Death Toll Rises In Barracks Collapse In Omsk Wednesday July 15th, 2015 at 1:56 PM
- Get link
- Other Apps
The death toll in the military barracks collapse in the Siberian city of Omsk rose to 24 after a paratrooper died in hospital on July 15.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman General Igor Konashenkov told journalists that the paratrooper was treated at the Kirov Military Medical Academy but died as a result of his injuries in the July 12 accident.
All four floors collapsed in one section of the building as 42 Russian paratroopers were resting in the evening on July 12.
Authorities blamed construction workers for the collapse.
The Investigative Committee has opened a probe into negligence, violation of safety rules, and abuse of power.
Those who are found guilty would face up to 10 years in prison the committee said.
Based on reporting by TASS, Interfax, and AFP
WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House predicted on Tuesday that this year's budget deficit will register at $455 billion, less than forecast in February and the lowest yet of Barack Obama's presidency.
The new figure is slightly less than 2014's deficit of $483 billion. In February, the administration predicted a ...
A top-secret national security document taken by former contractor Edward Snowden confirms for the first time that American officials attributed Israeli special command forces with the 2008 assassination of a key aide to Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Reports concerning the death of Muhammad Suleiman, Mr. Assad's chief weapons procurement adviser, ...
NATO to Invite Russia as Observer to Largest Drills in 10 Years
Sputnik International BRUSSELS (Sputnik) — NATO will invite Russia as an observer to Trident Juncture, the alliance's largest exercise in over a decade, commanding officer for the drill Gen. Hans-Lothar Domrose said Wednesday. "We invite international observers, there is ... and more » |
A Russian strategic bomber crashed in the Far East of the country Tuesday, killing two of the seven crewmembers.
Next Page of Stories
Loading...
Page 2
The nuclear deal with Iran was met with a profound wariness in the Arab world, where concerns are widespread that the easing of its international isolation could tip the already bloody contest for power in the region toward Shiite-led Tehran.
U.S. failure to replace Saddam’s Iraq with a functioning government in a strong state is the reason Obama has made this deal with Iran.
The speed with which NATO forces can respond to a crisis will be a focus of Trident Juncture 15, a massive alliance exercise set to spread across southern Europe this fall.
Obama Makes His Case on Iran Nuclear Dealby By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
In an exclusive interview, President Obama says the deal is “the most definitive path by which Iran will not get a nuclear weapon.”
Unbreakable Encryption Poses Big Problems for Law Enforcement
Techwire.net Yates and FBI Director James B. Comey say they want the technology companies to voluntarily build weaknesses into their systems that will enable them to access customer emails and text messages when law enforcement agents present a warrant. and more » |
In a stepped up effort to provide government spies with “backdoor” access to privately encrypted information, FBI Director James B. Comey gave testimony on July 8 to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and—along ...
Next Page of Stories
Loading...
Page 3
By John Ubaldi
Contributor, In Homeland Security
Contributor, In Homeland Security
On July 6, President Obama traveled to the Pentagon to receive an operational update from defense and military leaders on the campaign to defeat ISIL.
The military campaign to defeat ISIL has been going on for nearly one year, and the president was reviewing the current situation on the ground in the region.
By its illegal occupation of Crimea, Moscow has transformed that Ukrainian peninsula into an island, the second non-contiguous part of the Russian Federation and one that is already giving the Russian government and the Russian economy serious problems—as Kaliningrad long has (Ekho Moskvy, July 10). Like Kaliningrad, Crimea can be reached by land only by crossing the territory of a country with which Moscow does not have good relations. But unlike the westernmost oblast of the Russian Federation, the Crimean peninsula could, in principle, be reached by a bridge over the Kerch Straits from Russian territory.
That is the strategy Moscow has announced, even though all earlier efforts to build a bridge across those waters have failed. Furthermore, the problems involved—foreign political, economic, environmental, technical and domestic-political—are now greater than at any time in the past. Together, these obstacles make the realization of such a project more difficult than ever. As a result, Ukrainian defense analyst Igor Fedyk says, it is entirely appropriate to speak of the Kerch “curse.” And Fedyk doubts that even the Russian government will be able to overcome it (Krymr.com, July 3).
