touch upon ongoing investigations.
On Apr. 13, Iran fired dozens of drones, together with the Shahed-136, and a whole lot of missiles at Israel in retaliation for an Apr. 1 bombing that killed seven IRGC members on the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus, Syria. The Israel Protection Forces (IDF) didn’t reply to a request for remark about whether or not the Mohajer system was used in opposition to Israel in Iran’s assault, or in any assaults since Oct. 7.
Velicovich lately traveled to Israel, the place he mentioned he witnessed “lots of exercise” on the northern border, the place the IDF “are preventing with Hezbollah…in a form of covert battle.” Drones are a part of that battle, although Velicovich didn’t report witnessing Iranian drones on the northern border.
“Israelis have extraordinarily sturdy defenses in opposition to UAVs,” Velicovich mentioned. “However Iranian scientists are on a regular basis attempting to develop one thing new and testing these airwaves to determine the way to get across the Iron Dome, the way to get across the Patriot missile system,” he added.
There was no indication of whether or not Mohajer collection drones have been utilized by Iran, its proxy Hezbollah or different proxy teams attacking Israel or U.S. forces since Oct. 7. The MEK was not conscious of proof that the drone web site in Qom has been utilized in any assaults in opposition to Israel since Oct. 7.
In response to on-line paperwork from the U.S. Military’s Coaching and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), the Mohajer system has proliferated to Iran’s allies. TRADOC writes that the Mohajer-4 platform, which entered mass manufacturing in 1999, has been distributed “broadly,” together with to non-state actors. Used for surveillance and to interdict drug smugglers, the Mohajer-4 can be outfitted with the Hydra unguided rocket. It will possibly stay airborne for seven hours.
The Mohajer-6 entered manufacturing in 2018. Syria, Hezbollah, Ethiopia, the Russian Federation, Iraq and Venezuela have entry to the drone, in response to TRADOC. Military paperwork state the drone, which may be airborne as much as 12 hours, may be launched and recovered from a runway, and may carry “a multispectral surveillance payload, and/or as much as two precision-guided munitions.”
The MEK supplied paperwork and aerial imagery to Fox Information Digital exhibiting how the Qom web site has expanded in recent times. In response to translated paperwork MEK supplied from the Iranian Armed Forces’ Actual Property and Land Group, the positioning was first proposed as a UAV testing floor in February 2005. In Could 2006, 1,800 hectares (greater than 4,400 acres) of land close to Qom had been handed over to the Ministry of Protection and Armed Forces Logistics.
The MEK reviews that simply 949 hectares have been used for the positioning. Aerial images present the positioning’s first 500-meter runway, created in 2007. In 2014, photographs demonstrated that the runway was expanded to 1400 meters. Photographs present the runway was additional enlarged in 2020 to 1500 meters “so bigger drones is also examined.” Extra photographs present {that a} hangar of about 30 by 40 meters was added in 2021.
In response to the MEK’s report, uneven warfare varieties “a vital a part of a deliberate technique” that depends on “intensive use of drones and missiles, which the regime is able to manufacturing with the help of its allies. Proxies execute these operations on behalf of the regime.” The MEK additionally cites “intelligence sources” claiming that Supreme Chief of Iran Ali Khamenei “has personally overseen Iran’s drone mission since 2004.”
The MEK urges different Western states to observe swimsuit with the U.S.’ 2019 designation of the IRGC as a international terrorist group.
Velicovich famous that “Iran was the orchestrator, for my part, on the Oct. 7 assaults.” He defined that the regime used “one among their proxy teams, to not pin the total blame on them, however it’s their cash and materials.” He worries that the U.S. authorities “doesn’t have a deal with proper now on the true quantity of drone methods that the Iranians try to construct. And we received’t really feel the impact tomorrow. Will probably be years from now,” he warned.