 Iran doubled its military support to Russia. Iran is doubling down on military support for Russia in a series of new military deals that could prolong the war in Ukraine and offer sanction-battered Tehran new economic and defence lifelines according to five US and NATO officials familiar with the matter. About it informed Foreign Policy Edition. In public, top US and Allied leaders have castigated Iran for supplying Russia with drones and vowed to use everything in their power to block those shipments. Behind closed doors, officials concede that there are no realistic avenues to stem the flow of Iranian military goods into Russia for it to deploy to Ukraine. There's unfortunately a limit to what we can do to stop this unholy alliance with sanctions alone, said one senior Eastern European official who tracks the matter. The question of what Washington and its allies can or can't do to hamper cooperation between Moscow and Tehran serves as a litmus test for how it can cut off Russia from foreign military suppliers to help hasten the end of the war. With many of Russia's military supplies running low and its defence industrial base squeezed by Western sanctions, Moscow is increasingly seeking outside help and arms transfers from neighbouring Belarus, from Iran and North Korea and possibly from China to stay in the fight in Ukraine. The question over Iran's support for Russia's military has taken on a new sense of urgency for Western policymakers after Russian forces launched another salvo of Iranian-made drones in Ukraine this week. Although 11 of the 14 Iranian-made drones most aimed at the capital city of Kiev were shot down, the latest strike signals that Russia will continue to find ways to prolong the war by targeting Ukrainian civilians well outside the military battlefields. Moscow and Tehran have already advanced plans to build a drone factory inside Russia that could produce thousands of drones per year, the US and NATO officials confirmed. For now, US and NATO officials and independent experts said Iran's military support for Russia would not be enough to turn the tide of the war in Russia's favour, as Moscow struggles to regain the advantage in the face of effective and Western-backed Ukrainian resistance. But it could be enough to prolong the war and raise its death toll.