The Ukrainian government recently announced that its army had shot down more than 600 Russian drones.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in Washington on Monday evening that the American government had information that Iran was currently delivering or preparing to deliver "several hundred" drones to Russia for use in Ukraine.
In addition, preparations were underway to train Russian soldiers in the use of drones.
Rainer Herman
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The Iranian state media has so far been silent about the drone delivery.
However, on Tuesday they reported on the upcoming visit of the Russian President to Tehran.
On July 19, Vladimir Putin will meet the Presidents of Iran and Turkey, Ebrahim Raisi and Tayyip Erdogan, in the Iranian capital.
In Iran, Putin's visit is seen as a response to American President Joe Biden's trip to the Middle East, which begins this Wednesday, and to closer cooperation between America, Israel and the Arab Gulf States.
Erdogan will become the first politician from a NATO member country to meet Putin since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Some of the drones that Iran has promised to supply to Russia are weaponized, Sullivan said.
He did not provide any further information on the types of drones.
It is unclear whether the first drones have already been delivered.
Iran has further developed its drones
Should Iran actually deliver "several hundred" drones, they would also have to include kamikaze drones, said Ulrike Franke, an expert on drones at the think tank European Council on Foreign Relations, the FAZ These are guided missiles that are loaded with explosives at their target ram and destroy themselves.
Iran can neither fall back on this number of drones nor produce them quickly.
In particular, Iran cannot supply many of the newly developed Mohajer combat drone, which has been in use since 2018.
Franke considers the delivery of the nearly two-decade-old kamikaze drone Ababil more likely.
In the past, Iran had supplied drones to the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Shia militias in Iraq.
Last week, Israel announced that it had shot down three Hezbollah drones.
Experts consider the Iranian drones to be less powerful than the Turkish Bayraktar TB 2 combat drone, which the Ukrainian army uses in the war.
However, Iran has continued to develop its drones in recent years and is proud to present the new models.
The two most important reconnaissance and combat drones are Shahed-129 and Saegheh.
Both are Iranian copies of American drones.
Iran says it has forced an MQ-1B Predator drone to land over Iranian territory and copied it as the Shahed-129.
The Revolutionary Guards tested the drone in Syria and used it repeatedly.
The Saegheh drone is based on the RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drone, which entered Iranian airspace from Kandahar in 2011 and was forced to land.
More than a dozen military bases are known to have drones deployed in Iran.
Danger of Tehran's isolation
In Iran, the delivery of the drones is seen as another indication of closer military cooperation with Russia.
It harbors the danger that Iran will continue to isolate itself.
At the same time, a wave of persecution against dissidents, artists and even representatives of the now largely eliminated reformers has set in in the past few days.
Revolutionary leader Ali Khamenei may have given the go-ahead when he declared at a public rally a week ago that the Islamic Republic had survived a crisis at the end of the 1980s and that it will survive this one too.
In the late 1980s there had been an unprecedented wave of executions in Iran.
The Turkish state news agency Anadolu writes that Erdogan is traveling to Tehran for talks on Syria.
Turkey, Russia and Iran have been holding talks on Syria in the Astana process since 2017.
Turkey is currently primarily trying to contribute to a solution to the grain crisis.
To this end, Erdogan had phoned Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday evening.
This Wednesday, military delegations from Turkey, Ukraine and Russia will meet with representatives of the United Nations in Istanbul to discuss the establishment of a security corridor for the export of Ukrainian wheat.
Erdogan told Putin that it was time to put a corresponding UN plan into effect, his presidential office said.
Selenskjy wrote that he thanks Turkey for the support.
Last week Turkey detained a Russian cargo ship said to have loaded 700,000 tons of wheat from Ukraine, Reuters reports.
Ukraine has therefore requested that three more named Russian cargo ships with Ukrainian wheat be arrested.