Any airstrike against Iran by the United States or Israel would be “unacceptable,” the chief of the Russian General Staff Nikolai Makarov said on Monday. Go to original article.

The S-300’s surface-to-air rockets can hit many targets at once, including in-coming cruise missiles, making any Western or Israeli strike on Iran much more difficult.

News of the multi-billion pound deal with Moscow has caused fury and fear among Western powers as they desperately try to stop the country developing nuclear weapons.

An intelligence source told The Mirror: “In the game of bluff and counter-bluff this is bad news for Israel and the West. Go to original article.

A top Iranian general claimed today that its military’s had produced aerial drones capable of gathering intelligence and striking at targets. Go to original article.

Iran unveiled a new “homemade” missile defense system on Sunday that its defense minister claims is capable of destroying “advanced airplanes flying at low and medium altitudes” in a show of force that can easily be read as a warning to Western powers seeking to pressure Iran over its nuclear program. Go to LA Times.

TEHRAN, Iran—Iran announced the development of a new, more advanced, anti-aircraft system, the defense minister said Sunday on national television.

Ahmad Vahidi said the new Mersad, or Ambush, air-defense system would be able to hit modern aircraft at low and medium altitudes. Go to WSJ.

The United States will become bogged down in a quagmire if it carries out a “crazy act” against Iran, top hardline cleric Ahmad Khatami said on Friday as he blasted Washington’s new nuclear policy. Go to AFP.

In the kind of overheated rhetoric that often emanates from the Mideast (think “mother of all battles” etc.) Iran’s military chief, Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, warned Thursday that if the U.S. attacks his nation, no American soldier would leave the Middle East alive. Go to NPR.

Has a record-breaking British powerboat become the “ultimate toy” for an Iranian playboy or – as US investigators fear – is it now equipped with the world’s fastest torpedoes aimed at sinking an aircraft carrier in the Gulf?

In spite of efforts by the Obama administration to stop it falling into the hands of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the Bradstone Challenger – a high-performance powerboat built with support from a US defence contractor – is believed to be under new and dangerous ownership.

…In the meantime, Iran was developing Russian-designed Shkval (Squall) torpedoes, known to be the fastest in the world. In April 2006, General Ali Fadavi, deputy head of the Revolutionary Guards, announced the test of a torpedo moving at speeds of 360kph that “no warship can escape from”.

Craig Hooper, a San Francisco-based naval strategist who has been following the Bradstone Challenger, says Iran is scouring the world for speedboats with potential military use. Its force is based on ageing Swedish-designed Boghammar craft, as well as Chinese and North Korean speedboats.

But there is much debate whether a boat such as the Bradstone Challenger, even armed with one or two torpedoes, would represent a serious threat against an aircraft carrier in the confined waters of the Gulf.

“Though the US Navy is very concerned a swarm of small boats can overwhelm and sink a large warship, the hypothesis is untested. It has never been done,” Mr Hooper told the FT. “A small, fast boat navy is nothing more than a surprise strike and harassment force. Every time small, fast boats run into helicopters, the helicopters win.”

Go to Financial Times.

By Sebastian Rotella

MILAN – The Italian businessman sounded worried on the wiretap.

Alessandro Bon was a politically connected entrepreneur and former sales representative for Beretta, the Italian gun manufacturer. But behind that facade, he was leading a ring of Italian arms dealers and Iranian spies who were illegally selling ammunition, helicopters and other military hardware to Iran, according to Italian court documents obtained by ProPublica.

As investigators listened in October, Bon gave one of his associates bad news: Some German sniper scopes they had sold to Iran had surfaced among Taliban militants fighting NATO troops in Afghanistan.

“You want to know where they found two of the sniper scopes, between you and me?” Bon said, according to a transcript of the call. “In Afghanistan … They fired on German soldiers with two of the sniper scopes and the serial numbers were traced … and the [German] police are investigating because they were in the hands of the Taliban … I wonder what the hell they were doing in Afghanistan.”

Bon didn’t know it, but he had problems closer to home. His alleged clandestine business had already caught the eye of Italian authorities, who in March arrested him, four other Italians and two alleged Iranian intelligence officials. Two more Iranians remain fugitives. All nine are charged with violating international embargoes barring sales of arms and military technology to Iran. All have denied wrongdoing.

