After getting stiffed on the sale of a powerful Russian anti-aircraft missile, an Iranian lawmaker is warning that the Mullahs could see the Ivans in court.
Last month, Russia abruptly canceled a long-planned $800 million deal to sell Iran its S-300 missile, a 200-kilometer-traveling weapon that western air forces fear. Iran wants the S-300 in order to make the U.S. or Israel think long and hard before launching air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. So maybe it's not surprising that some Iranians don't want to take nyet for an answer.
Iran's Fars news agency reports that Hossein Ebrahim, the deputy leader of the parliamentary national-security panel, claims that Iran can pursue a case against Russia for breach of contract in some unspecified court. Russia "has acted in contravention of the contract concluded between Tehran and Moscow," Ebrahim told Fars. (Hat tip: Ares' Robert Wall.) The panel's chairman, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, issued a similar legal threat last week.
But the Russians aren't exactly lawyering up. Moscow claims that it voided the deal because of new United Nations Security Council sanctions on weapons shipments to Iran, so it's freed of its obligations to sell the mullahs the S-300. Pravda all but laughs at Iran -- which it says is in "convulsions" over the cancellation -- and essentially dares Iran to collect its minimal compensatory damages.
"According to the existing practice, the party at fault is to pay 10 percent of the transaction value to the customer," the paper dryly calculates. "In this case, the maximum that Russia could lose is $80 million. The amount is clearly small."
But it's not like Iran has better options than to hire a crack legal team -- at least not until it figures out how to send its flying boats after the Russian navy.
Photo: Novosti
See Also:
