Iran Weapons Linked to Russia
By Mike Eckel
The Associated Press The high-speed torpedoes tested by Iran this week were likely Russian-built weapons and may have been acquired from China or Kyrgyzstan, military analysts said Tuesday, as tension continued to rise over Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Tehran's latest saber-rattling, coming during war games in the Persian Gulf that Iran's military said are aimed at preparing defenses against the United States, also prompted criticism from Moscow, which is showing increasing impatience with Iranian policies.
General Mohammad Ebrahim Dehghani of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards said Monday that the military had tested a new, Iranian-made torpedo that was more powerful and capable of going deeper than others in its arsenal.
Dehghani gave no technical details of the torpedo, which was tested in the Straits of Hormuz, the entrance to the gulf and a vital corridor for oil supplies.
Iranian officials earlier announced the successful test of a torpedo called Hoot, or whale, which they said moved at up to 360 kilometers per hour and on Tuesday officials announced the successful test of a new medium-range, radar-avoiding missile.
Military analysts in Moscow said Tuesday that it was unlikely that the torpedoes were Iranian-built, and judging by the fuzzy television pictures, said they appeared very similar to the Russian-made VA-111 Shkval, the world's fastest known underwater missile.
Ruslan Pukhov, an expert with the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, noted that the Shkval technology was too sophisticated to clone or for the Iranians to produce themselves. "Hypothetically, they could get access to the Shkval technology, but if so, I don't think they got it through Russian channels," he said.
Pukhov noted that Kyrgyzstan once had a Soviet top-secret torpedo and naval testing center located on a remote mountain lake, Issyk-Kul. He said in the mid-1990s, in the turmoil following the Soviet breakup, Kyrgyz authorities had sold Shkvals to the Chinese, a major importer of Iranian oil.
While some experts doubted Iran had the means to build such weaponry, others said it would be easy to acquire old specimens -- sunken torpedoes used in tests in Issyk-Kul, for example -- and develop the technology with the help of Russian scientists who had gone to Iran in search of well-paying jobs.
"[Iran's] technology is developing very fast, they could get enough brains and the funds to build them on their own," said Vadim Kozyulin, an arms expert at the PIR Center, an independent Moscow arms proliferation think tank.
Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent analyst, noted that Iran in the 1990s had acquired several Russian Kilo-class attack submarines that could be used for firing Shkvals. But he said the torpedoes have too short a range to be militarily significant.
Kanybek Tabaldiyev, a senior official with a Kyrgyz company that manufactures torpedoes and other military hardware and conducts tests at Issyk-Kul, denied that his company had transferred any sophisticated technology to Iran. He said, however, that it was possible weaponry had been acquired through other means.
"We do not work with the Iranians," said Tabaldiyev, chairman of the board of directors of TNK Dastan. "But it's impossible to rule out anything since intelligence agencies work everywhere."
A senior Kremlin-allied lawmaker, meanwhile, criticized the Iranian weapons tests.
Such actions "are counterproductive and do not create the necessary atmosphere of trust at the consultations and negotiations around the Iranian nuclear program," Konstantin Kosachyov, the chairman of the State Duma's International Affairs Committee, was quoted as saying by Itar-Tass
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2006/04/05/251.html
