Iran: Bolstering Its Defenses

Owen Matthews and Kevin Peraino, Newsweek International:

What is Iran up to? Russia's giant arms-export company Rosvooruzheniye announced last week that Tehran has agreed to spend $1 billion on 30 Tor M1 air-defense missile systems, capable of protecting a target from up to 48 incoming planes or projectiles to a range of six kilometers. Iran currently has no comprehensive air defenses, leaving its cities and dozens of nuclear-research installations vulnerable to air raids.

The Tor M1 purchase is just the first stage of a more comprehensive Iranian purchasing program, according to a Rosvooruzheniye source who did not wish to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue. There are "ongoing talks" between Moscow and Tehran, he says, to purchase a much more sophisticated S-300 strategic air-defense system, which has a range of more than 150km and provides much more comprehensive cover. That system, says defense analyst Pavel Felgenhauer, is "really one of the most sophisticated in the world." Russia has also agreed to upgrade Iran's small fleet of MiG-29 interceptor planes to make them more effective against enemy aircraft. That's a worrying detail—those MiGs could be an "equal rival to the first-line fighters of Israel and the United States in an air fight at short ranges," says Shlomo Brom, former head of strategic planning for the Israel Defense Forces. READ MORE

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insists that such arms sales "do not alter the strategic balance, because they are of a purely defensive nature." By the terms of a 1995 deal forged by the then Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and U.S. Vice President Al Gore, Russia agreed not to sign any new arms deals with Tehran. But in 2002, Russia reopened arms talks because the rising price of oil had made Iran a good, cash-rich customer. Air-defense-system sales in particular are big business, because only about 10 percent of the components of the system needs to be manufactured from scratch. (The other components, including the missiles, are old Soviet-era stock.) Russian arms exports for this year are expected to top $5.1 billion, 70 percent of which is going to China.