Iran has been in a race against time to obtain advanced Russian-manufactured radar systems to challenge the United States-made F-35 fighter jets.
Russia and China have recently opposed a US attempt in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to extend an arms embargo on Iran which is due to expire in October.
The US argues that it can trigger the process - known as snapback - because a 2015 Security Council resolution that enshrines the nuclear deal still names it as a participant.
Thirteen council members expressed their opposition, arguing that Washington’s move is void given that it is using a process agreed under a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers that it quit two years ago.
Few days before triggering the process, Iranian Defense Minister Amir Hatami said upon his arrival in Moscow that talks with officials will mainly focus on cooperation in the fields of advanced military technology.
Russian sources have recently said that a Russian-made Rezonans-NE radar system, which Iran purchased to identify and track stealth aircraft and hypersonic targets, successfully spotted and tracked US F-35 fighters near the country’s borders during an aggravation of tensions in early 2020, following the death of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.
Rezonans-NE radar had been on round-the-clock combat duty in Iran for several years, TASS quoted deputy CEO of Rezonans Research Center Alexander Stuchilin.
“The radar’s personnel were transmitting information, including the routes of F-35 flights, in clear, thus confirming that it was reliably tracking the planes. For this reason, the opponent did not commit any irreparable actions that might have caused a big war,” Stuchilin said on the sidelines of the international military-technical forum Army-2020.
The Russian official’s statements contradict with doubts over the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC) ability to control the radar system.
This comes in light of its announcement that targeting the civilian passenger plane during its ballistic attack on Iraqi bases housing US forces was due to a radar error.
Iran retracted 72 hours later from the first official story, about the crash of a Ukrainian airliner, and the killing of 176 people on board.
In the first press conference following the incident, Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force, said his country’s air defense systems were put on the “highest level of readiness” and alerted to a possible cruise missile attack prior to the plane crash incident.
He added that the operator then identified what his air defense system had detected as an incoming cruise missile 19 kilometers away.
However, Tehran Military Prosecutor Gholam Abbas Torki said the shooting down of a Ukrainian airliner in Iran was due to human error.
“The portable system which fired the missile did not accurately determine the real north after rebooting, and this huge mistake caused the operator of the air defense system to see the plane on its radar as a target that is approaching Tehran from the northwestern region,” he said.
The Iranian operator was reported to have mistaken the Boeing jetliner for a cruise missile.
The Russian official’s defense of the effectiveness of the radar systems in Iran seems to be aimed at luring other countries to buy Russian systems, which are finding fierce competition with the Patriot system.
