Russian Arms Sales to Iran

[mv]

Update:

Reuters: Russia hits back at US criticism of Iran arms deal

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia has every right to sell arms to Iran, its defense minister said on Wednesday, responding to mounting criticism of a $1 billion deal announced last week.

The United States, calling Iran a "state sponsor of terror", said selling weapons to the Islamic Republic did not help the Middle East.

"This deal, this contract is absolutely legitimate. Like it or not, it's our affair. There are plenty of things we don't like either," Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said in comments shown on NTV television.

Moscow, already at odds with the West over its nuclear ties with Tehran, has stressed the deal concerns defensive weapons.

Western countries suspect Iran of seeking nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian atomic program, which Tehran denies, saying it wants only to generate electricity.

Diplomats have said the European Union is readying a protest about Russia's sale of the TOR-M1s, which are designed to bring down aircraft and guided missiles at low altitudes....
.....(more at link)....

The central problem is that both Russia and Iran are awash with oil money and right now there is no way to stop this sale with sanctions or protests. Iran will need these systems to protect ICBM silos, and Russia responds to the "orange offensive"; in both cases the motivation is strong.

[bh]

Henry,

Vendetta is getting even for something,I think we have to retaliate to cause Putin to change his ideas about assisting the mad mullahs.

Palladin, there are no iranians among modjaheds in Chechnia, but most of foreigners still are from "secular" Turkey - key alley of US in region and member of NATO. Iran is problem of US, but our problems are allies of US around us.

[henrylee100]

Henry,

Vendetta is getting even for something,I think we have to retaliate to cause Putin to change his ideas about assisting the mad mullahs.

but what makes you think that if you retaliate it'll cause Putin to change his mind and stop selling arms to Iran? Vendetta is destructive because instead of talking to each other to find out how to work around the differences, you get stuck in a vicious circle of inflicting harm on each other. It's a mistake to think that harming Russia will inevitably make Putin change his mind about Iran, when you twist people's arms half the time or even more you get defiance rather than compliance. Look where the US policy of musling the muslim nations around has led - there are now thousands of people in the muslim world willing to die if only that can cause grief to the US, aren't you willing to learn from past mistakes, maybe it's time to abandon issuing threats and taking sundry punitive measures and switch instead to shrewd deiplomacy?

I could care LESS what negative affect it has on our economy,if we're too cowardly to react to this provocation,NONE of us deserve a job!

that's your emotions speaking, and while emotion serve a purpose a lot of the time they also get us into trouble.

You want to sit back and watch them arm Iran it's your business,I don't and that's mine.

for one don't go blowing it out of proportion, selling a batch of AA complexes does not constitute arming Iran, after all even Israel sold arms to Iran once. For second, imho, with Iran Putin's actions are making more sense than the current US stance toward it. While Iran may be ruled by a bunch of mullaas, they are shi'ites and shi'ites are a relatively moderate muslim sect and imho it makes more sense to try and drive a wedge between different muslim sects rather than treat them all alike and in this way cause them all to rally together, unless that is you have in mind a final soultion to the muslim question or possibly even a final soulution to the question of all those nations that dare do something that the US doesn't approve of. And as for driving wedges between them, I think at the present time the events in Iraq provide a golden opportunity for that, look what's happening there, a large percentage of the terror attacks are carried out by sunni insurgency against different shi'ite targets, if the US fails to cash in on that, and that's what seems to be happening now, that'll be one of the stupidest mistakes in human history. Divide and conquer as the Romans used to say, and I think it still holds true today, you can't first unite them and then conquer.
In this context the sale of those AA complexes can be seen as a shrewd move, on the one hand it can serve as a gesture of good will toward Iran, yet at the same time you must realize that the specs of these complexes are probably hyped up and in reality they won't be able to carry off much on their own should the US mount full scale air raids against Iran.
So where the point to punishing Russia for this? Unless you're ben ton pushing it into the same camp with the muslim rogues.