Sanctions won't hit Russia's missile sales to Iran

France24

Two key Russian parliament members said on Friday proposed UN sanctions on Iran would not affect Russia's controversial sale of S-300 missiles to Tehran, the Interfax news agency reported.

The possible sanctions would not hurt "current contracts", said Mikhail Margelov, the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee at the Federation Council, the upper house of parliament:

"As far as Russian economic interests are concerned, this draft does not deal a blow to current contracts existing between Russia and Iran," he told journalists.

"We need to remember that Russia is a responsible seller of any of its products on external markets and we are not interested in the militarisation of the Middle East," he said.

Moscow had already agreed the sale of the missiles with Tehran but the delivery has been delayed by Western pressure.

Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee at the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, voiced a similar opinion, saying the sanctions would not hurt Russia's plans to launch Iran's first nuclear plant by this summer.

"The sanctions draft agreed by the five permanent UN Security Council members does not in any way prevent our cooperation with Iran," Interfax quoted him as saying. The S-300 missiles are defensive, not offensive weapons, he said.

Kosachev also said Russia would launch Iran's first nuclear power plant, which it is building in the city of Bushehr, by the end of the summer, "regardless of whether international sanctions are applied on Iran."

Western diplomats told AFP proposed UN sanctions against Iran's nuclear programme would halt Russia's sale of the missiles to Tehran.

Diplomats said the text for new sanctions, designed to force Iran to abandon nuclear activities that the West fears conceal a drive for an atomic bomb, had been broadly agreed by world powers.

Another parliament member, Viktor Ozerov, warned that Russia would torpedo the draft resolution if it hurt its interests.

"If the text of the resolution unilaterally impinges on Russia's interests, then as a permanent Security Council member, Russia will simply veto it," Interfax quoted Ozerov, the head of the Federation Council's defence committee, as saying.

Separately, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the text of an agreement forged by Turkey and Brazil for the Islamic Republic to swap about half of its low enriched uranium for nuclear fuel in Turkey in a bid to stave off a new round of sanctions, had to be clarified.

"There are unclear things in this declaration, we would like to clarify them," Lavrov said in an interview with Italy's RAI-1 television channel in comments released Friday.