Case Explained: Iranian Officials’ Legal Liability in Russia’s Drone War on Ukraine – Legal Perspective

The Islamic Republic of Iran has materially enabled and industrialized Russia’s drone campaign against Ukrainian civilians since mid-2022 through the supply, modification, and joint production of Shahed-style drones. This was not an isolated arms transfer, but a sustained contribution to Russia’s capacity to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity at scale. Indeed, the assistance culminated in Iranian officials and entities providing drone designs, training, and technology to Russia — handing over the information Russia needed to begin domestic production and ramping up its air terror campaign against Ukraine.

By late 2025, the Iranian government’s assistance to Russia’s drone war underpinned the most severe escalation of Russia’s aerial attacks, resulting in record civilian casualties, incursions by Russian drones into NATO airspace, and the gravest energy crisis Ukraine has faced since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022.

While Ukrainians continue facing relentless drone attacks, the Russian-Iranian Shahed industry poses a much broader threat. In apparent retaliation for the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran in recent weeks, Iranian drones, reportedly including Russian-produced variants, have targeted its neighboring countries in the Middle East, damaging civilian structures such as residential buildings, hotels, and airports. Previously, the Iranian government reportedly provided attack drones to repressive regimes and armed groups across Africa and the Middle East, including forces backing the then-government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the Sudanese Armed Forces, armed groups such as the Houthis in Yemen, and others.

A forthcoming report based on months of analysis by the Atlantic Council Strategic Litigation Project (where one of us, Celeste, works), the International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR, where Anastasiya works), and the research organization C4ADS argues that Russian Shahed attacks meet the legal tests for the war crimes of attacking civilians, civilian objects, and specially protected objects, and the crimes against humanity of murder and other inhumane acts (pp. 49-61). Secondary liability, furthermore, extends in certain instances to Iranian officials involved in industrial, financial, and logistical support for atrocities.

The continued impunity of Iranian officials reveals a structural failure of international criminal and sanctions enforcement to holistically constrain major international threat actors. The international community must use and strengthen all tools of law and diplomacy at its disposal — including international criminal law — to comprehensively thwart enablers of atrocities and hold them accountable.

Building Russia’s Capacity to Attack Ukraine at Scale 

The role of Iran (for the purposes of this article, “Iran” refers to the current regime, as distinct from Iran as a nation) in Russia’s drone war against Ukraine was not incidental, improvised, or limited to arms transfers at the margins. From mid-2022 onward, the Iranian regime enabled Russia to overcome a critical operational bottleneck: its inability to conduct sustained long-range aerial attacks deep into Ukrainian territory using low-cost, expendable systems. Through the provision, adaptation, and ultimately the co-production of Shahed-style drones, along with operator training, Iran transformed Russia’s sporadic strike capacity into an industrialized campaign of aerial terror against Ukraine and arguably beyond.

The partnership began with direct transfers of Iranian-made drones. From August 2022, Iran supplied Russia with Mohajer-6 reconnaissance drones and Shahed-131 and Shahed-136 kamikaze drones (also commonly referred to as loitering munitions or unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs), along with operator training and technical support. These systems filled an acute gap in Russia’s arsenal. Facing sanctions-induced shortages of critical components for precision-guided munitions, Russia lacked a scalable means of striking civilian infrastructure far from the front line. Shahed drones — cheap, long-range, and easily replenished — offered precisely that capability. Within weeks of their first deployment by Russia in September 2022, they were used to strike Ukrainian civilian homes, energy facilities, and entire residential areas well beyond active combat zones (see here, here, and here).

The Iranian government’s involvement did not stop at delivery. As early deployments exposed technical failures and operator errors, Iranian personnel reportedly provided on-the-ground troubleshooting and training, including in occupied Crimea. This operational support ensured that the drones could be used effectively in large numbers and integrated into Russia’s evolving strike tactics. By mid-fall 2022, Shaheds had become indispensable to Russia’s ability to conduct nightly terror attacks on civilian targets.

The most consequential escalation came with the decision to localize production. In November 2022, a front company for the Iranian Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL), Sahara Thunder, concluded a major agreement with Russia’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone in Tatarstan. This marked a clear shift from episodic supply to sustained industrial cooperation. Under the deal, Iran transferred not only drone kits, but also blueprints, source code, production equipment, and extensive training hours, enabling Russia to manufacture Shahed-style drones domestically at scale. The agreement envisaged thousands of units annually and laid the foundation for continuous design modifications and output expansion.

Crucially for the criminal liability of Iranian officials, this cooperation deepened after the consequences of the Shahed attacks became undeniable. By late 2022, Russian Shahed strikes had already been widely reported as tools of mass civilian harm and as central drivers of Ukraine’s first major winter energy crisis. Despite international condemnation and mounting evidence of unlawful use, Iran continued deliveries, technical upgrades, and production support. By 2024–2025, the Alabuga facility had expanded dramatically, and Russian production reached an estimated 2,700 Shahed drones per month — enabling sustained, high-volume attacks that overwhelmed Ukraine’s air defenses through sheer scale. The effects were foreseeable: according to data collected by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the weekly average for Shahed-style drones launched at Ukraine from February 2022 until September 2024 was 75. From September 2024 through February 2026, that average jumped to 903. In turn, the weekly rate of drones that evaded interception in 2025 was nearly three times that of 2024.

Weapon of Atrocities in Ukraine, New Threat to NATO

This industrialization, enabled by Iran’s support, changed the character of Russia’s air war on Ukraine. The niche filled by Shahed drones — inexpensive but with a range to hit targets beyond the front lines — was precisely what Russia needed to target civilians. By design, Ukraine’s immediate military targets are generally otherwise accessible on the front lines. Shahed drones, therefore, became the backbone of Russia’s daily swarm attacks, “double-tap” strikes, and combination attacks (alongside high-cost missiles) to exhaust defenses, maximize harm, and terrorize civilian populations.

Shaheds are relatively inexpensive, slow, long-range loitering munitions with limited payloads, known for their loud buzz. These characteristics make them highly vulnerable to air defences and largely ineffective against fortified or mobile military targets. Yet these same characteristics make them ideal tools of civilian terror. The low cost of Shaheds (about US$35,000 per drone compared with US$1 million to $15 million for a missile) allows Russia to launch them in overwhelming numbers, so that they “leak” through Ukraine’s air defenses and strike targets. It also allows Russia to prioritize psychological harm — with the impact of sheer frequency — over military efficiency. As a result, Shaheds have become the primary means by which Russia conducts nightly attacks on Ukrainian cities far from the battlefield and on critical energy infrastructure during cold winter months.

A series of modifications introduced by the Iranian and Russian militaries between 2022 and 2025 “optimized” Shaheds for use against “soft-skin” civilian targets. Warheads reinforced with shrapnel casings, thermobaric payloads, and later mine-dispensing adaptations increased lethality and destruction in residential areas, even as they were largely ineffective against fortified military installations and mobile units.

Despite high interception rates by Ukraine’s air defenses (up to 90 percent), Russia’s high-volume swarm attacks are designed to ensure that at least some drones do penetrate, causing deaths, injuries, large-scale urban destruction, and damage to critical energy infrastructure. The timing of attacks — frequently at night or during cold winter months — maximizes civilian vulnerability, disrupts sleep, and compounds harm through blackouts, loss of heating and water supply, causing devastating public health effects. Research gathered by the open-source intelligence (OSINT) team at IPHR, shows that, between September 2022 and May 2024, relevant attacks killed 58 civilians (including five children) and injured 265 more (including eight children).

Russia’s indigenization of drone production has helped increase its capacity to attack. In June and July 2025 alone, Russia launched 11,739 drones at Ukraine, “[t]railed by 433 cruise and ballistic missiles,” killing 518 civilians and “maim[ing]” more than 1,500. By winter 2025–2026, combined missile–drone swarms triggered the worst energy crisis Ukraine has faced since 2022, with millions of civilians left without electricity, water, and heating under severe freezing temperatures for days on end.

The threat, however, no longer stops at Ukraine’s borders. On Jan. 31 this year, Ukraine’s energy system experienced an extensive blackout that spilled over into neighboring Moldova, which shares power lines with Ukraine. Several months earlier, Russia’s repeated breaches of European Union and NATO airspace — including that of Poland, Romania, Moldova, and the Baltic region — culminated in Shahed drone incursions deep into Poland on the night of Sept. 9–10, 2025. According to experts, these Iran-enabled incursions form part of a deliberate effort to probe air-defense thresholds and NATO response mechanisms (Schmitt; Brobst, Browman, and McMillan). In the recent, rapidly escalating armed conflict in the Middle East, Iranian Shaheds have already attacked high-rise apartment buildings, international airports, and hotels across the Gulf states (see here, here). According to media reports citing Ukrainian and Western allies’ intelligence, Russia is now supporting Iran with targeting intelligence, Shahed deployment tactics, critical drone technology and, reportedly, even actual drones.

These developments demonstrate how a Russian-Iranian weapon developed and refined through atrocities in Ukraine is now being used to challenge regional security architectures. The same low-cost, high-volume model that overwhelms Ukrainian defenses poses a systemic challenge to NATO’s eastern flank, and, most recently, Middle East states, particularly in scenarios involving saturation attacks against civilian infrastructure.

Core Crimes and Iranian Officials’ Secondary Liability

Under the Rome Statute, the war crimes of attacking civilians (Article 8(2)(b)(i)), civilian objects (Article 8(2)(b)(ii)), and specially protected objects such as medical, educational, and cultural objects (Article 8(2)(b)(ix)) require that a perpetrator intentionally directed attacks against those targets as part of an armed conflict. As argued in the report, OSINT research demonstrates that hundreds of civilian objects, such as homes and residential neighborhoods, and protected objects, including medical facilities, kindergartens, universities, and aid centers, were targeted, causing more than 300 civilian casualties (pp. 50-55).

As detailed in the report (pp. 42-47), three strands of evidence support the inference that these attacks were intentional. First, the targets were overwhelmingly civilian in nature, often located far from active front lines, and their attacks caused mass civilian casualties. Second, the technical characteristics of Shaheds point to deliberate civilian targeting. Shaheds are precision-guided, meaning operators are aware of what they strike. Yet their small payload, slow speed, and high interception rates make them largely ineffective against fortified military objectives, while rendering them well-suited to damaging unprotected civilian infrastructure and terrorizing populations through volume attacks. Third, the strike patterns — nighttime swarm attacks, winter energy attacks, double-tap strikes, and targeting of densely populated areas — demonstrate tactics designed to maximize civilian harm rather than achieve concrete military advantage.

Crimes against humanity require the contextual elements that they be part of a widespread and systematic attack against a civilian population, according to a State or organizational policy. For murder under Article 7(1)(a), the perpetrator must have killed one or more persons. According to OSINT research into relevant attacks in the period of September 2022 to May 2024, at least 58 civilians were killed in attacks where the launch of UAVs was sine qua non in their deaths. Other inhumane acts under Article 7(1)(k) involve the infliction of great suffering that is of a similar character to other acts under Article 7(1). The report argues that the use of drones is intended as terrorism, to create an ongoing and credible fear of death across the entirety of Ukraine.

When looking at individual criminal responsibility, the Russian military personnel involved in launching or directing the use of the drones would likely bear primary liability. However, Iranian officials involved in the procurement, transfer, and production of Shahed-style drones and operational training may incur secondary (accessorial) criminal liability — including for aiding and abetting or contributing to a common plan or purpose — under international criminal law.

Contribution to a common plan under Rome Statute Article 25(3)(d) requires, in short, intentionally or knowingly making a significant contribution to a group’s plan to commit a crime. Aiding and abetting under Article 25(3)(c) is one step more involved, requiring knowingly or intentionally making a causal or substantial contribution to a crime’s commission, with the purpose of facilitating that crime. As argued in the report, evidence suggests Iranian officials’ actions could meet both tests (pp. 61-62). The Russian military relied on the Shaheds to target civilians beyond the front lines — something Russia could not manage before having access to Shahed technology — making the contribution critical for attacks against civilians and civilian objects. Iranian officials then worked with their Russian counterparts to introduce modifications aimed at increasing civilian harm (such as shrapnel and thermobaric warheads) without making them more effective against military targets, which demonstrates purposeful facilitation of the crime (pp. 10-19).

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has addressed secondary liability in a handful of cases, defining some evidentiary standards such as the thresholds of support needed. That said, the most relevant case in this context is that against Charles Taylor under the Special Court of Sierra Leone (SCSL). While the SCSL operated under a different statute with different modes of liability, the case provided factors to assess in measuring the impact of the military equipment a defendant supplied for the recipients’ military operations. For example, the Trial Chamber highlighted support provided at the times the recipient had depleted its arms and ammunition (para 5829). In affirming the Trial Chamber, the Appeals Chamber noted how the arms and ammunition provided allowed the recipient to defend its positions and thus commit other crimes (para 519). Thus, while the theory of secondary liability remains underdeveloped, it also creates an opportunity for the ICC and other courts to refine the law and use it to interrupt mutually reinforcing cycles of impunity.

