We can add Iran to the list of countries that have dropped munitions
in anger over the past year, now that an arms researcher has been able to
geolocate video of an Iranian drone striking targets near Aleppo, Syria.
On Feb. 4, an Iranian news
show broadcast a short piece highlighting how Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have
been using the Shahed 129 drone to monitor the country’s southeast borders with
Afghanistan and Pakistan.
But as arms researcher Galen Wright points
out, “in addition to footage of the drones operating out of Konarak airport near Pakistan, the program featured
two short clips of the aircraft striking targets south of Aleppo.” Watch the
report, and the footage, here.
Wright
figured this out by geolocating the strikes to the border region between Idlib
and Aleppo. The footage shows the Iranian drone bombing a group of men in a
field as well as a house in the nearby village of Halasah.
While this is the first time we’ve seen
evidence of an actual airstrike, the drone is hardly a newcomer to the war in
Syria. There’s been footage of the Shahed flying over Damascus as far back as
2014, but the strike would mark Iran’s entrance into the growing club of
countries that have used armed drones in conflict alongside Iraq, Pakistan, and
Nigeria just in the past year.