Russian Missiles to Iran Won’t Impact Our Military Options

(CNSNews.com) – Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey said Thursday that a Russian decision to sell Iran a sophisticated air defense system does not affect the military’s options for preventing Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon.

“We’ve known about the potential for that system to be sold to Iran for several years, and have accounted for it in all of our planning,” he told a briefing at the Pentagon.

Asked whether Iran’s deployment of the Russian S300 missile systems would present an obstacle should there be the need in the future to conduct a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, Dempsey replied, “The military option that I owe the president, to both encourage the diplomatic solution and if the diplomacy fails to ensure that Iran doesn’t achieve a nuclear weapon, is intact.”

Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who also took part in the briefing, said that the Pentagon’s role in the Iran diplomacy was not to be involved in the negotiations but “to make sure that we have, as the president says, other options on the table.”

“And that’s something we take very seriously here – we do have other options on the table.”

On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a decree lifting a five year-old voluntary ban on the sale of the S300 system to Iran, and his foreign minister said it was no longer needed due to the “substantial progress in settling Iran’s nuclear problem.”

The issue raised controversy in recent years mainly due to concerns that Iran would use the truck-mounted surface-to-air missile system – which is designed to protect military bases and other infrastructure against attack by enemy aircraft – to harden the defenses of its nuclear facilities.

Neither the U.S. nor Israel has ruled out the option of military strikes against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, aimed at preventing it from obtaining a nuclear weapons capability.

Marathon talks in Switzerland between Iran and the P5+1 group – the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany – led to an April 2 announcement of a framework agreement on Iran’s nuclear program. A comprehensive final deal based on that framework is due to be negotiated by June 30.

In his annual call-in question-and-answer session Thursday, Putin again linked the decision to lift the S300 ban to progress in the nuclear talks.

“Our Iranian partners are demonstrating a lot of flexibility and an obvious desire to reach a compromise on their nuclear program,” he said. “This is why we made this decision.”

Putin recalled that a contract to sell the system to Iran was signed in 2007, with the moratorium announced three years later.

“We suspended this contract absolutely unilaterally. Now that there is obvious progress on the Iranian track, we do not see why we should continue imposing this ban unilaterally.”

In reply to a question about Israel’s response, Putin said Iran having the missile system “does not pose any threat to Israel whatsoever. It is a solely defensive weapon.”

Asked whether the Obama administration agreed with Putin’s assessment that Iran had shown “flexibility” in the nuclear negotiations, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf declined to comment on “how Iran has been inside the negotiating room.”

She reiterated the U.S. view that with efforts underway to negotiate a final nuclear deal with Iran, “now is just not the time” to move ahead with selling the Iranians weapons like the S300 systems.

“We have long said that, given Iran’s destabilizing actions in the region, we did not think these kinds of weapons sales were a good idea – particularly at this time, given the ongoing negotiations.”

Harf said Secretary of State John Kerry in a phone conversation this week with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had “made clear that we did not think they should go forward.”

Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan said talks were underway with the Russians about the delivery date for the air defense systems, adding that they would arrive before the end of this year.