Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, vol. 52, no. 4, August–September 2010, pp. 121-130
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The combination of impressive and gradually growing missile capabilities with a suspected nuclear-weapons programme makes Iran a serious concern for the Middle East and beyond. Tehran’s intermediate-range missiles can reach targets within the Middle East, southeast and central Europe, the North Caucasus, parts of Russia and parts of Central Asia. While these missiles are probably quite inaccurate, if mated with nuclear warheads they could transform the geopolitical landscape.
In the worst-case scenario, Iran could establish direct or indirect control over and deny the West access to Middle Eastern oil. A more likely scenario is stalemate: by holding important targets at risk Iran could radically enhance the potential threat to oil exporters in the Gulf, who would be squeezed between Tehran and the West (first and foremost the United States). Washington’s ability to influence developments in the region, and its ability to fight international terrorism, would be sharply curtailed.
Increasingly, the same worries appear to be shared by Russia. Moscow’s support for progressively tougher UN sanctions demonstrates that the prospect of Iran emerging as a nuclear power with reach beyond its immediate vicinity is regarded as an unwelcome prospect. It is worth recalling that, even at the time of the greatest tension between the United States and Russia over missile defence, Iran’s launch in early 2008 of a missile capable of carrying a satellite into space met with Moscow’s immediate condemnation. ‘We do not approve of Iranian actions that are aimed at persistently demonstrating intentions to develop missile technology and to continue enriching uranium’, said Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov a few days after the event.1 While the Russian military continues to state that acquisition by Tehran of a strategic capability (that is, the ability to reach the United States) is still distant, and thus continues to oppose American proposals to create defences against it, Russian participation in a defence system intended to protect Europe and other regions is once again high on the US–Russian and NATO–Russian agendas. In short, Moscow has indicated that it might be prepared to accept and, under the right conditions, even join an ‘anti-Iranian’ common missile-defence system. But while there appear to be no impediments to Moscow agreeing to participate in a system that would protect Europe, or even the Middle East and the Gulf, Russian involvement in a larger-scale system capable of intercepting strategic missiles is hardly possible. Moscow would very likely renew its opposition and refuse to cooperate, as it did during the tenure of US President George W. Bush. Thus, at least in the near term, it would be necessary to consciously limit the scope and capability of any joint system.
If such limits could be agreed, however, there is already room for cooperation. Central to efforts to deny Iran the capability to threaten strikes againstvital targets in the Middle East and beyond is the ability to track missile launches. Such an ability is vital in two ways. Firstly, it can help monitor andmore accurately assess the characteristics of existing ...
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Nikolai Sokov is a Senior Research Associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. From 1987–92 he worked at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union and later Russia, and participated in the START I and START II negotiations as well as a number of summit and ministerial meetings.
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