On September 14, drones and cruise missiles believed to have been launched by Iran attacked key Saudi oil facilities. The inability of Saudi Arabia’s air defenses to prevent that attack raised serious questions about their overall effectiveness.
Russian President Vladimir Putin seized an opportunity to once again pitch the sale of S-400s to Riyadh.
“We are ready to help Saudi Arabia protect their people,” Putin said.
“They need to make clever decisions, as Iran did by buying our S-300, as [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan did by deciding to buy the most advanced S-400 air defence systems,” he added, amid grins and laughter from both Iran’s President Hasan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, who were attending a trilateral meeting on Syria hosted by Turkey.
“These kinds of systems are capable of defending any kind of infrastructure in Saudi Arabia from any kind of attack,” Putin claimed.
While some view the timing and circumstances of Putin’s remark as evidence he was in effect “trolling” US President Donald Trump, his offer is anything but inconsistent with Russia’s policy of offering and selling S-400s and S-300s to various countries in the wider region.
As Putin mentioned, Russia has already sold Turkey S-400s and Iran S-300s. It has also long been open to selling S-400s to both Saudi Arabia and its rival Qatar – which have been locked in a tense standoff since June 2017, when the former led an embargo against the latter.
Russia has supplied both Egypt and Syria with S-300s, giving both countries more advanced and longer range air defenses than they hitherto possessed.
While there are conflicting reports regarding Iraq’s interest in buying S-400s, Moscow would likely be open to selling Baghdad such systems as well, which would also greatly increase the effectiveness of Iraq’s limited air defenses.
Timur Akhmetov, an Ankara-based researcher for the Russian International Affairs Council, believes that Russia is using “these recent drone and missile strikes on Saudi Arabia to achieve several objectives”.
“First of all, it wants to advertise its weaponry,” he said.
“Secondly, it wants to send a signal to the region’s nations that there is an alternative in terms of arms suppliers.”
Akhmetov pointed out that Russia sells arms to both Azerbaijan and Armenia, which have been in conflict over the status of the Nagorno-Karabakh region since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
He believes that supplying arms to both sides “seems to be a kind of leverage by Moscow on both sides of the Karabakh conflict”.
More broadly, selling such expensive systems to a wide range of clients, many of which purchase primarily American and Western tech, could certainly give Russia a larger market for arms exports.
The US has made clear it will apply Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA)-related sanctions against any country that buys such advanced Russian weapon systems.
Turkey, for example, should be subject to these sanctions for its purchase of S-400s, but none have been applied yet by a highly reluctant Trump administration.
If Russia can successfully convince several states to risk incurring CAATSA sanctions, the US could find itself in a difficult position whereby it will have to seriously contemplate slapping sanctions on several of its clients.
This could simultaneously sour relations and result in these clients seeking to diversify their sources of military hardware.
This could then, in turn, give Russia a much more substantial market share in arms sales at Washington’s expense in the long-term.
Akhmetov, however, doesn’t believe that increasing its market share and directly challenging the US are Russia’s only objectives.
“Russia would like to contribute to enhanced air defense systems in the region, maybe hoping that once leaders in the region feel confident enough to withstand the challenge of air attacks by missiles or drones they will be more prone to stick to diplomacy and, ideally, dialogue,” he said.
“In other words, Putin’s proposal must be viewed as a part of attempts to stimulate a new regional security system, based not on a high potential of mutual destruction, but rather on improved defense, where offensive weapons are rendered less effective in driving regional political trends.”
