While the Obama administration considers pulling back on continuing to develop technology to provide a missile shield for Europe and beyond, the Iranians have made important developments in missile technology. This is not coming from Chas Freeman’s dreaded Israel lobby, but from a Russian military expert during a March 12, 2009 press conference which has not been widely reported in the European or American press:
Russia and the West would be making a big mistake if they ignored or underestimated the potential missile and nuclear threat coming from Iran, a Russian military expert said on Thursday.
“Iran is actively working on a missile development program. I won’t say the Iranians will be able to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles in the near future, but they will most likely be able to threaten the whole of Europe,” said [retired] Maj. Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin, head of the Moscow-based Center for Strategic Nuclear Forces….
“Iran has long abandoned outdated missile technologies and is capable of producing sophisticated missile systems,” Dvorkin said at a news conference in RIA Novosti
Dvorkin also warned that Iran is only 1-2 years away from obtaining nuclear weapons capability:
“One can speak of one or two years,” Vladimir Dvorkin, a retired general and veteran participant in US-Soviet disarmament talks in the 1970s and 1980s, told reporters when asked how close Iran was to having a nuclear weapon.
“In the technical sense, what may be holding them back is the lack of enough weapons-grade uranium,” said Dvorkin, who today heads a strategic arms research
centre at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.“I consider this a significant threat,” said Dvorkin, who stressed that he was voicing his personal views and not those of the Russian government.
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UPDATE: The website DebkaFile is reporting that Dvorkin’s comments signal a tougher Russian line on Iran’s nuclear development:
A Russian strategic arms control expert, Vladimir Dvorkin, said Thursday, March 12, that Iran could produce an atomic weapon in “one or two years,” allowing Tehran to broaden its support for Hamas and Hizballah. Dvorkin, as head of the strategic arms research center at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow and a former general of Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces, is a highly respected authority in the West….
It was the second pointer to a tougher Russian stance on Iran’s nuclear weapon aspiratoins. On March 10, the Russian news agency Interfax quoted an unnamed Moscow source as stating that “Russia may shelve delivery of its advanced S-300 air defense missile system to Iran.” Tehran wants this system to protect its nuclear sites against air or missile attack.
The Moscow source added: “Such a possibility is not excluded. The question must be decided at a political level…” The final decision on the transaction has therefore been passed to president Dmitry Medvedev and prime minister Vladimir Putin, say our Moscow sources.
The Dvorkin statement and Interfax disclosure lay down a hard new Kremlin line on the impasse over Iran’s quest for a nuclear bomb just ahead of the Russian President’s first summit with US president Barack Obama in London on April 1.
They also suggest that Russia would show some flexibility in the interests of cooperation with Washington. Moscow has not lost sight of a possible quid pro quo with Obama over the deployment of a US missile shield close to its borders versus Russian involvement in the Iran nuclear issue – although both sides deny this was proposed.
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UPDATE No. 2:
►The least we could do is give Dvorkin a big Obama “hellooo” for sounding the warning.
►For more on where we are heading, check out The Revolt of the Kulaks Has Begun, The Last Bull Capitulates and Not Too Early For “I Told You So”.
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UPDATE No. 3: Welcome Instapundit readers. Tell me, Has My Blog Strategy Failed?
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Comments
Oh, why do you insist on paying attention to the outside world like this? Don’t you know we have an economic “crisis” here at home? Since Iran is such a peaceful, reasonable and above all sane country, I’m sure there’s nothing for anybody to worry about.
We don’t need to worry about Iran. Obama, through his Sec of State, Clinton, will save us with “smart diplomacy.” We’ll all talk about our common interests and they will see the light. Of course, Iran would gladly give up being a nuclear power just to be friends with the USA. Just like North Korea….
didn’t russia help iran with their missile and nuke programs? i know russia helped the islamic revolution take power in iran. i’m skeptical about this message. why would they all of the sudden be so concerned when they are tied at the hip with them?
Maybe things have gotten away from them, and they thought they could control the Iranians but now realize they can’t.
It’s just disinformation intended to create the impression that Russia is at all distant from Iran and its strategic pursuits. Iran depends completely on Russia not only for weaponry but for sponsorship of its “Shiite Arc” strategy, which an Iranian nuclear weapons capability is intended to guarantee. Israel will then be faced with two lose/lose options: either it will refrain from attacking Iranian sites, and continue to be erroded into nothing by increasing diplomatic and proxy army pressure, or it will attack and be attacked in turn. The Arab countries, fearing for their own security, will turn to us; we will be bogged down in Afghanistan, and the Russians/Iranians will continue to be able to light up Iraq whenever they need to. Moreover the US domestic constituency has already been shaped in favor of peace and appeasement – until it will be too late. Russian pronouncements on Iran should only be taken as evidence that Iran’s progress is accelerating or more completely manifesting itself – and the Russians want you to know it.
Their own creation will destroy them. Unfortunately for the Russians, the Iranians do not ‘Love their children too’.
mdmhvonpa- Are you suggesting that the Russians’ strategy on Iran may come back to Sting them?