Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya: “Today, Lukashenka met with the President of Iran. Propaganda presents this as ‘new horizons’ and ‘friendship of peoples’. Lukashenka openly declared that Belarus is ready to cooperate with Iran ‘on any issues’. But there is no clear understanding of the framework in which this cooperation will take place. The one thing that is obvious is that the regime is dragging Belarus ever deeper into the war.
We know very well what the Iranian scenario means: life under constant sanctions, isolation, bans on flights and international bank cards, and the threat of nuclear weapons. The United States recently struck Iranian nuclear facilities – and this is certainly not the path Belarusians envision for their country.
The path Lukashenka is leading the country down is a trap. Belarus must be open, modern, and safe: without war, nuclear weapons, and isolation”.
It should be noted that such cooperation between the regime and Iran is not new:
- In the 2000s, Lukashenka supported Tehran’s nuclear ambitions in exchange for promises of investment, for which he came under sanctions.
- In 2011, the regime attempted to assist Iranian ballistic missile development – and again Belarus faced international sanctions.
- After 2022, Minsk and Tehran became allies of Moscow in the war against Ukraine.
- Since 2023, Belarus has been planning production of the Shahed-136 drone – a weapon critical to Russia’s capabilities in Ukraine.
- By July 2024, Belarus presented the Kochevnik drone – supposedly domestically developed but strikingly similar to the Iranian Shahed-136.
- In November 2024, a high-level military delegation from Belarus visited an Iranian military university specializing in drones.
- According to a BELPOL investigation, a secret drone factory is already operating and expanding in Minsk, producing combat drones, including the Askalon – an analogue of the Iranian Shahed.