The case has been reported in Italy, but transcripts of wiretaps, in court documents obtained by ProPublica, offer a rare inside look at Iran’s aggressive global campaign to buy prohibited deadly goods. Using layers of front companies and smuggling pipelines run by Iran’s increasingly powerful security forces, Iranian buyers prowl black markets in search of suppliers ready to take a risk for a profit, according to investigators and Western intelligence officials interviewed for this article.

U.S.-led international sanctions haven’t stopped the illicit sales, experts say, because European countries have longtime commercial ties to Iran and aren’t inclined to crack down, particularly in the current economic slump. Italy alone did more than $9 billion worth of legitimate trade with Iran in 2008.

A member of Italy’s Finance Police shows one of the confiscated pieces of optical equipment. (Giuseppe Cacace/Getty Images/AFP)

…The network’s troubles started in June when the suspects strayed into the sights of two top law enforcement agencies: a Milan unit of the Financial Guard, the Italian police force that investigates customs and tax-related crimes, and a prosecutors’ office with a tradition of pursuing corruption and terrorism cases.

The prosecutor in the case, Armando Spataro, led a historic investigation that ended in November with the conviction of two dozen CIA officials, in absentia, for the abduction of an Egyptian cleric here in 2003. Spataro’s prosecution also helped topple high-ranking officials of Italy’s foreign spy agency, worsening tensions with the administration of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a frequent critic of Italy’s independent-minded prosecutors.

The lead about the arms trafficking scheme came from Romanian customs officials, who were embroiled in a court fight with Bon, the Italian entrepreneur, over a shipment of 200 German sniper scopes. The merchandise had been confiscated in 2008 at the Bucharest airport en route to Iran.

Bon, 43, went into business on his own about five years ago after working in exports for Beretta, the firearms giant. He lives in Monza, a prosperous, politically conservative town near Milan.

According to an investigative report in an arrest warrant, Bon and an associate had sent the sniper scopes to a Romanian front company to mask the final destination: Iran. Investigators found an e-mail from Bon with instructions to the Romanian shipping agent: “You will find attached the bill for the Consignee in Teheran. THE BILL MUST NOT ACCOMPANY THE MERCHANDISE!!!”

The Financial Guard began wiretapping Bon and his associates, enlisting the help of Italy’s domestic intelligence agency and police in other countries to trace the web of smuggling routes.

Within weeks, investigators had reason to believe that the Italian arms dealers were hatching brazen multimillion-dollar deals with Iranian spies.

The Iranian Connection

The Financial Guard identified the main arms buyer as Bakhtiyari Homayoun, a suspected Iranian intelligence official who shuttled between Europe and Tehran.

Homayoun, 46, ran a front company in Tehran that was one of several Iranian firms operating as a government procurement network, according to the investigative report. A hard-nosed negotiator, he chewed out his Italian partners when they pestered him about debts or failed to deliver the goods.

In early August, Homayoun pressured Bon to free the blocked sniper scope shipment in Bucharest and get it to Iran. The Iranian complained that he was feeling heat from higher-ups to close the deal, according to a wiretap transcript.

“This is coming from the minister’s office, I can’t do anything,” Homayoun told Bon in English. “You know that the minister changes next week. Everything will be different next week, so they want to finish everything before leaving their posts.”

Homayoun’s shopping list offers insight into the goals of Iran’s procurement networks and its ties to Islamic militants. Western intelligence officials say many of the munitions, explosives and other arms he ordered were probably intended not for the conventional military, but rather for proxy forces that are believed to be supported by Iran: the Iraqi insurgency, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. U.S. military chiefs also have accused Iran of providing military assistance to the Taliban.

Financial Guard officers are investigating the clues about how sniper scopes ended up in the Taliban’s arsenal. They are also pursuing leads that some of the 1,000 sniper scopes Homayoun bought, paying up to $2,600 each, may have reached insurgents in Iraq. According to the investigative report and Italian officials, British troops discovered the same kind of scopes in Iraqi militant hideouts in Basra in 2006 and 2007.

German sniper scopes were among the arms confiscated by the Italian police.