Faced with long lines of cars and trucks waiting to use the limited ferry service between Russia proper and occupied Crimea, Moscow has found itself caught between two foreign policy imperatives: On the one hand, it has to demonstrate that it can supply the annexed peninsula to a sufficient degree to give some substance to its longstanding claims that Crimea is in important ways part of Russia. But on the other hand, Moscow’s earlier agreements with Ukraine mean that it cannot build a bridge to service the peninsula/island without Kyiv’s permission, something unlikely to be forthcoming. Indeed, in recognition of that, the Duma (Russia’s lower house of parliament) has taken up legislation that would allow Moscow to simply ignore yet another international obligation.
The second big problem or “curse” on such a project is its cost. Russian officials have estimated that building a bridge across the Kerch Straits will have a price tag of 228.3 billion rubles ($4.5 billion). That is the amount Moscow expects Russian oligarch Arkady Rotenberg’s SGM group construction company to invest in it with government aid. But Western experts say that the ultimate price tag could be two or three times higher, and even Russian officials concede that the price could go up. At a time of budgetary stringency in Russia, that makes such a project almost undoable. Indeed, Russia could start building such a bridge but be unable to complete it, giving itself a black eye in Crimea, Ukraine, domestically and around the world.
The third “curse” is environmental: any such bridge would have a powerful impact on the waterways involved, destroying flora and fauna and hurting some of the very people it supposedly was being built to help. Crimean officials have called for an environmental impact statement before anything is done, but again Duma deputies are discussing new legislation that would permit Moscow to ignore these ecological issues. Doing so in this case—as in the case of the lands around the Sochi Olympiad (see EDM, June 23)—would undoubtedly promote more environmental activism in Russia and spark ecological protests around the world.
Fourth, there are technical problems both on the straits themselves and on the adjoining territories in Russia and Crimea. No one has yet been able to build a bridge there for a very good reason: the ground underneath the straits is anything but stable, and the land on both sides is not ready for large roads without massive investment there. Such investment almost certainly would add to the costs of the project and might, by itself, make it prohibitive, even if engineers can solve the tricky construction problems involved in the footing of the towers of such a bridge.
And fifth, the bridge project involves some tricky “domestic” political issues as well. On the one hand, Moscow would like to put much of the burden of construction on Crimea, something neither officials nor businesses there are happy about. Indeed, as plans for construction go forward, a project intended to integrate Crimea into Russia could have the unintended effect of doing exactly the opposite. And on the other hand, Russian regions and Russian companies do not see how they can make a profit on the project. If the Kremlin forces them to become involved, they will have grievances—and such grievances in the current environment will only add to Moscow’s woes.
These are some of the reasons that the Kerch bridge project is unlikely ever to be carried out. But there are two others that may ultimately be more important than any of these: Many in Moscow still hope that they can create a land bridge to Crimea by occupying more of Ukraine or force Kyiv to agree to the overland transit of goods between Russia and Crimea. And at the same time, at least some in the Russian capital are concerned that Moscow may ultimately have to withdraw from Crimea altogether in order to overcome the current breach with the West.
In either case, a Kerch bridge would be a white elephant at best, the latest victim of the Kerch “curse.”
Read the whole story
· · ·
US Defense Secretary Ash Carter recently visited Berlin to assure allies that the US would deter aggression. NATO leaders are worried that Russia might invade the Baltics in a Crimea-style fait accompli, and then threaten nuclear escalation unless the alliance backs down.
The US Army's announcement that through 2017 it's cutting end strength by 40,000 more troops made headlines last week, but was hardly a surprise.
WARSAW — Georgia announced it has inked a deal with European missile systems group MBDA to acquire a "state-of-the-art defense system," according to Georgia's Defense Minister Tinatin Khidasheli
After months of increasingly strident warnings against nuclear negotiating concessions to Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is calling on "all for whom the security of Israel is dear" to deny those seeking to sign "a bad deal at any price."
Next Page of Stories
Loading...
Page 4
Fox News |
Why the OPM hack is an ongoing cyber headache | Fox News
Fox News The shadowy hackers that stole more than 21 million Social Security numbers in a huge breach of federal personnel files have created an ongoing cyber headache, experts warn, citing the data's value to both criminals and cyber spies. “It's tremendously ... and more » |
Business Insider |
The growing China-Russia economic relationship - Business Insider
Business Insider Or, as Alexander Gabuev, senior associate and the chair of the Russia in the Asia-Pacific program at the Carnegie Moscow Center, told Foreign Policy: "China would be the bank and Russia would be the big gun." China and Russia are pursing policies to ... and more » |
Spanning 20 countries, Operation Shrouded Horizon has dismantled an online criminal forum.
