Russia will not sell its long-range surface-to-air missile systems, S-300, to Iran as they fall under UN Security Council sanctions against Tehran, the chief of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff has said.
“A decision has been made not to supply S-300s to Iran. [The air-defense systems] certainly fall under the sanctions,” Nikolay Makarov said on Wednesday, cited Interfax agency. He added that“there was an instruction from the leadership to stop the shipment and we are following it.”
General Makarov was also asked to comment on whether the respective contract with the Islamic Republic will be torn up. “Time will show. It will depend on Iran’s behavior,” he responded.
The deal, estimated to be worth around US$1 billion, was signed back in 2007. However, as yet no missiles have been delivered to Iran but the contract still has not been cancelled and the authorities are saying they are waiting for Iran’s reaction to the announcement, and how the decision is going to be taken by president.
The deal, estimated to be worth around US$1 billion, was signed back in 2007. H
owever, as yet no missiles have been delivered to Iran but the contract still has not been cancelled and the authorities are saying they are waiting for Iran’s reaction to the announcement, and how the decision is going to be taken by president.
On June 9, the UN Security Council adopted a new – fourth – set of sanctions against Tehran over its uranium enrichment program. That followed Tehran’s failing to prove its program has no military motives. The new document – developed jointly by the United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom, France and Germany – imposes a ban on supplying Iran with tanks, military ships, combat aircraft, as well as large caliber artillery, missiles and missile systems.
The final decision on the fate of the S-300 shipment to Iran was to be made by the country’s President Dmitry Medvedev.
“We should take into account that the resolution includes a whole set of measures, which cover different aspects of relations with Iran and other countries and they are all inter-connected. According to our practice, a UN Security Council's resolution must first be realized through a decree of the Russian president before it is implemented, as will be done in this case. The resolution will define which particular arms are to be banned from being supplied to Iran according to the resolution,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said commenting on the issue shortly after the resolution was approved.
This decision is definitely going to affect the relations between the two countries, the question is – how? Relations between Moscow
and Tehran over the years have been quite complicated and gone through many ups and downs.
Just recently Russia built and then helped to start the peaceful Bushehr nuclear power station in Iran, and this project was monitored by IAEA.
Co-operation of this kind has been strongly criticized by the US for quite some time, so Washington’s reaction to the news is expected to be very positive.
Within the context of resetting of relations, which both Moscow and Washington have been engaged in since Barack Obama became US president, there have been positive tendencies in the relations – such as the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and co-operation in the military sector. Russia’s Defense Ministry has recently announced that Moscow is planning to buy some arms from the US, and there is also strong co-operation in the space industry between Russia and the US.
Russian defense analyst Vadim Kozyulin believes that the shift of plans concerning S-300 missile systems has to do with the recent visit of the Russian Defense Minister to the US.
“Mr Serdyukov has achieved some breakthrough agreements concerning the future military co-operation with the United States,” Kozyulin told RT,“It concerns not only political fields but also military technical cooperation in production of new modern weapons.”
“Two battalions of S-300 is definitely not enough for Iran, which has quite a lot of short-range air defense missiles and medium range missiles,” the analyst added. “But as for long range missiles, which are S-300, they are not in big numbers in Iran and definitely the demand is very high. It was a long time request from Iran to supply this equipment and by the recent time Russia always confirmed that it will be ready to supply, as soon as political decision is taken. Now we see that the political decision was negative.”
The defense analyst believes that resets of Russian-Israeli and Russia-US relations means a new strategy in Russian policy towards Western countries and towards Israel.
“We have certain agreements about development of joint venture in production of drones and manned aerial vehicles and in some other fields,” he said. “So probably that might be another aspect which influenced Russian position towards Iran.”
Speaking of the balance of powers in the Middle-East, Vadim Kozyulin drew attention to the observers to the fact that the United States planned to deliver new modern weapons to Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries to the amount of $60 billion.
