American newspapers misrepresent Iranian missiles (Asia Times, Hong Kong)

A diplomatic telegram, sent last February, and published this week on WikiLeaks, gives a detailed description of how Russian experts on the Iranian ballistic missile program have rejected US speculations that Iran has missiles capable of reaching European capitals, or that Tehran is going to achieve similar potential.

In fact, the Russians questioned the very existence of the mysterious missiles, which, according to the US, were acquired by Iran from North Korea. But the readers of the two leading American newspapers have not learned anything about these key facts.

The New York Times and the Washington Post reported only that the United States believed that Iran had acquired such missiles - allegedly called BM-25 - from North Korea. Neither newspaper reported a Russian refutation of the American point of view on this issue or the lack of solid evidence of the existence of BM-25 by the United States.

The New York Times, which received diplomatic telegrams not from WikiLeaks, but from the British newspaper The Guardian (as reported by the Washington Post on Monday), did not publish the text of the telegram.

The New York Times article said that the newspaper decided not to publish the document "at the request of the Obama administration." This means that its readers could not compare the extremely distorted version of the document, described in the New York Times, with the original document, unless they went to the WikiLeaks website to independently find a telegram in question.

As a result, the key document, which was supposed to lead to the emergence of articles calling into question the basic idea of ​​the Obama administration’s strategy of creating a missile defense system in Europe, based on the declared Iranian missile threat, led instead to the emergence of articles supporting the current viewpoint about the Iranian threat.

The full report of the US State Department on the meeting of the joint threat assessment team in Washington 22 December 2009 of the year, available on WikiLeaks, demonstrates that an impressive collision has occurred on the issue of the mysterious BM-25 missiles.

The BM-25 is described as a ground-to-ground rocket based on the obsolete Soviet ballistic missile launched from submarines, known as P-27 or SS-N-6 (according to the US and NATO classification). It is believed that this rocket is capable of covering a distance of 2400-4000 kilometers, which means that most of Europe is within its range.

The published document says that the head of the American delegation at this meeting, the acting assistant secretary of state for international security and non-proliferation, Vann Van Dippen, said that the United States "believes" that Iran had acquired 19-like missiles from North Korea.

But the representative of the Russian Ministry of Defense rejected the published reports on such a rocket, saying that they "do not contain references to any reliable sources."

He noted that neither in North Korea nor in Iran had there ever been a test of such a rocket, and that the Russian government "does not know if anyone has seen this rocket at all." The Russians asked the American side for any evidence of the existence of such a rocket.

The US representatives did not claim that they have photographic or any other solid evidence of the existence of the rocket, but said that in North Korea the rocket was paraded through the streets of Pyongyang. The Russians replied that they had carefully studied the video of this parade and concluded that it depicted a completely different rocket.

The Russian representative said that there is no evidence that 19 of such missiles were sent to Iran in 2005, and that it would be impossible to hide such a transaction. The Russians also said that it’s hard to believe that Iran would have bought a missile system that did not undergo any tests.

The head of the American delegation, Van Dippen, cited one indirect evidence that Iran had worked on the “steering engines” for the BM-25. He said that photographs of welds and tanks of tanks at the second stage of the Iranian Safir space launch vehicle published on the Internet show that the ratio of oxidizer to rocket fuel does not coincide with the rocket fuel used previously in Shahab-3 rockets.

According to Van Dippen, this indicates that Saphir used the same system as the P-27 missiles. However, the Russians claimed that the rocket fuel used in Safir was not the same as that used in the P-27 missiles.

Even more important evidence from the launch of Safira, showing that Iran has no BM-25 missiles, was mentioned in an authoritative study of the Iranian missile program published by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) last May .

The study found that Iran did not use the main engine related to the proposed BM-25 rocket to force the Safir space launch vehicle.

The study says that if Iran really had a more powerful engine, such as the original Russian P-27 rocket, Safir could launch a much larger satellite into orbit. But in fact, “Saphir” “clearly had a low power” and was barely able to put an 27-kilogram satellite into Earth orbit, according to the IISS study.

The same study also indicates that the original P-27 rocket was designed to launch submarines from the launch tube, and that the road-mobile version of such a rocket requires major structural changes.

Another reason for doubt, indicated in the IISS study, is the fact that the fuel mixture for the P-27 rocket is not suitable for a rocket provided with ground vehicles, because "the oxidizer must be maintained within a narrow temperature range."

Van Dippen pointed to two other Iranian actions: using Shahab-3 technology with "grouped or multi-level engines" or developing a solid-fuel rocket with a more powerful engine.

However, the Russians expressed strong doubts in both versions, stating that they are skeptical about Iran’s allegations of the existence of missiles with a range of 2000 kilometers. They indicated that, so far, tests of Iranian missiles have not shown results above 1700 kilometers, and this result was achieved only due to a significant reduction in payload.

Van Dippen cited “modeling” studies that showed that Iran can achieve a greater range, and that adding 300 kilometers is “a slight technological excess.” However, the Russian delegation insisted that the additional flight distance could lead to the fact that various parts of the rocket would simply burn out, and the rocket itself would fall apart.

The head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Nazarov, deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council, said that, in Russia's opinion, any assessment of the Iranian missile program should be based not only on modeling, but also on "considerations of real technological obstacles facing Iran."

One of these obstacles mentioned by the Russians was the lack of “structural materials” necessary to create more range missiles that could threaten the United States or Russia. An example of such materials is high quality aluminum.

The Russians insisted that even assuming favorable conditions, Iran could start a program to develop ballistic missiles capable of reaching Central Europe or Moscow, not earlier than after the 2015 year.

However, the Russians denied that Iran has such intentions, arguing that its ballistic missile program continues to be directed toward "regional concerns," which means deterring an Israeli attack.

The US delegation never took up the issue of Iranian intentions - and this position is consistent with the dominant role that weapons specialists play in the work of the American intelligence community in assessing Iran, and their all-conquering potential orientation and the absence of any interest in intentions.

Michael Elleman, lead author of a study of the Iranian missile program prepared by IISS, told the Inter Press Service agency that the report on the US-Russian exchange of views underlines the difference in the approaches of the two countries to this issue. “The Russians talked about the most likely combination of outcomes,” said Elleman, “while the American side concentrated its attention and efforts on what might happen.”