The wiretaps exposed Masoumi as a “high-ranking operative of the Iranian secret intelligence services,” according to the investigative report. As part of his covert activities, he sometimes presented himself as an employee of Iran’s national airline and often operated out of the Iranian embassy, according to the report. He also denied the accusations,

The senior investigator in the case told ProPublica that Masoumi co-founded the front company in Romania with one of Bon’s associates. The company officially dealt in telecommunications equipment, but it completed only one transaction, the investigator said: the export of the 200 Schmidt & Bender sniper scopes that were blocked at the Bucharest airport.

“Why is Masoumi, a TV journalist, involved in a Romanian front company?” the senior investigator said. “How does the Iranian government explain that?”

Following instructions from an Iranian embassy official in Rome recorded during wiretapped calls, Masoumi also spied on critics of Iran, prosecutors allege. He grilled an Italian journalist who had contributed to a book about Iran’s opposition movement, asking if any Iranian exiles were among the authors, according to the investigative report.

“Are there any Iranians involved?” Masoumi demanded during a phone conversation in September. “Are there any Iranian names?”

Masoumi’s intrigues enabled him to “soften” Italian news coverage of the Iranian regime’s violent repression of the opposition, according to the prosecutor’s report. Intercepted communications with Italian journalists show that Masoumi promised them visas to Iran and access to officials if they would tone down negative reports about Iran, the prosecutor’s report says.

Go to original article.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Thursday he hoped to export coveted U.S. drone technology to allies, despite legal hurdles, and played down the threat from rival drone programs in nations like Iran.

Gates, testifying at a Senate hearing, said it was in the U.S. interest to try to help friendly nations get drone technology, despite limitations on exports imposed by an international pact.

“There are other countries that are very interested in this capability and frankly it is, in my view, in our interest to see what we can do to accommodate them,” Gates said.

The drones have proven to be a crucial technological advantage for the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq, allowing it to remotely track and kill insurgents and giving troops eyes-in-the-sky battleground imagery in real time.

The CIA has used drones armed with missiles to ramp up its covert campaign to kill al Qaeda and Taliban targets in Pakistan.

“The reality is so far we have been in situations where (drone) technology cannot be used, or has not been used against our troops anywhere,” Gates said.

But that might not remain the case, he said. He cited Iran, which he has said is providing limited support to Afghan insurgents, and which is developing unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs.

“Iran has UAVs and that is a concern because it is one of those areas where I suppose if they chose to, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, they could create difficulties for us,” Gates said.

Still, he called UAVs “relatively slow flyers” that could be neutralized by the Air Force if they threatened U.S. forces. Go to Reuters.

FP: Get Yer Anti-Ballistic Missile Shield Here Where do sheikhs go shopping? Facing the rising threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, they go to weapons shows like the International Defence Exhibition and Conference, where leaders from Cairo to Riyadh are stocking up.

According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies report Military Balance 2010, Saudi Arabia’s defense budget grew from $24.9 billion in 2001 to $41.2 billion in 2009, a 65 percent increase. The budget of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) grew a whopping 700 percent, from $1.9 billion to $15.47 billion, in the same time period. Kuwait and Bahrain also dramatically expanded the dollars devoted to security over the last decade; their defense budgets increased 35 percent and 80 percent, respectively.

Free Iran: Considering the military expenditures cited above and the graph below, the US arms industry must be loving Ahmadeinejad all the way to the bank.  Scarecrows are good for business.  The US is the runaway winner of selling arms and much of it to the developing countries and most of that to the Arab Persian Gulf countries. How about all the lofty talk about promoting America’s ideals and democracy, you say.  Well, that’s just talk.  This is business – the business of selling arms.

AP:  Surging global weapons transfers raise concerns Surging global weapons transfers are raising concerns about arms races in tension-fraught areas of the globe, a leading peace research group warned Monday.  New data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute showed that transfers of major conventional weapons rose by 22 percent in 2005-2009, compared to the previous five-year period.  The U.S. remains the biggest arms supplier, accounting for 30 percent of weapons exports, while China and India are the biggest importers of conventional weapons, SIPRI said. It added that Singapore and Algeria both made the top-10 list of major weapons importers for the first time.  SIPRI also said that Iran was the second-largest customer for China’s arms industry over the past five years. Sales included more than 1,000 surface-to-air and anti-ship missiles, along with 50 infantry fighting vehicles, and accounted for 14 percent of China’s arms exports by value during 2005-2009, according to SIPRI.