KIEV — President Petro Poroshenko ordered Ukraine's security services and police on Monday to disarm "illegal groups," saying they threatened to further destabilize a country fighting separatists in its east.
Poroshenko said a weekend standoff between members of a far-right group and police in the western town of Mukacheve, close to the border with Hungary, Slovakia and Romania, was simply a turf war over smuggling routes.
But he appeared to take aim at Right Sector, which played a prominent role in protests that toppled Moscow-backed President Viktor Yanukovych last year, saying no political force should operate armed cells in Ukraine and run "criminal cells."
The far-right nationalist group demanded the resignation of the interior minister at the weekend after two of its members were killed in a firefight with police in Mukacheve, where it said it was set upon by police. The Interior Ministry said the group shot first.
Poroshenko said in a statement there needed to be a tough investigation into the events there and that the Interior Ministry, security services and other law enforcement officials must disarm "all illegal armed groups."
"No political force should have and will not have any kind of armed cells. No political organization has the right to establish … criminal groups," Poroshenko said.
Poroshenko said last week the flow of arms from the conflict with pro-Russian separatists in the east increased the risk of serious crime in Ukraine, where corruption flourished under Yanukovych and where the authorities are under fire for not reforming the justice system quickly enough.
The Ukrainian president came one step towards admitting that not enough had been done to combat corruption, saying: "We must get to the bottom of old problems … I'm talking about clans, smuggling, corruption and the like."
The situation was calmer in Mukacheve on Monday but it was not clear whether Right Sector, in turn hailed or blamed for injecting violence into last year's Maidan protests, had downed arms as demanded by the police.
Right Sector has defended its right to hold arms, saying they must protect Ukraine from attempts to derail their demands for a new way of governing and from "outside forces," mainly Russia, to destabilize the country.
But officials have questioned the need to hold arms in western Ukraine, thousands of kilometers from the east, where fighting has killed more than 6,500 people and forced more than 1.5 million to abandon their homes.
Read the whole story
· ·
Russian Su-34 fighter bombers, Su-27 jet fighters and MiG 29 jet fighters fly above Moscow's Red Square on May 7 during a rehearsal for the Victory Day military parade(Photo: Yuri Kadobnov/AFP via Getty)
MOSCOW and WASHINGTON — Russia's Air Force is falling from the sky.
As the Kremlin continues to assert its air power in a bid to intimidate NATO allies in Europe and North America, its mostly Soviet-built aircraft are being pushed to their limits — a fact experts point to when attempting to explain the loss of five aircraft of different designs in just the past month.
The latest in the string of crashes came July 6, when a two-seat Su-24 strike fighter crashed at an air base outside of Khabarovsk, in Russia's Far East, while trying to take off for a training exercise.
This follows the crashes of two MiG-29s, an Su-34 and a Tu-95, all in the last month — part of a larger trend of Russian aviation failures over the last several years as the Soviet-era fleets have fallen victim to age and substandard sustainment.
A source close to the Defense Ministry said on condition of anonymity that the crashes are the result of two key trends dogging Russia's Air Force today — the overuse of old aircraft and a lack of qualified pilots.
It is easy to understand the first point. The pace of Russian activities has shot up dramatically since its invasion of Ukrainian territory in March of 2014.
According to data provided by NATO, the alliance intercepted over 400 Russian aircraft near its airspace in 2014 following the start of the Ukraine Crisis, a 50 percent increase over the previous years and a rate that harkens back to the antagonistic posturing of the Cold War.
The regular nature of these activities is one of the factors that led US Gen. Joe Dunford, expected to easily be confirmed as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to identify Russia as the "greatest existential threat" to the US during a confirmation hearing July 9.
Paul Schwartz, a nonresident senior associate who focuses on Russia with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, notes that it is not unusual for Russian aircraft to experience a "spate of incidents," but that the current rate of aircraft loss is beyond the norm.
The numbers bear that out. Since 2010, when the Russian government began putting its Air Force back into regular action under former-Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, it has experienced over 30 crashes, hardly ever breaking more than one a month, according to Russian news reports — a stark contrast to the last month of aircraft losses.
