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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nicholas Thompson who wrote (726847)	2/19/2006 11:17:11 PM
From: puborectalis	Respond to of 769670

And Russia's self-appointed role as honest broker doesn't sit terribly well with its place as a major arms supplier, especially to Iran. Last month Rosvooruzheniye, Russia's giant state-owned arms-export company, announced that Tehran had agreed to spend $1 billion on 30 Tor-M1 air-defense missile systems, capable of protecting a target from up to 48 incoming planes or projectiles to a range of six kilometers. Iran also has a longstanding accord with Moscow for up to $7 billion in conventional arms, including MiG-29 fighters, assistance with Iran's small submarine fleet, BMP-3 armored personnel carriers and landing craft. The bottom line? Moscow may be broadly cooperative in international efforts to get Iran to cease its uranium- enrichment program—but at the same time, it's providing Iran with the means to defend itself against a possible air raid like the Israeli strike that destroyed Saddam Hussein's French-built Osirak reactor in 1981. In that, Russia's "new" role looks more like that played in the past—less middleman than a check on Washington and the West.