"Anything, so long as no Jews on the West Bank add a guest room."
Posted on 09/17/2009 7:41:31 AM PDT by maquiladora
Washington, 17 September (WashingtonTV)—An Israeli lawmaker said in remarks published on Thursday that the delivery of Russia’s advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to Iran would accelerate a possible Israeli decision to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.
“I hope Moscow understands that the deliveries will at least speed up such events, if not trigger them,” Zeev Elkin told the Russian daily, Kommersant, according to the Interfax news agency.
Israel and the United States have pressed Russia to forgo delivering the advanced missile system to Tehran, which would greatly increase Iran’s defense capabilities against a possible airstrike on its nuclear sites.
Elkin said that the missiles would “substantially complicate or make impossible the peaceful settlement of the (Iranian nuclear) program and may force Israel to act sooner than it would under current circumstances,” Interfax reports.
Russia insists that it only provides its partners with non-destabilizing weapons, which comply with its international commitments.
Elkin asserted that Moscow did not fully realize the speed at which Tehran’s nuclear program was moving forward.
“We are approaching the point of no return, after which it will be impossible to stop Tehran’s development of a nuclear bomb,” he told the daily, adding: “We have several months left to make a decision.”
Iran’s Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi said on Wednesday that the Islamic Republic would make an announcement on the S-300 system “in time”, reports the Fars news agency.
Iran, which maintains that its nuclear program is peaceful, has dismissed threats of a military strike on its nuclear facilities.
ping
If s300s are scarry those
Chinese s300 knock offfs that litter their air defense systems must be really bad
I assign a very low operational capability to the Iranian air defenses. I doubt they can competently employ them. But, why take any chances?
The next year should be interesting.
But the Israelis might have a tough time getting through US Air Defenses based in and around Iraq.
The S-300 is fully self contained, truly plug-n-play. As soon as they roll off the ships they can be driven to a site and set up. And do we know if they have any surface to surface capability? That is, can exotic warheads be affixed to the S-300 missile bodies? I don’t think Israel is going to wait to find out. Oh, the long range version, which I just read on the web, has a 2500km range.
And we are buying back our debt....
lot of chatter the past week
I once worked for a guy who grew up in Bern, Switzerland during WW-II. Occasionally U.S. bombers would overfly Switzerland on their way to Reich and the Swiss would fire an ineffectual FLAK barrage, apparently to dissuade them.
The joke was that the U.S. bomber commander called the Swiss air defense commander one day to ask him if he knew his FLAK was fused too low. “Yeah”, replied the Swiss commander, “precisely 300 meters too low.” (The idea being that the Swiss were tacitly allowing the over flights.)
By the way, the Americans actually bombed Switzerland twice during the war. Once they attacked a Swiss village that happened to be on the “German” side of the Rhine. On another ocassion they bombed a “Nazified” section of Bern. The guy I worked for said his house rattled violently and his mother’s decorative plate fell off a shelf in the kitchen.
The U.S. claimed it was a navigational error. The Bernese thought that it was a warning to Switzerland not to become a haven for Nazis post war. Apparently a lot of high ranking Nazis owned (now flattened) homes in a section of Bern and had money stashed in Swiss banks.
That was when America was a different country.
Thanks!
"Anything, so long as no Jews on the West Bank add a guest room."
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