Russia may nix S-300 sale to Iran

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's reported promise to Israeli President Shimon Peres that Moscow will reconsider the sale of powerful S-300 air-defense missiles to Iran could determine whether Israel - and the United States for that matter - launches pre-emptive strikes against Tehran's nuclear facilities.

"President Medvedev promised to review this issue once again after I explained that it would have an impact on the balance of forces in our region," Peres said Wednesday following his meeting with the Russian leader in Moscow on Tuesday.

Israel has been threatening to attack Iran's controversial nuclear program for many months because the Jewish state considers Tehran's acquisition of nuclear weapons to be an existential threat.

Any Israeli offensive would undoubtedly involve air and missile strikes. At present, the Israeli air force's prospects of penetrating Iran's air defenses, including Russian-supplied M-1 Tor close-range surface-to-air missiles, are reasonably good.

But the Israelis' capabilities would be immeasurably reduced if Tehran got its hands on an advanced air-defense weapon like the S-300.

Russia says it has not delivered any the missiles to Iran yet, but it may yet do so to up the ante in its growing confrontation with the United States.

Medvedev's pledge may be little more than a tactic to force the Israelis to stop providing arms and intelligence to Georgia, Azerbaijan and other former Soviet republics that are defying Moscow.

U.S.-based security consultancy Strategic Forecasting noted in July: "The Americans realize that if they arm Russia's adversary, Moscow will respond by arming U.S. adversaries - particularly Iran.

"Russia has deals in place under which it would deliver strategic air-defense systems and other arms to Iran and complete Iran's nuclear facility at Bushehr - all things it has notably declined to do for years now.

"Moscow has been holding onto this card to ensure that the United States does not fulfill its own commitments to Georgia."

So the Israelis believe that their window of opportunity to attack Iran under optimum conditions may be limited and that it should go after the Islamic republic's nuclear centers before any Russian S-300s are delivered despite pressure from Washington not to act unilaterally and risk triggering a regional war with possibly calamitous consequences.

At the very least, the Iranians would be expected to retaliate against an Israeli attack by firing salvoes of Shehab-3 intermediate-range ballistic missiles with conventional high-explosive warheads at the Jewish state.

Israel does not have the power to knock out enough of the heavily guarded and widely nuclear facilities, most of them buried deep underground, to permanently cripple Iran's nuclear program.

But with the Israelis claiming Iran has accelerated its missile production and that Tehran could fashion a nuclear warhead within a year, Israeli strategists appear to be inclined to strike while they can to set back Iran's nuclear ambitions.

"With the rise of Binyamin Netanyahu to power in Israel and his appointment of Avigdor Lieberman as his foreign minister, Israel has been behaving in provocative ways that betray a burning desire to strike Iran as soon as possible," Egypt's Al Ahram weekly said in July.

The Israelis have conducted several long-range airstrikes over the years, but never simultaneously against such a plethora of targets spread across a country 900 miles away.

The Israeli air force simply does not have the capability of targeting all of Iran's nuclear targets in a single raid.

Any attack on Iran would be immensely more complicated than the landmark long-range airstrike that knocked out Saddam Hussein's French-built Osirak reactor near Baghdad - far closer to Israel than Iran - in June 1981.

Analyst Reuven Pedatzur wrote in Israeli daily Haaretz in May that the 1981 strike, ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, marked the start of "the Begin Doctrine Â… which holds that Israel will not let any hostile country in the region acquire nuclear weapons."

But Pedatzur acknowledged: "The problem is that what could be accomplished in Iraq more than two decades ago is no longer possible today under the present circumstances in Iran."

The S-300V system (NATO codename SA-12 Giant) can engage multiple targets simultaneously and shoot down aircraft and missiles at a range of around 100 miles.

The system is so sophisticated and tamper-proof that air force planners calculate that 20 percent to 30 percent of the aircraft deployed would be lost.

According to the Israeli media, a minimum of 90 aircraft would be required to attack three key nuclear sites - all 25 of the U.S.-built F-15I strike jets in the air force's inventory and at least 65 of its 135 F-16s, about one-quarter of the air force's strength.

Israel, which has the most advanced ballistic missile programs in the Middle East, also possesses an arsenal of road-mobile Jericho 1, 2 and 3 missiles capable of hitting Iranian targets.

