Russian experts visited Iranian missile plants twice last year, records show

Several senior Russian missile specialists have visited Iran over the past year as the Islamic Republic has deepened its defense cooperation with Moscow, a Reuters review of travel records and employment data indicates.

The seven weapons experts were booked to travel from Moscow to Tehran aboard two flights on April 24 and September 17 last year, according to documents detailing the two group bookings as well as the passenger manifest for the second flight.

The booking records include the men’s passport numbers, with six of the seven having the prefix “20.” That denotes a passport used for official state business, issued to government officials on foreign work trips and military personnel stationed abroad, according to an edict published by the Russian government and a document on the Russian foreign ministry’s website.

Reuters is unable to determine what the seven were doing in Iran.

Both dates were within weeks of major Iranian attacks on Israel on April 14 and October 1. Israeli counterstrikes targeted Iranian air defenses, at least some of which are supplied by Russia.

A senior Iranian defense ministry official says Russian missile experts had made multiple visits to Iranian missile production sites last year, including two underground facilities, with some of the visits taking place in September. The official does not identify the sites.

A Western defense official who monitors Iran’s defense cooperation with Russia says an unspecified number of Russian missile experts visited an Iranian missile base about 15 kilometers (9 miles) west of the port of Amirabad on Iran’s Caspian Sea coast in September.

The seven Russians identified by Reuters all have senior military backgrounds, with two ranked colonel and two lieutenant colonel, according to a review of Russian databases containing information about citizens’ jobs or places of work, including tax, phone and vehicle records.

Two are experts in air-defense missile systems, three specialize in artillery and rocketry, while one has a background in advanced weapons development and another has worked at a missile-testing range, the records show. It’s unclear whether all were still working in those roles as the employment data ranged from 2021 to 2024.

Contacted by phone, five deny they had been to Iran, deny they worked for the military, or both, while one declines to comment and one hangs up.