Well, the Israeli media did not fail to notice the mysterious disappearance of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and after extensive investigation came to the conclusion that he had secretly flown to Moscow to voice concern over the sale of Russian S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems to Iran, among other highly sensitive security issues.According to various media accounts, people familiar with Netanyahu's movements said the plane belonged to Yossi Meiman, head of the Merhav group, a conglomerate with media and energy interests primarily located in the former Soviet republics. Netanyahu decided not to use an official plane, instead leasing the plane from Merhav.
Netanyahu's secret trip to Moscow over the S-300 systems is in fact just the latest appeal from Israel to Russia to reconsider its planned sale and delivery of the systems. For instance, Israel's President Shimon Perez took up the matter with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last month in Sochi. Before Perez, Israel had sent senior Defense Ministry envoy Amos Gilad to Moscow last December to try to persuade Russia to review its sale of S-300 systems to Iran, the contract of sale for which Russia had concluded back in 2007. During his two-day visit, Gilad met with Russia's chief of staff and head of intelligence as well as senior defense officials and diplomats, making Israel's case heard at the very top.
On top these secret visits, a mysterious hijacking last month of a cargo ship, the Arctic Sea, that was later intercepted by the Russian navy off Cape Verde along the African coast, thousands of miles from the Algerian port where it was supposed to have delivered its cargo of Finnish timber, fueled speculation that the ship's real cargo was indeed S-300s bound for the Middle East. With regard to this, many leading papers, including Israeli papers, suggested that the Israeli secret service, Mossad, had tipped off the Russians about the real cargo and thereby prevented its delivery.
In light of this incident, the aforementioned high-level visits made by Israeli officials -- including the most recent visit by Netanyahu -- and other possible contacts that we may not know about, it is quite safe and reasonable to say that Israel is seriously concerned about the possible delivery of S-300 systems to Iran, because they could render any possible air strikes by the US and Israel against targets in Iran extremely dangerous if not impossible.
The systems are considered among the most sophisticated anti-aircraft systems in the world. The S-300 includes a mobile missile launcher that fires at the rate of one missile every 3-5 seconds. The missiles can hit aircraft at a maximum height of about 30 kilometers and at a distance of 150 kilometers.
The S-300s are also capable of destroying ballistic missile targets and are regarded as one of the most potent anti-aircraft missile systems currently deployed in the world. Their special radars have the ability to simultaneously track up to 100 targets while engaging up to 12. Their deployment time is only five minutes. The S-300 missiles are sealed rounds and require no maintenance over their lifetime. An evolved version of the S-300 system is the S-400 (NATO reporting name SA-21), which entered service in 2004 in Russia. Although none of the S-300 versions have ever fired a missile in a real conflict, it is considered a very capable anti-aircraft system by all experts.
Therefore, given the efficiency of the system, Israel and the US have strong military reasons to fear the Russian S-300s. As I said in an article about the S-300s last year, a good weapon like the S-300 can change many things -- like the outcome of an air operation against Iranian targets, either by the US, by Israel or a joint operation. That is why S-300s are very important and that is why Iran wants to have them, while the US and Israel have been trying to prevent Russia from delivering them to Iran. What happens in the future as regards the S-300s will determine the course of any final military action the US and Israel might adopt toward Iran.
The S-300s are very important, indeed.
