The United States on Thursday presented to UN member states the wreckage and components of Iranian military drones that Washington says it found in Ukraine, in what the Pentagon says is evidence of “deepening” relations between Tehran and Russia, AFP reported.

This is the first time that the US Department of Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has shown the bodies, engines and components of Iranian-made military drones, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) Shahed 101, Shahed 131 and Shahed 136, which Washington says have ” recovered ” from the theater of war in Ukraine.

On Wednesday evening, DIA officials showed four reporters several wreckage and pieces of military kamikaze drones, comparing devices found in Iraq in 2021 and 2022 to “nearly identical” ones found in Ukraine in 2022.

The same wreckage was presented to representatives of “more than 40 countries” and the UN secretariat on Thursday, the US mission reported.

“The systems are the same size and shape and were built using similar materials and components,” the DIA said.

According to the Pentagon, further evidence that the two UAVs are Iranian is their “honeycomb structure,” which another military intelligence analyst said is “almost certainly” a Tehran trademark.

Iran, which has very close ties to Russia, has for months been accused by Western countries of supplying large numbers of drones, including explosives, to the Russian military to help them in the war in Ukraine, a charge Tehran denies.

From Syria to Ukraine, military ties between Russia and Iran, which are “growing”, are worrying the United States, US military official General Alexus Hrynkevich said in Abu Dhabi at the end of September.

“The deepening of Russian-Iranian relations is of great concern,” said a DIA analyst in New York, accusing Iran of “lying” about supplying drones for “Russia’s war” in Ukraine.