MOSCOW (Washington Post) -- The Iranian ambassador in Moscow says Russia has assured Iran that it still intends to deliver long-range air-defense missiles.

Russian news agencies cite Seyyed Mahmoud-Reza Sajjadi as saying on Thursday “our Russian colleagues have assured us that they will meet their obligations.”
Russia signed a 2007 contract to sell the S-300 missile complex, but so far has not delivered.
Technical issues to blame for delay
The ambassador said the delay in delivering S-300 air defense systems has been due to technical reasons.
Several technical issues have occurred while implementing the contract, the diplomat said.
The latest version of the S-300 series is the S-300PMU2 Favorit, which has a range of up to 195 km and can intercept aircraft and ballistic missiles at altitudes from 10 meters to 27 km.
It is considered one of the world's most effective all-altitude regional air defense systems, comparable in performance to the U.S. MIM-104 Patriot systems.
According to a Jan. 28 report from the Russian news agency Interfax – translated by BBC Worldwide Monitoring – Russia’s state-owned arms trading company Rosoboronexport will continue selling weapons to Iran because there is no international prohibition against it.
“There are no international sanctions against Iran,” Anatoliy Isaykin, the company’s director-general said. “Therefore there are formally no bans against supplying any kind of arms to Iran.”
“Iran has remained our partner for a long period of time,” Isaykin said. “There has not been a single instance of the commitments outlined in (arms) contracts being breached (by Iran).”
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Russia’s S-300 long-range air-defense missile
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