Iran's key sites exposed without S-300s

Staff Writers Via UPI ^ | 11/23/2009 | Staff Writers Via UPI

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

The large-scale exercises Iran is currently conducting to test its air-defense network and assess its ability to protect its nuclear facilities appear to be little more than a show of defiance against the United States, Israel and Russia, its longtime key arms supplier. Without the advanced S-300PMU missiles that a fickle Moscow refuses to deliver, presumably because the Kremlin finds it more advantageous to extract concessions from the Americans, Iran's strategic targets are highly vulnerable to air and missile strikes.

Indeed, as the United States and its Western allies consider imposing a package of harsh economic sanctions on Tehran for its apparent refusal to abandon its uranium enrichment program, this missile diplomacy appears to have put Moscow in a pivotal position.

According to an assessment published by Asia Times Online: "If Israel does attempt an airstrike against Iran's nuclear program, it will do so in response to the visible failure of American diplomacy, and with the tacit permission of Russia -- which has the capacity to veto such a strike by giving Iran anti-aircraft missiles of sufficient capability (or by not giving Israel the key to the countermeasures, for Russia never sells a weapons system to another country that it cannot neutralize.)"

Russia agreed to provide Iran with the S-300, which can detect and intercept multiple aircraft and missiles up to 100 miles away, under a 2007 contract worth an estimated $800 million.

The mobile, truck-mounted system is also purported to be immune to electronic jamming, a key component of U.S. and Israeli strike doctrine.

But, as far as is known, Moscow has so far failed to deliver any S-300s to the Islamic Republic, whose best air-defense weapons are short-range Russian Tor-M1 missiles.

[Nabber]

“The mobile, truck-mounted system is also purported to be immune to electronic jamming”

And welcome to another episode of “You Bet Your Life”....

[Husker24]

Perhaps the Russians wont sell it to them because they know that there is a good chance of an Isreali attack on Iran. If not a single aircraft is shot down with the system, well, thats not good for future sells.

[Eye of Unk]

It would be ironic if Irans nuclear sites were destroyed not from the air but from the ground, from BELOW the ground.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

Its possible. I have been working on a theory of instead of of ICBM’s deliver their payload by the air but under the earth. They would burrow through the earth and destroy the underground bunkers. But there are many technical problems such as the missile must be able to withstand the high temperatures and pressures of the earth. Its plausible. I read a technical manual of this such delivery system.