Moscow continues to deny repeated reports that it is wrapping up a major arms deal with Syria and Iran despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Reuben F Johnson investigates
Persistent reports from sources in Moscow, New Delhi and foreign delegations attending last month's Paris Air Show point towards Russia's state arms export agency, Rosoboronexport, preparing to make a major sale of conventional arms to Syria and Iran
During the Paris show, the Moscow based newspaper Kommersant reported on a Rosoboronexport contract to deliver five Mikoyan MiG-31E fighter aircraft and an undetermined number of MiG-29M/M2 fighters to Syria in a deal worth more than $1 billion.
The MiG-29M/M2 aircraft will be new production models, but the MiG-31E fighters will be used Russian Air Force aircraft that have been upgraded at the Sokol plant in Nizhni-Novgorod, where they were originally manufactured.
The MiG-31 contract is reported to be worth $400 million of the $1 billion deal, indicating that
these five aircraft are probably only the first batch of a larger number to be delivered.
Kommersant also reported that Syria does not have the financial resources to support such an order and that the contract is being financed by Iran. Under the mutual defence agreement between the two nations, the aircraft might be transferred to Iran once Damascus has taken delivery.
However, Russia recently wrote off $10 billion in debt that Syria had accumulated during the Soviet years, mostly from weapon systems delivered to Damascus on credit. The cancelling of this debt now gives Syria a clean ledger to start purchasing weapons anew.
Israeli analysts also point out that the weapons may be a secondary consideration. At about the same time as the MiG contract was reportedly signed,
Syria and Russia penned another agreement giving Moscow access to the Syrian port of Tartus.
This port access satisfies Russia's longstanding ambition for a naval base in the Mediterranean and it explains both the debt forgiveness and the shiny new weapons being delivered to the Assad regime.
It is not without precedent for Moscow to write off debt left over from the Soviet era in order to put together a set of interlocking arms sales and strategic trade and defence assistance agreements.
A similar set of deals was reached with Algeria that forgave that nation's debt in exchange for a multibillion-dollar weapons sale, access for Russian oil companies to Algerian oil fields and an agreement on transfer of Algerian gas liquification technology to Moscow's Gazprom.
At Paris, however, Rosoboronexport General Director Sergei Chemezov denied the existence of the contract. He stated: "Russia has no plans to supply fighters to Syria and Iran. If talks start with these countries, it will be announced."
Skeptics point out that Chemezov's denial is hard to take at face value for several reasons.
None other than Russian Federal Industry Agency Chairman Boris Alyoshin, whose government ministry controls the entire Russian defence industry, confirmed that there is a contract to supply these upgraded MiG-31Es to a foreign customer, but declined to name the buyer.
Another member of the Russian delegation at Paris also verified the existence of the MiG-31 contract, stating that the aircraft are for an unnamed "Middle Eastern nation".
Adding to the speculation are statements from sources in New Delhi that quote Rosoboronexport representatives as preparing to sell
"as many as 250 [Sukhoi] Su-3OMKs to Iran".
Because there is the possibility of such a large sale in the offing, said one Indian defence analyst, Rosoboronexport is not particularly bothered about the problems it currently has in fulfilling some of its contracts to India - most notably delays in delivering the refitted Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier.
"They seem prepared to let India - at least temporarily - become disenchanted with its Russian supplier in order to focus on the potential for a new client base in Iran," continued the analyst.
Where the mystery begins is why Moscow dispatched Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to Israel the week after the Paris Air Show to make the Russian position on sales to Syria clear.
"Whatever we do in the area of arms supplies is absolutely in line with our international obligations," he told the Israeli government on 28 June.
"It's also absolutely in line with the national legislation of the Russian Federation," Lavrov said. "Whatever we supply to Syria is transparent and is not offensive. In any case, it is not destabilising the balance [of power] in the region."
The question, however, is this:
if Chemezov's denials are true and there are no sales to Syria in process, then why did Moscow feel compelled to send Lavrov all the way to Jerusalem to defend the right to make a sale that is not supposed to even exist?
The answer is that it has been made very clear - at least inside Russia - that arms sales to Syria and Iran are a subject that is off limits for discussion.
In early March, Kommersant reporter Ivan Safranov, a retired Russian military colonel and a defence exports correspondent with the newspaper for 10 years, fell to his death from the fifth floor of his apartment building - two floors above from where his own apartment is actually located. Numerous circumstances surrounding this event point to someone or some organisation trying to permanently silence him.
Safranov had been pursuing a story that detailed plans for Rosoboronexport to sell
Su-3OMKs, Iskander-E intermediate-range ballistic missiles and Almaz-Antei S-300 air-defence systems to Iran - using both Syria and Belarus as pass-through nations in order to give Moscow deniability of its involvement.
Riddle Of Russia Reported Arms Sale To Syria/Iran
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