The United States urged Russia Friday to reconsider its decision to honor a contract to sell TOR-M1 surface-to-air missiles to Iran.
“We would hope that Russia would take a second look at this issue,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.
In Saint Petersburg earlier Friday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Russia would honor the deal “except in the case of some major event.”
“The technical characteristics of the system prohibit it from being used for terrorist activities,” he said.
“The contract to deliver the short-range TOR-M1 air defense system has been signed; to fulfill it will take some time,” Ivanov told journalists after a meeting with his German counterpart, Franz Josef Jung.
Russia was “far from being the main arms supplier in the Near East and Middle East region,” he added.
At the end of last year, the Russian press announced that Iran had signed a contract with Moscow to buy 29 TOR-M1 air defense systems in a deal valued at 700 million dollars (546 million euros).
