During the last three weeks, a Boeing 747.21 cargo plane of the “Iran Air” company landed six times at Hmeimim airport south of Latakia (northwest Syria). The landings took place on May 25 and 30 and on June 1, 4, 13 and 15. The plane stayed on the ground for a few hours and took off back towards Iran. The airport is actually part of the largest Russian military base in Syria and is under full Russian military control (the civil airport named after Bassel al-Assad, located within the complex, is very limited in its activity if at all). Also, several civilian aid flights landed there in February 2023 in response of the earthquake.
Hmeimim Airport has two runways. One is 3000 meters long and the other 2860 meters long. A 747 plane of this type can land and take off on routes of this length, if it is partially loaded and fueled with less than half the amount of fuel in its tanks (enough for the flight distance from Iran). From the above data, two central questions arise: First, in the context of the Iranian arms corridor to Syria. The second, in the context of supplying Iranian weapons to Russia: Is there Iranian-Russian cooperation on the issue of the Iranian air weapons corridor to Syria? Are the Russians actually being used as a protective shell, knowing that no air attack will be carried out in the area under their full control? Is Hmeimim airport used as a transit station for equipment/weapons that should arrive from Iran to Russia? Is this to make tracking more difficult in distinguishing the cargo from Iran?
In light of the recent publications about the possibility of transferring Western weapons that came into the hands of the Russians during the war in Ukraine and their transfer to Iran. There is also a possibility that the Russians transfer such equipment/weapons to the warmongers and it was taken from there by the Iranians.