Russia halts sale of air defense missiles to Iran
washingtonpost.com
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Russia has frozen the sale of S-300 air defense missiles to Iran, Russian news agencies reported Friday, in a victory for the Obama administration in the wake of new U.N. sanctions imposed on Iran.
The sanctions ban the sale of eight categories of conventional weapons, including “missiles and missile systems,” but a loophole in the language of the resolution suggested that defensive ground-to-air missile systems such as the S-300 were not covered by the ban. On Thursday, the day after the U.N. Security Council vote, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman indicated that the $800 million sale was still on and would not be affected by the sanctions.
On Friday, the Kremlin contradicted that suggestion. “S-300s fall under these sanctions,” a Kremlin official was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying. “Therefore, these type of weapons cannot be supplied to Iran.” The statement was amplified by news reports out of France, where Prime Minister Vladimir Putin met Friday with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, that Putin had told Sarkozy that Russia would “freeze the delivery of the S-300 missiles.”
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