There is "clearly a linkage between the increased tempo of military operations undertaken over the last year and a half and the increased spate of accidents for military aircraft," Schwartz said.
"It's clearly taking a turn upwards."
The Russian source pointed to the stress placed on the Russian fleets by demanding patrol and exercise rates over the past several years — and since the start of the Ukraine crisis in particular.
"The majority of the equipment, apart from the [recent crash] of a newer Su-34, is very old. Under [Defense Ministers] Anatoly Serdyukov and Sergei Shoigu, the planes are being used very extensively, especially during these so-to-speak famous snap inspections," the source said.
"If you start to extensively use equipment made many years ago, even if the equipment is certified [in good shape], the percentage of failure becomes higher," he added.
The issue of aging gear is not one faced just by Russia, points out Richard Aboulafia, an analyst for the Teal Group. In fact, it has some similarities to the situation faced by the US Air Force, where service leaders have explicitly said they need to recapitalize aging fleets.
But the situation in Russia, where sustainment and upkeep have never been strong suits, is worse.
"It's exactly like us, except for a couple very big differences — we take sustainment seriously and we build robust systems," he said. "They don't."
Schwartz notes that while the Russians have made changes since 2008 in how they do sustainment and maintenance, historically "the amount they expand on maintenance has been substandard when compared with Western approaches."
The poor state of Russia's defense industry is also contributing to the state of Russia's aircraft fleet, said Vadim Kozyulin, a military expert at the Moscow-based PIR Center think tank.
"These old aircraft require a lot of maintenance, and the spare parts currently in stock are old," Kozyulin said, noting that when it comes to maintenance personnel, the older ones are experienced while the younger ones are not qualified.
"Many manufacturers of military components went bankrupt, converted to civilian production, or were left abroad — like in Ukraine — after the Soviet collapse," Kozyulin said. "Large numbers of existing producers of military components do not have military quality control inspectors on site to ensure the quality of components, as was done in Soviet times."
Sanctions from Western countries are having an impact in that regard, Schwartz said, as many of the high-end components that would help keep the fleets in top shape are no longer available to Putin's government.
"They've been especially dependent on electronic components from abroad," Schwartz said. "With sanctions taking effect that reduce their ability to purchase some of the components they use in their aircraft, they have to look for substitutes or look to buy from intermediaries."
Another issue the Russian source identified is the lack of qualified pilots to fly the kinds of missions the Defense Ministry is asking of the Air Force as Moscow tries to flex its muscles in the face of NATO.
"There are less pilots [in Russia] than there are aircraft, and they gave young pilots missions that are supposed to be given to experienced pilots," the source said.
These young pilots are lacking in basic skills such as midair refueling, the source said, noting "today, air refueling in Russia is, I dare to say, almost something exceptional."
Schwartz concurred that pilot training has been an issue for Russia since the end of the Soviet Union.
"They had pilots who flew so infrequently following the collapse that flight time for pilots was down to 20-30 hours a year, in some cases," he said.
Most of Russia's qualified pilots have retired or taken up better jobs flying for commercial airlines such as Aeroflot, Transaero and foreign companies, the source added.
Grounded Fleets
Russia is not ignoring the problem of lost planes, and has not hesitated to ground whole fleets while they attempt to find the sources of the problems.
"They're pretty good about grounding a particular category of aircraft when there's been an incident so they can trace the cause of the incident and prevent additional incidents from happening," Schwartz said.
Shortly after the crash of the Su-24 on July 6, the head of Russia's Air Force, Col. Gen. Viktor Bondarev, ordered the grounding of all Su-24 planes until the cause of the crash is identified — making the fleet Russia's third to be grounded over the last month.
On July 3, Russia's force of over 200 MiG-29 air superiority fighters were grounded after one crashed near its base in Krasnodar in southern Russia — the fourth loss of a MiG-29 over the past year.
Another MiG-29 crashed on June 4 in nearby Astrakhan during training. Just two and a half hours after that MiG-29 crash, one of Russia's newer Su-34 fighter-bomber aircraft flipped over while trying to land at its base in Voronezh region, about 500 kilometers south of Moscow.
An unidentified Defense Ministry source, quoted by state news agency RIA Novosti that day, said the plane's drag chute failed to deploy upon landing.
