Bush
Russia Agrees to Sell Missiles to Iran
Friday , December 02, 2005
MOSCOW â
Russia has agreed to sell more than $1 billion worth of missiles and other defense systems to Iran, Russian news media reported Friday, a move expected to draw a heated reaction from the United States.
The Interfax and ITAR-Tass news agencies cited unidentified sources in the Russian military-industrial complex as saying that Russian and Iranian officials had signed contracts in November that would send up to 30 Tor-M1 missile systems to Iran over the next two years.
Interfax said the Tor-M1 system could identify up to 48 targets and fire at two targets simultaneously at a height of up to 20,000 feet.
The news agency quoted its source as saying the two countries had reached a deal on modernizing Iran's air force inventory, as well.
The deal was also reported in the Vedomosti newspaper, which cited an unidentified manager at a military-industrial enterprise as saying Russia would provide Iran with 29 Tor missile systems that had originally been manufactured on orders from Greece.
The state arms export agency, Rosoboronexport, said it had no information on the reported deal.
No Iranian officials were immediately available for comment Friday, a weekly holiday in the country. There were no reports in the Iranian media about the deal.
While the conventional weapons deal would not violate international agreements, it was likely to elicit an adverse reaction from the United States.
"I expect that Russia's decision to supply the complexes to Iran will meet a negative reaction from the West, but this criticism will be of a political rather than legal character," Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the parliamentary foreign affairs committee, was quoted by Vedomosti as saying.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States had not yet validated the news reports.
Russia, a key Iranian ally, has resisted U.S.-led efforts to bring Tehran before the U.N. Security Council over its alleged nuclear weapons program, insisting that the disputes be resolved through the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Obama
Russia prohibiting weapons sales to Iran
September 22, 2010|By the CNN Wire Staff
Russia blocked weapons sales to Iran on Wednesday because of U.N. sanctions against the Islamic republic.
President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree that prohibits "the transit across Russia, including by air, the removal from Russia to Iran, and the transfer to Iran outside Russia of any combat tanks, armored personnel carriers, large-caliber artillery systems, warplanes, attack helicopters, military vessels, missiles or missile systems as defined by the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms, S-300 surface-to-air missile systems, or materiel and spare parts used for all of the above."
The decree was published on the Kremlin website.
This comes after Russian media reports that Moscow has decided not to sell S-300 air defense missile systems to Iran because they are subject to U.N. Security Council sanctions,
"A decision has been made not to supply S-300s to Iran as they are definitely subject to the sanctions," Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Nikolai Makarov said, according to the state-run RIA-Novosti news agency. "There has been an instruction from the country's leadership to stop the deliveries, and we are obeying it."
Makarov didn't give a definite response on whether the contract between Iran and Russia on those deliveries will be terminated. However, he said, "we'll see. Everything depends on Iran's behavior," according to RIA-Novosti.
Russia froze the contract with Iran on the S-300 missiles this year after the latest U.N. Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on Iran.
