Iran and Russia announced yesterday that they would expand military co-operation despite US concerns over Moscow's decision to cancel an agreement not to sell conventional weapons to Tehran.
"We've just opened a new chapter in our relations, marked by the reopening of military co-operation between Moscow and Tehran," the Russian Defence Minister, Marshal Igor Sergeyev, said in Tehran. He said the two nations agreed to "develop their military co-operation in all fields", including the future training of Iranian officers in Russian military schools.
Iran and Russia will also work together in the domains of politics, science and technology, said Marshal Sergeyev, making the first Tehran visit by a Moscow defence minister since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution.
Marshal Sergeyev held the press conference with his Iranian counterpart, Rear-Admiral Ali Shamkhani, who said the two nations had "the same approach" on security questions including the eastward expansion of NATO and "Israel's presence in the Caucusus".
President Mohammad Khatami of Iran said on Wednesday that Moscow's decision to renounce the 1995 arms sales pact was "a sign of courage and Russian independence, and a decision based on its own interests".
Moscow and New Delhi yesterday signed a contract for the licensed production in India of Sukhoi-30 multi-role combat jets worth more than $3 billion, a Russian military source in Moscow said.
The deal, signed in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, is "the largest contract in the history of Russian-Indian military co-operation and one of the biggest armaments contracts ever [for Russia]", the Russian source added.
Under the agreement, 140 Sukhoi-30 jets will be manufactured under licence in India over a 17-year period.
Meanwhile, a Russian-launched Cyclone-3 rocket which disappeared shortly after its launch late on Wednesday carrying six satellites exploded in the atmosphere, according to Russian space officials quoted by ITAR-TASS.
Officials from the Plesetsk military cosmodrome told the news agency that the rocket, one of whose engines malfunctioned, had disintegrated above the east Siberian sea in the northernmost part of Russia's Far East.
Space officials earlier said it had crashed somewhere in the vicinity of the Wrangel island near the Arctic Circle, where some 150 people live.