The Russian Air Force was also forced to ground its fleet of 61 Tu-95 "Bear" long-range strategic bombers temporarily last month after an engine fire during takeoff led one to run off its runway during takeoff from the Ukrainka Air Base in Russia's Far East.
The Bears are Soviet-era staples that form the mainstay of Russia's strategic bomber force. The planes have been spotted repeatedly buzzing along the fringes of NATO airspace over the past year. However, their engines are old and a modernization program is progressing at a snail's pace.
There is, for example, a production bottleneck in engines for the Tu-95s. Russia can only produce about 10 Bear engines a year for a fleet of over 60 of the four-engined airplanes.
After last month's incident with the Bear at Ukrainka Airbase, it is not clear how long the bombers were grounded, or if it impacted the rate of Russia's provocative patrols near NATO borders.
However, two Tu-95s were intercepted by US Air Force F-22 aircraft off the California coast on July 4.
The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment on the reasons behind the crashes, or clarify the status of its temporarily grounded fleets of Su-24s, MiG-29s and Tu-95 long-range strategic bombers.
The rate of attrition could begin to impact Russia's ability to fly patrols with regularity. While noting that five losses in a month likely won't happen on a regular basis, Schwartz said he expects the fleets to continue to grind down for several more years.
Eventually, however, the influx of newer aircraft into those fleets will help balance out the losses. The Su-24, for instance, is planned to be replaced by the Su-34 by around 2020. But replacing the aging fleets could take longer than desired if sanctions continue to impact Russia's fiscal situation.
In the meantime, the mix of older planes, lack of experienced pilots and sustainment issues will likely continue to be a problem for Putin's government.
Or as Aboulafia noted: "You couple the trends together, and they have a real problem. I expect this to worsen considerably."
Twitter: @Mattb0401 | @AaronMehta
Read or Share this story: <a href="http://defnews.ly/1ITo7rR" rel="nofollow">http://defnews.ly/1ITo7rR</a>
Read the whole story
· · · · · · ·
Six Russian military aircraft of different designs have crashed since the start of June as the country's air force buckles under the strain of the Kremlin's efforts to show off its military power.
The latest accident came on Tuesday, when a Tu-95 strategic bomber went down in Russia's Far East. All four of its engines had failed mid-flight during a training mission, an unidentified government source told news agency TASS.
Five of the airmen aboard the crashed Tu-95 managed to successfully bail out of the aircraft, while the two remaining crew members died, news agency Interfax reported later.
The bombers, known in the Russian air force as "Bear" aircraft, form the mainstay of Russia's long-range bomber fleet, with around 60 in service. Other Russian bombers include the long-range supersonic Tu-160, and the shorter range supersonic Tu-22M.
Tuesday's crash was the second loss of a "Bear" in just over one month. Four fighter jets have gone down in the same period.
The core problem driving Russian planes into the ground at such an astonishing rate is the air force's heightened tempo of patrols and exercises since the start of the Ukraine crisis 18 months ago, aerospace experts told The Moscow Times.
Last year NATO intercepted 400 Russian aircraft near its borders, a 50 percent increase over 2013. Russian aircraft are being dispatched to test the alliance's reaction times in the Baltic, in Western Europe, and even along the west coast of North America. But these missions are burning the old birds out.
"Russian aircraft were never designed for maintainability, they were designed to be flown 10 years and then thrown away," said Mark Bobbi, a principal analyst at international defense consultancy IHS.
Russia under President Vladimir Putin in 2010 launched a massive 20 trillion ruble ($350 billion) rearmament program intended to replace 70 percent of Russia's aging hardware with brand new equipment by the end of the decade, but the modernization drive for Russia's air force appears to be falling behind the Kremlin's ambitions on the international stage.
"Even with the big budgets of the past 10 years, Russia has not been able to recapitalize its fleet fast enough to get ahead of the age-out curve; the point of no return when an aircraft should not be flown any longer and the risk of accident is magnified," he added.
A source close to the Defense Ministry said on condition of anonymity that the pilot training also factors into Russia's string of aircraft losses.
"Many pilots in Russia today are young or lack flying experience," the source said, pointing out that Russia has only recently begun to purchase advanced computer simulators to give young pilots more practice before entering their cockpits.
A Month of Accidents
Russia has been flying more hours and more missions along NATO's airspace since the start of the Ukraine crisis early in 2014 largely without incident, but the poorly maintained nature of Russian aircraft is catching up with them.
