Rostec missiles to Iran: the Kremlin thumbs its nose at the West

Defying UN sanctions, Russian defense contractor Rostec is offering its latest Antey-2500 anti-aircraft missiles to Iran.

Sergei Chemezov, head of Russian state arms conglomerate Rostec, announced Monday, February 23 his offer to supply Tehran with the latest in Russian anti-ballistic missiles. This Russian decision flies in the face of a UN resolution adopted in 2010 that bans the delivery of missiles and missile systems to Iran.

Moscow’s support of the deal marks another unsettling page of the Putin regime’s modern, mercurial offensive on international democratic institutions, which seems increasingly capable of wrong-footing the NATO alliance. With the Kremlin seeking to undermine western order at every opportunity, President Putin’s enigmatic, recalcitrant actions are becoming more and more difficult to counter as a united front.

As Ukrainian soldiers at last gave up a hard-fought battle for the strategic town of Debaltseve last week, questions for key western leaders on how to react to Russian provocations were reaching a high. Attempts by European heads of state Angela Merkel of Germany and François Hollande of France to reach yet another peace agreement with Ukraine’s President Poroschenko and Russia’s President Putin had once again evidently been to little avail, as separatist forces conquered Debaltseve.

Along with plummeting oil prices, the sanctions imposed by the US and the EU have contributed to the severe financial turmoil of the Russian ruble (currently sitting at around 62 rubles to the dollar), but this has hardly hampered Moscow’s stubborn and flagrant disruptive behavior toward NATO and other democratic institutions, or its military support of Ukrainian insurgents.

As his currency continues to wobble, Mr. Putin has made it very clear that he is willing to watch his nation crumble before he will bend to the will of the West. Considering the support Mr. Putin continues to enjoy at home (a popularity rating of 85%), and the chord his ‘traditional’ anti-gay and nationalist rhetoric strikes with groups all over the world from Middle Eastern despots to European radical parties, the Kremlin’s unremitting, insidious mix of soft and hard aggression toward the West is proving a danger to be reckoned with. Now it is taking the form of an ambiguous proposal to Tehran.

Why supply Iran?

Where Russia was recently willing to bow to western pressure and cancel an $800 million deal with Iran to sell its Soviet-era S-300 air defense system, it is now more than happy to supply Tehran with a newer model against the same diplomatic and economic pressures. Rostec boss Mr. Chemezov said, “As far as Iran is concerned, we offered Antey-2500 instead of S-300. They are thinking.” So why the change?

The primary reason is simple: with its tumbling ruble and increasing worldwide isolation, the Kremlin now has less and less to lose. Western nations, however, have everything to lose, leading to Mr. Putin’s current strategy of courting disaster in order to disrupt and destabilize western institutions.

Financially, sanctioning Moscow would bite back, and Mr. Putin knows it. Imposing further sanctions on Russia for the Iran arms deal will only bring Russia’s economy closer to the brink of an irreparable catastrophe. This is not an attractive proposition for the European Union, whose members would be hit the hardest. From a political standpoint, supplying Iran also supports Mr. Putin’s shift in international diplomacy in recent years: it enshrines Russia’s self-appointed position as sympathizer for persons and nations being penalized by democratic institutions for their anti-democratic behavior. One mustn’t look further than Budapest to understand Putin’s allure.

Supplying Iran with missiles in spite of multiple embargos will complicate the route of Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani, who came to power in 2013 promising his people he would negotiate with the West to gain his country’s nuclear development in exchange for transparency. The Russian offer aims to stir up agitation among Iranians frustrated by the democratic procedures which the west demands in return for the country’s nuclear program.
Ultimately, Mr. Putin is seeking to unsettle and undermine the west on yet another front. He is sending a clear message of defiance against the international order, a message which will ring out among like-minded illiberals throughout the world, including the radicals in western democratic nations. He is wielding his lack of inhibition over the western world as his trump card. And for all its economic, diplomatic and even moral superiority, the west is going to struggle to maintain the order which Moscow seeks to disturb.