- Iran unveiled its new Gaza drone for the first time at the International Arms Fair in Doha earlier this month.
- Iran says the new drone can fly more than 1,200 miles at an altitude of 35,000 feet and can carry 13 precision-guided bombs.
- This would be a big step up from Shahed's famous “exploding” drones.
Iran is selling a new drone named “Gaza” on the international market.
Iran unveiled the drone at an arms expo in Doha earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Gaza drone can carry up to 13 bombs and fly more than 1,200 miles at an altitude of 35,000 feet, the report said.
Iran has been developing weapons for years and shipping them to allies and distributors around the world, but now has no access to them on the open market after U.N. sanctions that barred the import and export of ballistic missiles and armed drones expired last year. It is ready for sale.
These sanctions were part of the so-called “Iran deal,” which was supported by former U.S. President Barack Obama and ultimately signed by Iran and the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council in 2015. As part of that agreement, Iran agreed to limit sanctions against Iran. Nuclear development program. However, former President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018.
Sales of Iranian weapons around the world have skyrocketed since the U.N. ban expired. And Iranian drones have figured prominently in recent conflicts, including in Ukraine.
Perhaps Iran's most famous drone, which is not even technically a drone, is the Shahed 136. It is actually a propeller-powered loitering weapon. It can only go in one direction as it hovers over the target before colliding and exploding.
Iran recently developed a new version of this type of “explosive drone” known as Shahed-238. It is considered faster. These Iranian drones, which fell into Russian hands, wreaked havoc in Ukraine. In November, Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that it had shot down 71 Iranian-made Shahed drones as they were flying from Russia to Kiev.
Iran's latest drone was named in solidarity with Gaza residents, who have been under shelling since Hamas launched attacks on Israeli territory in October. If it performs as well as it does on the market, it will be a big step forward from the Shahed series.
However, not everyone is convinced that the “Gaza” drones are all that Iran claims.
A spokesperson for General Atomics, which manufactures the MQ-9A Reaper in the United States, told the Wall Street Journal that the Gaza drone could carry less than a third of the Reaper's payload. He said there is.
“There are a lot of counterfeit products out there these days,” he says. “Often imitated, but never duplicated. Don't be fooled by lookalikes.”
