ll an S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to Iran, Iran's defense minister was quoted as saying on Wednesday, a report likely to irritate the United States.S-300 missiles are longer-ranging than the TOR-M1 surface-to-air missiles which Russia, in a deal criticised by the West, earlier this year said it had delivered to the Islamic Republic under a $1 billion contract.
Iran is under U.N. sanctions over its refusal to halt sensitive atomic work that Western powers suspect it wants to master so that it can build nuclear bombs, but they do not ban conventional weapons sales to the country.
"The S-300 system, under a contract signed in the past with Russia, will be delivered to Iran," Defence Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar told Fars News Agency, without giving details.
"The timing of the delivery ... will be announced later," he said. The ISNA news agency carried a similar report.
The United States and Israel - Tehran's arch foes - have said Iran could use the TOR-M1 system to attack its neighbours. Russia says it is a short-range system and purely defensive.
Najjar said last month Iran would never launch an attack against another country but warned that anybody trying to invade Iran would "face a crushing response."
Under Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian arms firms have aggressively pushed sales abroad as the Kremlin seeks to reassert its role as a global power in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. Russian arms exports were worth a record $7 billion this year, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said Monday. "Since 2000 our arms exports have nearly doubled and in 2006 we hit the record sum of $6.5 billion. This year we have a good chance of passing the seven-billion-dollar mark," RIA Novosti quoted Ivanov as saying.
Russia's drive to boost arms exports have raised tensions with the U.S., which last year imposed sanctions on Russia's state arms trader Rosoboronexport for cooperating with Iran, a move Moscow has called illegal. read more ...
