Iran Announces Acquisition of S-300 Air Defense Systems

Nicholas Krueger / August 05, 2010

A picture taken on April 9, 1992 shows a Russian S300 missile burning away from its pad in Priozorsk during a training launch. Russia on December 22, 2008 denied that it was delivering sophisticated S-300 surface-to-air missiles to Iran, following reports it was about to supply the weapons to the US arch-foe.

According to Iran’s Fars news agency, Iran has obtained four S-300PT air-defense missile systems. Fars claimed that this report was first revealed last year by another news agency—one linked to Hezbollah—and that Iran never disputed the story. The report claimed that two of the four systems came from Belarus; details about the source of the other two systems were not provided and have not been reported elsewhere since the Fars claim. Belarus has denied any involvement in such a deal.

In fact, the story begins well before last year. According to a report by Mark Harrington from February 2008 in Jane’s International Defence Review, Belarus and Iran were then finalizing a major arms deal, conceived at an exhibition in Minsk in May 2007 attended by Iranian President Ahmadinejad and other senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps leaders. (more…)