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MOSCOW [MENL] — Russia expects a mild U.S. response to what could be a $1.5 billion arms deal between Moscow and Iran.
Russian officials and analysts said the Bush administration does not want to divert attention away from Washington’s efforts to form a coalition against terrorism. Moscow has supplied intelligence and other aid for the U.S.-led campaign against Saudi billionaire Osama Bin Laden.
Iran, the analysts said, has quietly turned into a normal state for the United States despite Teheran’s support of such Islamic insurgency groups as Hizbullah, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. They said Washington recognizes the importance of Iran in any U.S. offensive against neighboring Afghanistan.
“It seems to me that now, in the new context, the political and military-political context, we have to break the perception of Iran as a devil,” said Konstantin Makiyenko, deputy director of the Moscow-based Center for Strategic and Technological Analysis. “Because this perception was largely molded by the United States based on internal political considerations and I think that now we have to get away from this perception. Iran is a sufficiently normal state for the region.”
The United States failed to respond immediately to Tuesday’s announcement of a military cooperation agreement between Moscow and Teheran. The agreement is said to pave the way for Russian arms sales to Iran of $300 million annually over the next five years.
Officials and analysts said Iran will also be a partner of Russia in the U.S.-led attempt to overthrow the Taliban regime. They said Russia will sell weapons that will eventually end up in the hands of the northern-based Afghan opposition. The Iranian-Russian partnership, they said, will also seek to contain Turkey, a rival of both Moscow and Teheran.
“There are serious military-political partnerships, notably in the field of containing the Taliban movement, and military-political containment of Turkey,” Ivan Safranchuk, the Moscow representative of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information, said.
The analysts said the major source of aid to Bin Laden comes from the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and Pakistan. The leading sponsors of Bin Laden and Taliban, they said, are Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
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