Iranian officials have announced that Russia has stopped using the Hamedan Air Base, in western Iran, to conduct airstrikes in Syria, saying the deployment was only ever meant to be temporary. Russia confirmed their planes had all left Iran.
The base only began being used last week, and was seen as a major win for Russia’s air war, as the Iran base supporters larger planes than their own bases inside Syria, and was much closer than flying them from Russia directly.
Indications are that this is at least in part the result of Iranian annoyance at Russia for publicizing the use of the air base. Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan had slammed Russia for its “showing-off and inconsiderate attitude” in making the announcement.
Russian officials had never said how long they intended to use the base initially, but certainly gave the impression that this was to be a long-term matter, and not something they did over a long weekend before transitioning back out of the country.
What a mystery. Why do they care? Did russia ever deliver the S3 missile defense system? Why don’t they cooperate more?
Russian planes’ flights from Iranian base not suspended — official – http://tass.com/world/895398 Well, which is it?
What Russia did is known as forward deployment I believe. You move your assets closer to the battlefield so they can be more effective but don’t move all the resources needed to support those assets to where they’re located, This keeps the costs and complexity down. Because of arms treaties, the TU-22M3 can’t be fitted with aerial refuelling kit fitted so they were flying from southern Russia with reduced bomb loads so they could carry the fuel they needed for the extended ranges they were flying. By forward deploying to Iran with their own fuel and bombs delivered on transport aircraft, they were able to increase the bomb loads and frequency of raids and also allow less time for the US to warn their allies among the terrorists about the imminent arrival of heavy bombers. Then after a few days, the aircraft need maintenance to keep flying, so they all pack up and fly home. In the next few days we’ll probably see another deployment to Iran and as the Russians get better at it, they might have a fast enough rotation that there are always aircraft ready for flying operations in Iran.