Beginning last month, Russian aircraft are falling out of the sky at a breathtaking pace. According to data compiled by news agency TASS, the air force experienced around 30 crashes between 2010 and mid-2014 — or around one crash every two months.
But in early June, a MiG-29 fighter jet crashed during routing training in Astrakhan in southern Russia. Just 2 1/2 hours later, a Su-34 fighter-bomber went down during training in Voronezh region, about 500 kilometers south of Moscow.
The string of incidents continued with the crash of a Tu-95 "Bear" bomber a few days later. The aircraft's engine caught fire during takeoff, and the plane careened off the end of its runway and was heavily damaged. The accident led to the temporary grounding of the entire Tu-95 fleet.
The air force was forced to ground its fleets of MiG-29 fighter jets and old Su-24 strike jets after two more incidents in early July. Then came Tuesday's Tu-95 crash in the Far East and another temporary suspension of flights.
Old Equipment on Demanding Duty
The crash of a "Bear" on Tuesday marks the second loss of a Tu-95 flying out of Russia's Ukrainka bomber base in the Far East because of an engine failure, pointing to a common theme — poor maintenance for the aging airplanes and their engines.
Russia is working to modernize the aircraft, but is currently only able to produce around 10 new engines a year for over 60 of the massive four-engine aircraft.
The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment on the causes for the recent crashes.
It is hard to estimate the cost of a single "Bear" bomber, since the planes first entered service with the Soviet air force in 1956 and production ended in 1994. They are capable of carrying nuclear bombs and nuclear cruise missiles.
Vadim Lukashevich, a Russian aerospace expert formerly affiliated with the Skolkovo Innovation Center, told The Moscow Times that the string of accidents reflects accumulating problems in Russia's air force that have been exacerbated by the rate of flying amid the Ukraine crisis.
According to Lukashevich, these problems are "poor or irregular maintenance of aircraft, low flight hours [racked up] by flying crews and maintenance personnel, low level of training for airmen, and logistics problems."
IHS's Bobbi said: "Increasing [the operational] tempo has most definitely contributed to the number of crashes. What does increased tempo mean? More sorties and hours, and the more sorties and hours you fly an aircraft, the more likelihood of an accident."
This basic law has been amplified by the poor reliability of Russian aircraft, Bobbi stressed. The planes are meant to be used and disposed of, then replaced by newer aircraft — a quintessentially Soviet means of defense procurement.
In the case of the Tu-95s, old aircraft do not necessarily mean higher accident rates. The design is fundamentally sound, having served for years without major problems. The U.S. also flies bombers designed in the 1950s, such as the famous B-52 strategic bomber.
"Until Russia has a Western-style aircraft design, development and production system, they will always have a higher accident rate," he concluded.
Read the whole story
· · · ·
Next Page of Stories
Loading...
Page 5
The Pentagon exerted key influence over one major sticking point in the final hours of the nuclear negotiations with Iran, according to current and former U.S. officials and diplomats: when to relax the international embargo on advanced military weapons to the Islamic Republic.
As the talks entered the final stages, U.S. negotiators were under enormous pressure — from Russia and China, as well as some European allies — to immediately lift the United Nations embargo that was put in place in 2010 as punishment for Iran’s nuclear weapons development, they said. Iranian diplomats, meanwhile, were insisting on immediate relief in exchange for forgoing the nation’s nuclear ambitions.
Story Continued Below
But while economic sanctions will be lifted and billions of dollars in assets unfrozen under the deal reached Tuesday, the restrictions on conventional arms sales will remain in place for five years — and for ballistic missile technologies, which worry the U.S. military commanders the most, for eight years.
That came as a surprise to many. And it was seen as a major win for the U.S. military establishment, which had argued both publicly and behind the scenes that allowing Iran to rearm quickly — before any confidence could be built that it was living up to the terms of the nuclear pact — was a dangerous prospect given Tehran’s recent record of destabilizing military behavior in the region.
“I expected to see something short term and not very strong,” said Thomas Pickering, who has served as ambassador to the United Nations, Russia, India, Israel and Jordan and remains a close adviser to the State Department. “Five and eight years are better than zero. For the rest of the world the pressure was for zero.”
In the final days of the talks, the U.S. military’s point of view was made clear to U.S. and international negotiators, both in public and through closed-door meetings and briefings, POLITICO has learned.
