Azernews.Az

By Bloomberg

Agreement has largely been reached on resolving the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, as he defended a decision to end a ban on delivering missile-defense systems to the Islamic Republic.

Iran is “demonstrating great flexibility and willingness to compromise on the Iranian nuclear program,” and only technical details remain to be resolved by June, Putin said during his live annual call-in program in Moscow.

Russia chose to freeze a 2007 contract to sell the S-300 anti-missile systems to Iran in 2010 even though the deal wasn’t covered by United Nations sanctions over the nuclear program, he said. “We see no reason to maintain the ban unilaterally,” Putin said.

Putin ended an embargo on delivery of the S-300 on Monday, prompting objections from the U.S. and Israel. Iran welcomed the decision and said it expected to take delivery of the missile systems before the end of the year.

Iran and representatives of Russia, the U.S., China, France, Germany and the U.K. said April 2 that they’d negotiated a political framework in a step toward ensuring the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program is restricted to civilian development and can’t be used to build a bomb. The deadline for reaching a final agreement has been set at June 30. Iran denies it’s seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

Israel is concerned about delivery of the S-300, Putin said. Russia considers the geopolitical situation in decisions on arms sales and canceled one contract to supply S-300s to another country in the region, returning a $400 million deposit, he said, without identifying that state.

The U.S. sends more arms to the Middle East than Russia, Putin said. Delivery of the S-300s to Iran will be a constraining factor in light of the conflict in Yemen, he said.