The three-stage Jericho 3 is believed to be able to carry a multi-megaton nuclear warhead, or a conventional warhead of 1,000-1,200 kilograms.

However, Pedatzur noted, "It is doubtful the Jerichos' accuracy can be relied on, and that all of them will hit those critical spots with precision."

I think that was an earlier generation air defense system that was defeated by the IAF in Syria.

I don’t ‘get’ the fear of the S-300. Maybe I just don’t understand the technical aspects, but Soviet SAM’s have always underperformed relative to their initial Press clippings.

What I do understand is that air defenses can be systematically taken down through a deliberate air campaign designed to punch holes for ‘safe’ air corridors. This makes the SAM system the primary target in any air campaign and re-strikes are often necessary. Where things get dicey is when you simply flood the air in a single massive attack against another target, ignoring the SAMS. This amounts to ‘going over the top’ against entrenched machine guns and mortars. In a massive single-strike you are accepting the fact that you are going to take significant losses of aircraft.

Didn't Syria have the S-300 in place when Israel took out the nuke reactor a while back? As I recall Israel's fighters were able to penetrate Syrian airspace, bomb the reactor into oblivion and retreat unscathed without a single S-300 missile fired...

One darn persistent myth, that no matter how disproved, keeps springing back like a bad rash.

The issue of SAM defense of the Syrian reactor has been subject to a lot of misinformation. Some facts:

i) The Syrians did not have the S-300 ...any version of it. They had older Soviet SAM types, such as the SA-6 and SA-3 (co-ordinates of which include the following: a location for a Syrian SAM - one of 30 SA-6 sites - is as follows: 33 54' 31.31" N 36 53' 51.70" E. While we are at it, let me give you the location of another SAM site in Syria, this time a SA-3 SAM system - one of over 30 - 34 31' 17.63" N 37 41' 01.54" E). Often, on FR, claims are made of the far more capable S-300 system, when the SAM network was old Soviet.

ii) There was no 'state of the art' radar system as some have claimed on other threads. There was no advanced IADS in place.

iii) The Israelis were quite clever, coming in through Turkish airspace and to the North of Syria, which is a weak point in the country SAM/AD network.

iv) The reactor site was not well defended. This was the result of a gambit by the Syrians that went way wrong ...due to the secrecy of the site, they had decided not to have any significant military presence in the area, in order to avoid any undue surveillance. This included a heavy SAM presence. All in all the Syrians had some semblance of a stratagem, the only problem is that the Israelis already knew of the site due to their formidable HumInt. A newspaper from Qatar called Al Watan that had an interview with President Bashar Assad of Syria, where he tried to claim it wasn't a nuclear site because it was not defended. Fox news reported the same on the 25th of April 2008 (quoting the UN ambassador for Syria, Bashar Ja'afari).

Put all those factors together, plus the very capable Israeli airforce, and the Syrians had no chance whatsoever.

Thing is, development of air-space denial weapons is progressing much faster than the ability to keep 4th generation weapons platforms viable in such areas. Double digit SAMS coupled to advanced IADS are making significant gains, and sooner or later it will begin to percolate to more and more nations we may not want to have them.

Talking about the Israelis, they were all in a flurry, making threats and all, when Russia was supposed to sell S-300 systems to Iran.

Is the S-300 invincible ...no, far from it. But it is a powerful system, that as part of an advanced IAD system it can cause a lot of pain ...unnecessary pain. Furthermore, look at the Gulf War (first). Even against the most formidable array of air assets assembled, with suppression and wild weasels, F-117s and cruise missiles, the Iraqi SAM system still managed to bring down allied jets ...and those SAMs were no where as advanced as the S-300 is. The Israelis, in one of the engagements against the Egyptians decades back, suffered a lot due to Soviet SAMs in the hands of their foes. Why then would the Israelis want to risk an advanced SAM system? Even though they can, since they are one of the most dedicated groups of people, come up with a viable/semi-viable solution against the S-300, why would they want to face it? The S-300 is not invincible, but it is the most lethal anti-aircraft (as opposed to ballistic) SAM system present outside the AEGIS/Standard team-up in USN Aegis ships, and arguably the Patriot PAC-3. Not unbeatable by any measure, but not a joke. And if in GW1 Soviet era SAMS still managed to shoot down jets, I wonder what S-300s could do against 30-60 jets?

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.