NYT:  As Its Arms Makers Falter, Russia Buys Abroad Indeed, until recently, Russia’s military exports were second in volume only to the United States.  But in today’s Russia, the $40 billion military equipment industry is withering alongside civilian manufacturing.  Once-legendary Russian weapons are suffering embarrassing quality-control problems. Algeria, for example, recently returned a shipment of MIG jets because of defects.  An aircraft carrier refurbishment for India is four years late and hundreds of millions of dollars over budget.  In perhaps the most poignant sign of trouble, Russia’s own military is now voting with its rubles: Moscow is in talks with France to buy four French amphibious assault ships. If a deal is struck, it would be Russia’s most significant acquisition of foreign weapons since World War II.  The purchase of Mistral-class ships would be “the most salient example of the deficiencies in the Russian defense industry,” said Dmitri Trenin, a military analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center, a policy research organization.

NYT:  Taking a Risk With Nuclear Technology As concerns intensify about countries like Iran and North Korea and their nuclear capabilities, this may be a risky time to sell more of the technology to the developing world.  Yet furthering nuclear exports is what several governments are seeking for their industries amid talk of a renaissance for the technology.  Take the promotion by the French government of a nuclear conference in Paris last week.

Iran will test a “new generation” of 2,000-pound bombs, the nation’s Air Force commander said, in the third announcement of an Iranian military development in the past month.

The Ghased-2 bomb will be more destructive and hit targets with greater precision than its predecessor, the Ghased-1, Air Force Commander Hasan Shah-Safi said today, according to the state-run Fars news agency. The Ghased-1 is now in production and operational, he said. Both versions use “smart” technology, Fars cited him as saying without providing details.

Iran has hailed its recent military developments as proof the country remains technologically self-sufficient while under international sanctions. The Persian Gulf nation said on Feb. 24 that it formed its first squadron of domestically manufactured Saeghe fighter planes, following an announcement on Feb. 19 that it had put the first Iranian-built naval destroyer into service.

The New York Times reported Jan. 31 that President Barack Obama is accelerating the deployment of new U.S. defenses against possible Iranian missile attacks in the Gulf.

“This is not a new development,” Shah-Safi said about the U.S. missile defenses. “They have installed these systems elsewhere and tested them without reaching a positive response.” Go to Bloomberg.

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iranian state television said the first Iranian-built destroyer was launched on Friday in a ceremony attended by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“The first domestically made destroyer Jamaran was launched this morning and joined Iran’s naval forces in the southern waters of the Persian Gulf,” state television IRIB reported. It did not give the location of the launch.

The report showed footage of the warship and said it was equipped with torpedoes and electronic radar. The ship is 94 meters long and more than 1,500 tonnes, it said. Much of Iran’s naval equipment dates from before the 1979 Islamic revolution and is U.S.-made. Go to Reuters.

As Iran’s defiance over its nuclear weapons program heightens, Tehran has unveiled a new satellite launch vehicle (SLV), which experts say could be the basis for a future intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

A mock-up of the 85-ton Simorgh (Phoenix) SLV was displayed during Iran’s Space Technology Day on Feb. 3, exactly one year after the launch of Iran’s first satellite, Omid (Hope), onboard a Safir SLV.

The Iranian official news agency describes the Simorgh as a 27-meter (88.5-ft.)-long, multi-stage, liquid-fuel missile with a thrust of 143 metric tons (314,600 lb.). Iranian TV showed a cluster of four engines at the first stage, each providing 32 tons of thrust and a second-stage engine providing a thrust of 15 tons .

Iran says the Simorgh is designed to carry a 60-kg. (132-lb.) satellite into low Earth orbit, and could grow to carry a 700-kg. payload up to a 1,000-km. orbit.

“It is hard to overstate the global significance of that development,” Uzi Rubin, former director of Israel’s Ballistic Missile Defense Organization tells Aviation Week. “Anyone that can put a 700-kg. payload in orbit could easily deliver a 500-kg. nuclear bomb to any point around the globe.” And, he adds, “the Simorgh could clearly be the basis for a future Iranian ICBM that could threaten not only Europe but the continental U.S.” Go to original article.