Just days before the deal was inked in Vienna, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey told a Senate committee that “we should under no circumstances relieve pressure on Iran relative to ballistic missile capabilities and arms trafficking.” His boss, Defense Secretary Ash Carter, similarly told the Senate Armed Services Committee that “we want them to continue to be isolated as a military and limited in terms of the kinds of equipment and material they are able to procure.”
Referring to Iran’s efforts to build long-range missiles, Carter added: “The reason that we want to stop Iran from having an ICBM program is that ‘I’ in ICBM stands for intercontinental, which means having the capability of flying from Iran to the United States.”
The breathing room on the issue could help defuse at least some of the concerns about the overall pact raised by many Republicans in Congress and some Democrats who fear an emboldened Iran, which remains a major supporter of terrorist groups across the Middle East and is fomenting the civil wars in both Syria and Yemen.
The Pentagon’s forceful position, which was out of character during months of negotiation in which it mostly remained silent on the details, was matched by calls in Congress on the eve of the deal not to let Iran rebuild militarily.
“If you lift the arms embargo, not only do they get more resources and money to support terrorism, but then there would not be an arms embargo and they would have more opportunity to purchase arms from countries like Russia,” Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, told reporters Monday. “As the largest state sponsor of terrorism, it would be irresponsible.”
“Carter and Dempsey were very clear last week in the Senate Armed Services Committee for good reason,” she added.
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) expressed similar concerns about the short-term implications of an Iran able to purchase arms from Russia or China.
“The last thing we need to do is give Iran the ability to have the wherewithal to have arms going throughout the region,” he said. “What is lost here is that if we lift the arms embargo, then Russians freely can sell the S-300 to them.”
The Pentagon has been extremely vocal about the potential for Iran to advance its ballistic missile program and procure conventional arms such as as fighter aircraft and anti-missile systems from Russia that it fears could upend the balance of power in the region.
In April, it criticized the announcement by Russia that it was taking steps to sell Iran the S-300 surface-to-air missile system.
Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Armed Services panel, remained unbowed by the news that any relaxing of the international arms embargo would not go into effect for years — and only if Iran is living up to its end of the bargain.
“The result, I fear, is that this agreement will strengthen Iran’s ability to acquire conventional weapons and ballistic missiles, while retaining an industrial scale nuclear program, without any basic change to its malign activities in the Middle East,” the Arizona Republican said in a statement Tuesday.
But a number of close observers said the language in the agreement dealing with the arms embargo will go a long way to keep Iran’s military ambitions in check — at least for now. And it will help ensure that Saudi Arabia, Israel and other U.S. allies in the region that are buying American arms in record numbers maintain a significant edge.
“We ought to be able to judge Iran’s behavior in the region and beyond and if there are reasons to put back on the [arms] embargo,” Pickering said.
“I am surprised the Iranians agreed to it,” said Ben Moores, a defense analyst at IHS Janes, an international security consulting firm in Britain.
Moores recently completed a study of what it would take Iran, which is widely viewed as having a relatively weak military, to rebuild its arsenal after years of both U.N. sanctions and efforts by the U.S. and its allies to deprive the regime of advanced technologies as punishment for supporting terrorist groups like the Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas.
“Iran, in total weapons procurement last year, spent $550 million,” he said. “If you look at Saudi Arabia’s defense imports, they were $7 billion last year. UAE imported $4 billion. Oman was $1 billion, which is twice as much as the Iranian total.”
“The Iranian military capability is very weak,” Moores added. “They have no real air force. Their navy is weak, relatively speaking. Their ground forces lack command and control and communications capability.”
In his view, even the ballistic missile program is “inflated.”
He estimates it would cost Tehran $40 billion for a military “refresh.”
But the short-term nature of the agreement is likely to mean more arms sales to U.S. allies in the region as a hedge.
“If there is an arms race, it will be one-sided,” said William Hartung, an expert on the international arms trade at the Center for International Policy in Washington. “The Saudis and the Israelis will be increasing their margins” vis-a-vis the Iranian military.
“The Iranians are just patching up stuff that they got under the shah, some from during the Iran-Iraq war,” according to Hartung. “It is why they have pursued this asymmetric strategy of arming Hezbollah and Hamas.”
Read the whole story
· · · · ·
- Get link
- Other Apps
Comments
Post a Comment