Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Will Russia's Decision To Arm Iran With S-300 Missiles Make Any U.S. Attack On Iran Impossible?



Dave Majumdar, Daily Beast: Putin’s Missile Could Make U.S. Attacks on Iran Nearly Impossible

For years, Team Obama crowed about keeping this advanced Russian missile out of Iran’s hands. Now the Kremlin suddenly seems eager to hand it over to Tehran.

This nuke deal with Iran had better work. Because the Kremlin is lifting a ban on selling a powerful air defense system to Iran that would render an airstrike on Tehran’s nuclear weapons facilities nearly impossible.

The delivery of the new weapon, called the Almaz-Antei S-300PMU-1—known as the SA-20 Gargoyle in NATO parlance—would effectively force the U.S. to rely on its small fleet of stealth aircraft to strike targets inside Iran in case the mullahs make a dash for the bomb. But even those aircraft might have a difficult time.

WNU Editor: On the political front, this decision by Russia to ship these weapon systems to Iran has to put bed any hope that the U.S. and Russia would continue to cooperate in reigning in Iran's nuclear program. Both countries are now approaching Iran from a different "play-book", and it would not surprise me if we are start seeing Iran take advantage of this. On the military front .... the S-300 is not as advanced as the S-400 and the soon to be deployed S-500 .... but it does change the dynamics on what would be necessary to successfully strike Iran's nuclear facilities. My guess is that from now to the day when these weapons systems are finally shipped and deployed, the military option for a country like Israel will be very tempting .... but after that .... it will take advanced stealth U.S. jet fighters and cruise missiles to do the job.

Update: Another red line crossed? .... Russian Missile Sales to Iran Cross White House ‘Red Line’ (Washington Free Beacon).

5 comments:

Unknown said...

You hit the S300 with Tomahawks.

At worst you come to the edge of the respective envelopes of the attacking planes and S300 and send ground to air and air to ground flying.

Chances are the S300 gets waxed.

The S300s ticks up the risk a little, but does not necessarily stop an attack. All it does is give the Iranians a few minutes more warning or grace time.

Obama may pull a Kirchner.

After all with Zarif treating Kerry like a dog. With Khamanei going balls out in ridiculing Obama's agreement and making the diplomatic process a 3 ring circus, Obama might just feel like he has to strike.

To play brinksmanship you have to know when to hold them and fold them. All the Iranian rulers know is attack. They are not really that intelligent. They are vicious like NAZIs.

Too many Lucy & Charlie Brown with a football comparisons will destroy the Democrat brand. Obama might feel compelled to pull a Kirchner and actually go through with it.

Right now Obama's poll #s are the best they have been in 18 months. Around June or July as the northern hemisphere hots up, they will go down.

China is sucking ass economically. Not what I want to see. Like the U.S. when china economy drags other will around the world. So the economy in the U.S. will falter heading into an election year. more soldiers will be killed in Afghanistan. There will be more bad news out Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Nigeria. Obama cannot control the bad news and neither can Khamanei. They really cannot control the tempo too much in those places.

All this will make people nervous.
between the economy and world event Obama will look like a loser and , Khamanei wants to further push him into a corner.

Go for it.

Ropestuff said...

I had the same thought about hitting the batteries with Tomahawks Aizino, then I remembered, aren't we going to stop producing Tomahawks very soon?

Unknown said...

Ropestuff

That is true. But they are meant to be a deterrent or barring that used.

Obama only has a very long and for us agonizing 21 months in office.

He might pull a Jimmy Carter and belatedly ramp up military spending.

If soldiers keep going back and forth across the Yemen Saudi Border, people will start to get nervous.

Unless the new Nigerian president can cut off support/ money for Boko Haram or defeat them they will keep making news and worry people.

these are all things beyond Obamass control because he put in troops in piece meal in penny packets.

I read part of a WW2 German manual that said punch don't poke or tickle. Obama seems to be doing the latter. Nothing he has done in Africa form Boko Haram to Ebola to Kony to Libya to Egypt engender any confidence. He is a loser and the nightly news will show that more and more.

The nightly news and newspapers are so stupid that most american know that besides Afghanistan and Iraq that a major portion of the U.S,. effort against terrorist groups was Djibouti. All that has been propagandizes was that there was a good war, Afghanistan and a bad war,Iraq. As soon as Iraq was over, then Afghanistan became a bad war. That is the extent of MSM war coverage. Every so often the MSM would decry drone strike in Yemen but still miss Djibouti.

Anonymous said...

Greece has S-300, Israel IAF trains with Greece. Difficult once the Iranians have but not impossible me thinks

James said...

Still have to have Iranians trained and capable of using them which I believe has been a problem. Now Putin could really throw a monkey wrench in all this by sending some 300's with Russian crews, bringing up the possibility of them being casualties. This would give would be attackers pause, but how much, we'll see.