Envoy: Iran Hopes to Receive Russian S-300 Missile System
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iran's Ambassador to Russia Mehdi Sanaei said that Tehran is hopeful that Russia will this year deliver sophisticated S-300 air defense system to the Islamic Republic.
“I hope that our Russian friends will deliver this defense system to Iran in 2015,” Sanaei was quoted by Sputnik news agency as saying in a press conference in Moscow.
Under a contract signed in 2007, Russia was required to provide Iran with at least five S-300 defense system batteries. In 2010, then-president Dmitry Medvedev cancelled the contract as he came under strong US and Israeli pressure not to go ahead with the sale of the weapons system, but his pretext was that the sale was covered by the fourth round of the UN Security Council sanctions against Iran.
According to the report, Sanaei said on January 27 that Iran regards the S-300 contract as legitimate and does not deem it subject to international sanctions, since it was signed before the restrictive measures imposed on the Islamic Republic.
On January 20, defense ministers from Iran and Russia agreed to push for the settlement of the lingering dispute over Russia’s failure to honor its commitments under the sale contract.
The agreement was made in a meeting between Iran’s Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan and his Russian counterpart, General Sergei Shoigu, in Tehran.