A senior Iranian official said his country and Russia have not been successful in finalizing a widely contested sale of advanced S-300 missile systems due to a disagreement over the sale price, Israel’s NRG reported on Thursday citing the Turkish Anadolu news agency.
According to the report, the Iranian official, in Moscow for an international aviation and aerospace exhibit, said, “Though there are no legal obstacles [to the sale], the two sides failed to agree on a price, so the deal was not completed.”
Meanwhile, this week, a Russian news agency reported that the deal hit a snag over a different issue.
According to a report in Russia’s state-run TASS news agency, the two countries are unable to agree on how to proceed regarding a lawsuit filed by Iran over Russia’s failure to deliver on an earlier 2007 contract to deliver the systems.
Last week, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov announced that the deal had been concluded, telling news outlets that the details of the deal, other than a number of “technical issues,” had been agreed upon. “This transaction has been closed,” Bogdanov said. “We have reached an understanding on the matter with our Iranian partners.”
Earlier in the month, a senior official in the Russian Foreign Ministry said his country would “certainly” deliver the S-300 missile system to Iran some time in the coming year. Responding to a question about whether Iran would receive four S-300 systems instead of three, as was stipulated in the original 2007 contract between the parties, the Russian official responded, “We will act exactly according to what is written in the contract.”
The U.S. and Israel have long opposed the S-300 sale to Iran fearing the advanced technology would limit their options should the need arise to strike the country’s nuclear facilities.
{Matzav.com Newscenter}
