CIA chief says Russia’s Iran drone deal shows military weakness

Bloomberg

The head of the US Central Intelligence Agency said Russia’s interest in buying drones from Iran for its war in Ukraine reveals the poor state of its military.
“It’s true that the Russians are reaching out to the Iranians to try to acquire armed drones,” CIA Director William Burns said during a three-hour stop at the Rocky Mountain resort of Aspen, Colorado, for an annual security forum that has drawn senior Biden administration officials, US generals and diplomats. “They need each other, they don’t really trust each other, in the sense that they’re energy rivals and historical competitors,” Burns said. “It’s important to remind ourselves that it’s a reflection, in some ways, of the deficiencies of Russia’s defense industry today, and the difficulties they’re having after significant losses so far in the war against Ukraine.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Tehran earlier this week. Burns said Russia and Iran are trying to help each other evade US sanctions, are exploring options for alliances, shortly after President Joe Biden’s trip to the Middle East. While the expected drone purchase is “troubling,” Burns said, there are limits to how much the two countries will be willing to cooperate.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine must be viewed as a “strategic failure,” Burns said, with the US intelligence community estimating that Russia has already lost 15,000 soldiers and about three times as many wounded.
Burns, a veteran diplomat who joked that “most of the gray hair on top of my head came from negotiating with Russians and Iranians over the years,” scoffed at rumors Putin is in poor health, saying, “As far as we can tell, he is entirely too healthy.”

China ‘Unsettled’
In a wide-ranging discussion at the Aspen Security Forum, Burns said China’s President Xi Jinping might be worried about the global economic uncertainty the Ukraine war has unleashed before a crucial Chinese Communist Party Congress later this year, when he is expected to secure a third term.
“It seems to me that President Xi and the Chinese leadership have been unsettled to some extent, especially in the first phase of Putin’s war in Ukraine, by what they saw,” Burns said. “Unsettled by the military performance of the Russians early on, and the performance of Russian weaponry. Unsettled by the economic uncertainties that the war has unleashed around the world in a year, 2022, when I think Xi Jinping’s main concern is getting through a very important congress.”
The Chinese, Burns said, are also disappointed that the war has made the US and its European partners more united, adding that the risks of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan “becomes higher the further into this decade we get.” He said it was important not to underestimate Xi’s determination on Taiwan, and that Beijing was learning from Russian missteps in Ukraine. “The lesson the Chinese leadership, the military are drawing is that you’ve got to amass overwhelming force,” he said, as well as appreciating that it would need to control the “information space,” shore up their country from sanctions and drive a wedge between the US and allies in the Indo-Pacific.