Iraq-Russia Signs First Major Weapons Deal Post-Saddam: Reports

The Iraqi government is set to purchase more than $4.2 billion in weapons from Russia in what would be the first major arms deal between the two countries since the fall of Saddam Hussein, reported Reuters and Bloomberg News on Tuesday.

The Iraqi government is set to purchase more than $4.2 billion in weapons from Russia in what would be the first major arms deal between the two countries since the fall of Saddam Hussein, reported Reuters and Bloomberg News on Tuesday.

According to Bloomberg, Russian weapon manufacturers lost around $8 billion worth of contracts in 2003, after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq saw the end of Saddam Hussein, who was one of Moscow’s biggest weapons customers.

Russian officials also told Reuters that their country had lost another $4 billion in arms deals with Libya following the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, and the future of Russian sales to Syria was still uncertain because of the conflict there.

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As such the deal with Iraq is believed to be a major coup for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had vocally opposed the 2003 invasion but has since struggled to regain the nation’s past share of Iraq’s energy, arms sales and infrastructure markets.

[quote]”After the fall of Saddam Hussein, it looked like the country was lost forever” as a Russian arms customer, said Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Russian security and defence think tank CAST, to Reuters. “This is absolutely sensational,” he added.[/quote]

Konstantin Makiyenko, deputy head of the Moscow-based Center for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, noted that the deals would comprise about one-third of the total Russian arms contracts signed this year, maintaining Russia’s position as the world’s second-biggest arms seller after the U.S..

“We knew that there were plans to sign deals but the fact that they are already signed is a big surprise,” Makiyenko told Bloomberg.

According to an e- mailed government fact sheet, the new Russia contracts were signed following trips by Iraqi military experts to Russia in April and July-August. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is also in Russia this week and plans to meet both Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev tomorrow.

[quote]“Iraq is sending a clear signal to the U.S. that it can conduct an independent policy,” said Alexei Malashenko, a Middle East analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “The message is: ’We can sign contracts with Russia if we like.”[/quote]

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On Tuesday, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland however dismissed claims that the Iraq-Russia deals would diminish the U.S.’s military relationship with Iraq, which she claimed to be still “very broad and very deep.”

[quote]”Iraq overall has initiated some 467 foreign military sales cases with the United States. If all of these go forward, it will be worth over $12.3 billion,” Nuland said. “So obviously our own military support relationship with Iraq is very broad and very deep.”[/quote]

CAST’s Ruslan Pukhov also speculated that the U.S. may have tacitly supported the deals in order to appease Russia, which had to scrap a deal to sell air-defence systems to Iran citing U.N. sanctions over Tehran’s nuclear programme.