Putin: Russian S-300 Delivery Should Play Role Model for Global Commitment

Russian President Vladimir Putin in a meeting with Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani said Moscow’s decision to deliver the sophisticated S-300 air defense missile systems to Tehran sets a role model at global class that every nation should remain loyal to its undertakings.

“The decision which was taken today bears this clear message that all countries are necessitated to remain committed to their undertakings,” Putin said during the meeting in Moscow on Tuesday.

Putin appreciated the Islamic Republic’s principled policy of constructive interaction with the world, and said, “Iran’s close cooperation with the Group 5+1 (the US, Russia, China, Britain and France plus Germany) has resulted in major steps,” he added.

Elsewhere, Putin voiced concern about the spread of security crises in Yemen, Syria, Libya, North of Africa and Ukraine to other parts of the world, and said changing the world’s unipolar structure, whose maintenance is insisted by certain states, is inevitable.

Shamkhani, for his part, lauded Russia for its constructive role in the political developments at the regional and international levels, and described the country’s decision to repeal the ban prohibiting the delivery of S-300 missile air defense systems to Iran as a “valuable move” on the path of developing the two neighbors’ growing cooperation.

Touching on the developments in the region, he said measures like military strikes against Yemen and massacring the innocent Yemeni women and children provides the ground for the creation and spread of extremist terrorist streams, saying that military actions like what is happening in Yemen indicate the tight relations between terrorist groups and certain countries.

The Kremlin’s press service announced on Monday that Putin had removed the ban on the delivery of the missile shield to Iran.

In response, Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan said “the decree came as an interpretation of the will of the two countries’ political leaders to develop and promote cooperation in all fields”.

“Expansion of mutual cooperation with the neighboring countries in various fields can play an effective role in the establishment of durable security and stability in the region,” the Iranian defense minister said.

He said the threats posed by the trans-regional powers as well as the spread of Takfiri terrorist groups had necessitated the broadening and deepening of cooperation, a point “which has always been at the center of Iran-Russia talks for cooperation“.

Also, Shamkhani, who is in Moscow to attend the 10th meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), told Interfax on Tuesday that the Russian S300 air defense missile systems can be delivered to Iran in the next 8 months.

Putin’s decision was announced hours after relevant reports said the Kremlin also plans to supply China with the advanced S-400 air defense system.

FNA

R.S