The Iranian Government have been quick to redact any indication that they would be prepared to curb their ballistic missile research or arsenal as part of any removal of sanctions. The issue arose when Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif gave a somewhat open to interpretation interview to NBC News.
This included the statement “room for negotiation is wide open” once the US removed its punishing sanctions. When asked about missiles he indicated that if the US wanted to discuss the programme “they need, first, to stop selling all these weapons, including missiles, to our region”. Obviously, these statements are pretty woolly but do raise a couple of interesting points, especially given the revelations regarding Donald Trump’s rationale for abandoning the 2015 Nuclear agreement in the first place.
Iran’s Ballistic Missile stock is a bugbear for the US
Image: Alexyz3d/Shutterstock
The first is that although the US has a foreign policy objective of limiting the proliferation of Missiles in the Middle East – it seems to be turning a blind eye to its allies’ actions, with both Israel & Saudi Arabia having substantial arrays. Surely if the US is seeking to meet this foreign policy objective it would be unilateral and not aimed at one country in isolation.
Secondly, the vast majority of Iran’s Missile arsenal is short-distance tactical ones such as the Shab-1 with a working range of around 300km. More useful to defend against an invasion than for offence. They do have some longer-range ones which could easily hit Saudi Arabia and if fired from close to the border of Israel, they are never ever going to be a threat to the US directly. The only main threat to the US military could come from the anti-ship missile programme which is becoming quite sophisticated, but would again be a defensive weapon against US ships in the Gulf.
Missile Proliferation
If ending Missile proliferation in the Middle East was the main goal then seeking unilateral strategic talks regarding them would be the way forward. However, if you have a more nefarious foreign policy objective such as getting directly involved in the fighting in Syria or heaven forbid considering an attack on Iran then limiting their missiles while allowing your allies to keep theirs makes more sense.
Conspiracy theory – probably but then again who would have believed Donald Trump would have pulled out of the 2015 Nuclear Agreement just to spite his predecessor – as alleged by former UK ambassador to America Sir Kim Darroch.
Sadly the path that Iran & the US seem keen to tread may tend up testing the effectiveness of these missiles.