Furthermore, the existence of these provisions under the Rome Statute confirms that facilitators were envisaged as falling under its remit. While the specific charges against specific individuals would depend on the development of additional facts, recognizing that the door is open to secondary liability accurately captures the gravity of Iranian regime’s conduct, unlocks underused accountability pathways under the Rome Statute and domestic criminal law, and challenges the prevailing tendency to treat enablers as politically relevant but legally peripheral actors.

Assessing — and ideally holding accountable — actors such as Iranian officials under international criminal law frameworks further underscores the difference between conduct such as that of Iranian officials and that of other, more tertiary, actors. Iranian government entities made sustained, large-scale contributions with the purpose and knowledge of facilitating crimes. This is distinct from actors whose conduct might violate sanctions or export control provisions, but falls short of such knowing and impactful support. While still acting unlawfully, that second group would not be complicit in core international crimes. Thus, in cases of such significant contribution to international crimes as Iranian officials, criminal prosecution can complement economic pressure and actions under financial legal frameworks. This approach also opens opportunities for prosecutors under complementary legal frameworks to share resources, evidence, and the burden of pursuing such enablers.

Accountability for mass atrocity crimes cannot stop at direct perpetrators if it is to have a deterrent effect. Foregrounding secondary liability signals that industrial, financial, and logistical support for atrocities carries legal risk, thus closing a gap that has allowed States, including Iran, China, and North Korea, and their corporate actors to normalize participation in atrocity-enabling ecosystems while avoiding meaningful consequences.

Accountability to Date — and the Remaining Gaps

Accountability efforts to date have focused overwhelmingly on Russian perpetrators, a natural starting point as they will most often incur primary and command liability. The ICC has issued arrest warrants against four senior Russian officials, including the minister of defense and chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, for missile attacks on critical infrastructure. Sanctions have targeted Iranian-linked entities, including, most recently in the EU, Sahara Thunder, indicating States have evidence of these entities’ misconduct. But sanctions alone do not capture the gravity of their actions. No international or domestic prosecutions have meaningfully addressed Iran’s secondary liability for Shahed-enabled crimes.

Maximizing prosecutorial impact and deterrence requires coordinated, multi-track approaches. States and international bodies should leverage international (ICC), regional (Eurojust), and domestic judicial and law enforcement apparatuses encompassing primary and secondary liability for international criminal law, alongside terrorism, sanctions evasion, and money-laundering prevention tools, and corporate or administrative liability regimes. Such integration is particularly necessary in tackling complex networks of perpetrators and facilitators adept at operating across multiple conflicts and sanctions regimes.

Luckily, infrastructure for such mechanisms already exists, at least at the European level. Eurojust and Europol — EU agencies coordinating cross-border criminal investigations and prosecutions among member States — provide a framework for cooperation on core international crimes, including support for universal jurisdiction cases and ICC investigations. But this framework remains underutilized for enabler liability and constrained by limited resources and mandate. Meanwhile, authorities responsible for sanctions, customs enforcement, export controls, and financial intelligence often hold critical linkage evidence — on procurement networks, front companies, payment channels, and logistics routes — that rarely reaches criminal investigators in a timely or structured manner.

The remaining gaps are not evidentiary but political: while the evidence is ample, the political will to confront enablers and commit the substantial resources required for criminal investigations and sanctions compliance remains lacking. This is a strategic miscalculation, as failure to pursue a holistic response to Russia’s expanding network of atrocity enablers ultimately undermines the security of Western democracies.

By 2026, the Iranian regime’s Shahed program has become a central pillar of the Russian government’s campaign of aerial terror against Ukrainian civilians, with consequences that now extend beyond Ukraine’s borders. Drone incursions into NATO airspace, energy blackout spillovers into neighboring states, and Iran’s recent Shahed attacks on Middle East states underscore that the war in Ukraine is no longer a contained conflict, nor is it a Russia-specific war strategy. As long as Western responses treat Russia’s war and its enablers as siloed problems, repressive regimes will stay one step ahead, leaving civilians to pay the price.

FEATURED IMAGE: Ukrainian emergency workers and police inspect a Russian Shahed-136 drone that failed to detonate inside a civilian apartment and carefully remove its fragments from the building after an overnight attack. Russian forces had launched a drone assault on Kyiv using Shahed-136 loitering munitions, several of which struck residential buildings, causing fires and damage to civilian infrastructure, on October 23, 2025 in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Photo by Kostiantyn Liberov/Libkos/Getty Images)