Summary: Non-signatory Iran acknowledges the humanitarian concerns raised by cluster munitions, but has not taken any steps to accede to the convention due to a host of long-held objections. Iran abstained from voting on a key United Nations (UN) resolution promoting the convention in December 2017.

Iran is not known to have used cluster munitions, but it has imported, may have produced, and likely stockpiles them.

Policy

The Islamic Republic of Iran has not acceded to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Iranacknowledges the humanitarian concerns raised by cluster munitions, but has not taken any steps to accede to the convention due to its long-standing objection to the process that created it.[1]

In October 2017, Iran elaborated its criticisms of the Convention on Cluster Munitionsupon explaining its decision to abstain from voting on an annual resolution by the UN General Assembly (UNGA) that urges states outside the convention to “join as soon as possible.”[2] The representativetold the UNGA First Committee on Disarmament and International Security that Iran still believes that: “by bypassing the United Nations disarmament machinery, the process leading to the conclusion of the Convention on Cluster Munitions disregarded the interests and concerns of many States.”

Iran has also criticized the convention’s provisions on participating in joint military operations with states not party that use cluster munitions.[3] In 2011, it said “to be effective, a convention regulating aspects of cluster munitions should include the major producers and former users of these munitions.”[4]

Iran did not participate in the Oslo Process that created the convention.

Iran participated as an observer in the convention’s Second Meeting of States Parties, hosted by Lebanon in Beirut in September 2011.[5] This is, to date, its only attendance at a meeting of the convention. Iran was invited to, but did not attend the Seventh Meeting of States Parties in September 2017.

Iran said it abstained fromthe vote on the 2017 UNGA promoting implementation and universalization of the convention and from voting on previous UNGA resolutions on the convention in 2015 and 2016 because: “first, Iran did not participate in its negotiation and is neither a signatory nor a party to it, and, secondly, we do not want to legitimize instruments that are negotiated outside the framework of the United Nations or that disregard States’ principal security concerns and interests.”[6]

Iran is not party to the Mine Ban Treaty or the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Use and production

Iran is not known to have used cluster munitions, but there is increasing evidence that it may produce them.

A number of western media outlets claim that submunition payloads are an option for Iran’s domestically produced rockets and missiles. For example, there are claims that the Zolfaghar short-range ballistic missile may contain a standard high-explosive warhead or a submunition variant.[7] Additionally, according to one source, “Iran has displayed a variant of the Fateh missile with 30 submunitions, each weighing approximately 20 pounds and capable of creating a crater several yards wide in a runway. Other Iranian missiles known to be equipped with submunitions include the long-range Ghadr and the medium-range Qiam.”[8] Iran also produces a number of types of unguided 122mm, 240mm, and 333mm rockets, but it is not known if these include versions with submunition payloads.[9]

Cluster munitions were used in Iran during the Iran-Iraq War in 1980–1988.[10] According to one source, during the war Iraq used air-dropped cluster bombs in 1984 against Iranian troops.[11] A United States (US) Navy aircraft used 18 Mk-20 Rockeye bombs in attacks on Iranian Revolutionary Guard speedboats and an Iranian Navy ship on 18 April 1988.[12]

Transfer and stockpiling

Iran has imported cluster munitions and likely possesses stockpiles. Jane’s Information Group lists Iran as possessing KMGU dispensers that deploy submunitions, PROSAB-250 cluster bombs, and BL755 cluster bombs.[13] Additionally, Iran possesses Grad 122mm surface-to-surface rockets.[14]