Iran is pro­vid­ing Rus­sia with ma­te­ri­als to build a drone man­u­fac­tur­ing plant east of Moscow as the Krem­lin looks to lock in a steady sup­ply of weapon­ry for its on­go­ing in­va­sion of Ukraine, ac­cord­ing to a U.S. in­tel­li­gence find­ing re­leased by the White House on Fri­day.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil spokesman John Kir­by said that U.S. in­tel­li­gence of­fi­cials be­lieve a plant in Rus­sia’s Al­abuga spe­cial eco­nom­ic zone could be op­er­a­tional ear­ly next year. The White House al­so re­leased satel­lite im­agery tak­en in April of the in­dus­tri­al lo­ca­tion, sev­er­al hun­dred miles east of Moscow, where it be­lieves the plant “will prob­a­bly be built.”

Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s ad­min­is­tra­tion pub­licly stat­ed in De­cem­ber that it be­lieved Tehran and Moscow were con­sid­er­ing stand­ing up a drone as­sem­bly line in Rus­sia for the Ukraine war. The new in­tel­li­gence sug­gests that the project, in the Yelabuga re­gion of Tatarstan, has moved be­yond con­cep­tion.

Iran has said it pro­vid­ed drones to Rus­sia be­fore the start of the war but not since.

Kir­by said that U.S. of­fi­cials al­so have de­ter­mined that Iran con­tin­ues to sup­ply the Russ­ian mil­i­tary with one-way at­tack drones made in Iran: The drones are shipped via the Caspi­an Sea, from Amirabad in Iran to Makhachkala, Rus­sia, and then are used by Russ­ian forces against Ukraine.

As of May, Rus­sia had re­ceived hun­dreds of one-way at­tack drones, as well as drone pro­duc­tion-re­lat­ed equip­ment, from Iran, ac­cord­ing to the White House.

“This is a full-scale de­fense part­ner­ship that is harm­ful to Ukraine, to Iran’s neigh­bours, and to the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty,” Kir­by said. “We are con­tin­u­ing to use all the tools at our dis­pos­al to ex­pose and dis­rupt these ac­tiv­i­ties in­clud­ing by shar­ing this with the pub­lic — and we are pre­pared to do more.”

Kir­by said the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic ad­min­is­tra­tion on Fri­day would an­nounce a new ad­vi­so­ry meant to help busi­ness­es and oth­er gov­ern­ments put in place mea­sures to en­sure they are not in­ad­ver­tent­ly con­tribut­ing to Iran’s drone pro­gram. The Unit­ed States, the Eu­ro­pean Union and the Unit­ed King­dom in re­cent months all have is­sued rules de­signed to cut off the flow of drone com­po­nents to Rus­sia and Iran.

The Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion has re­peat­ed­ly pub­li­cized in­tel­li­gence find­ings that de­tail how Iran is as­sist­ing the Russ­ian in­va­sion.

The per­sis­tent drip of in­tel­li­gence find­ings from the ad­min­is­tra­tion is in­tend­ed to de­tail what U.S. of­fi­cials say is a deep­en­ing de­fense part­ner­ship be­tween Rus­sia and Iran. It’s al­so part of a broad­er ad­min­is­tra­tion ef­fort to spot­light Moscow’s pros­e­cu­tion of its war in Ukraine in hopes of fur­ther pro­mot­ing glob­al iso­la­tion of Rus­sia.

The White House last month said Rus­sia was look­ing to buy ad­di­tion­al ad­vanced at­tack drones from Iran af­ter us­ing up most of the 400 drones it had pre­vi­ous­ly pur­chased from Tehran.

The Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion last year first pub­li­cized satel­lite im­agery and in­tel­li­gence find­ings that it said in­di­cat­ed Iran sold hun­dreds of at­tack drones to Rus­sia. For months, of­fi­cials have said the Unit­ed States be­lieved Iran was con­sid­er­ing sell­ing hun­dreds of bal­lis­tic mis­siles to Rus­sia, but White House of­fi­cials have said they do not have ev­i­dence a deal was con­sum­mat­ed.

The White House has not­ed that Iran al­so has weapons flow­ing its way from Rus­sia.

Iran is seek­ing to pur­chase ad­di­tion­al mil­i­tary equip­ment from Rus­sia, in­clud­ing at­tack he­li­copters, radars and YAK-130 com­bat train­er air­craft, ac­cord­ing to the White House. In April, Iran an­nounced that it had fi­nal­ized a deal to buy Su-35 fight­er jets from Rus­sia. —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by AAMER MAD­HANI | As­so­ci­at­ed Press