Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

*** Russia to ‘cut the corner’ to catch up with West on arms.  Russia’s deputy prime minister, and former representative to Nato, Dmitriy Rogozin, said that Russia must stop buying foreign arms, only doing so as an exception.  Speaking in Moscow on 11 January he said: “If we want to catch up with the West technologically in this business, we should not so much follow the beaten track as find an opportunity to ‘cut the corner’ and gain superiority in priority areas for us.”

Rogozin did not elaborate on what he meant by ‘cutting the corner’, but perhaps the explanation was in remarks he made a few days later, on 13 January, in Brussels.  He said: “Russia is not interested in buying ready-made models of weapons but it is interested in cooperation with Western countries, particularly European countries, in terms of research into prospective common areas...”

*** Russia still opposing West on Iran.  On 12 January, Russian Security Council secretary Nikolay Patrushev said that there was no proof that Tehran is trying to create nuclear weapons.  He said: “We have been hearing for many years that the Iranians are going to create a nuclear bomb any day now.  No-one has to this day proved the existence of a military component in Tehran’s nuclear programme.”  The day before, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov warned that a military operation against Iran by the US and Israel would be “a very grave mistake and a severe blunder on the part of the West”.  He also said that Russia is opposed to oil sanctions against Iran.

Separately, India has also said that it is opposed to new sanctions against Iran.  On 17 January, Indian Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai said: “We have accepted sanctions which are made by the United Nations.  Other sanctions do not apply to individual countries.  We don’t accept that position and we continue to buy oil from Iran.”

*** Israel’s nuclear doctrine “legal”.  Subscribers will be familiar with our contention that Israel’s real problem with a nuclear-armed Iran is less that it might launch a nuclear first-strike against Israel but that the existence of an Iranian nuclear deterrent would prevent Israel from using its own nuclear weapons to defeat an overwhelming conventional attack. 

This point is still insufficiently understood, and of course never admitted openly by Israel.  Nevertheless, it was interesting to see a commentary in The Jerusalem Post on 17 January, written by US academic Louis Rene Beres, which went as far as to remind readers that an Advisory Opinion from the International Court of Justice in 1996 “extends...lawful authority to the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons in certain residual or last-resort circumstances”.