Former members of the Russian military have been secretly helping Iran obtain the technology needed to make missiles capable of hitting European capitals, a British newspaper claimed yesterday.
Citing anonymous "Western intelligence officials," the Sunday Telegraph said the Russians were go-betweens as part of a multi-million-pound deal they negotiated between Iran and North Korea in 2003.
"It has enabled Teheran to receive regular clandestine shipments of top secret missile technology, believed to be channelled through Russia," the newspaper reported in a front-page article.
A top Kremlin-connected Russian legislator denied the reports. Konstantin Kosachyov, chairman of the international affairs committee of the lower house of parliament, called on Russian government agencies to quickly respond to the Sunday Telegraph and "exclude the spiraling of speculation," the Interfax news agency reported.
"But even now I have no doubts about our answer: Russia could not and, of course, did not, cooperate either with Iran or North Korea."
The allegations came after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice feuded openly with her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov over Iran's nuclear program while on a brief trip to Moscow on Saturday.
The article also emerged as Rice prepared to meet British Prime Minister Tony Blair in London later yesterday.
According to the Telegraph, Iran would be able to use its new technology to build a missile with a range of 3,500km.
"It is designed to carry a [1-tonne] payload, sufficient for a basic nuclear device," the newspaper said.
It quoted a senior US official as saying Iran's program was "sophisticated and getting larger and more accurate. They have had very much in mind the payload needed to carry a nuclear weapon.
"I think [Russian President Vladimir] Putin knows what the Iranians are doing."
Russian analysts were divided over the possibility that Moscow had aided Tehran in its alleged quest to develop such long-range missiles.
"Without the president's permission no one could do it," Georgy Mirsky, an Academy of Sciences researcher, told Ekho Moskvy radio.
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
MORE RESPONSIBILITY: Draftees would be expected to fight alongside professional soldiers, likely requiring the transformation of some training brigades into combat units The armed forces are to start incorporating new conscripts into combined arms brigades this year to enhance combat readiness, the Executive Yuan’s latest policy report said. The new policy would affect Taiwanese men entering the military for their compulsory service, which was extended to one year under reforms by then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in 2022. The conscripts would be trained to operate machine guns, uncrewed aerial vehicles, anti-tank guided missile launchers and Stinger air defense systems, the report said, adding that the basic training would be lengthened to eight weeks. After basic training, conscripts would be sorted into infantry battalions that would take
GROWING AMBITIONS: The scale and tempo of the operations show that the Strait has become the core theater for China to expand its security interests, the report said Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan have surged nearly 15-fold over the past five years, according to a report released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of China Affairs. Sorties in the Taiwan Strait were previously irregular, totaling 380 in 2020, but have since evolved into routine operations, the report showed. “This demonstrates that the Taiwan Strait has become both the starting point and testing ground for Beijing’s expansionist ambitions,” it said. Driven by military expansionism, China is systematically pursuing actions aimed at altering the regional “status quo,” the department said, adding that Taiwan represents the most critical link in China’s
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
RSS