International Business Times:
The economically crippling stranglehold that Western governments collectively imposed on Iran nearly four decades ago began to slowly loosen its grip this week, and the country has responded in part by dusting off its decades-old shopping list for advanced weaponry and other defense items it has been coveting but could not acquire. After agreeing to forfeit its nuclear enrichment program in exchange for the oppressive sanctions being lifted as part of the Iran nuclear deal, which supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei officially endorsedWednesday, Iran is apparently looking to make up for lost time from a military standpoint.
“Iran is really falling behind the conventional arms race in the Persian Gulf; and when you look at its Arab neighbors, they are spending tens of billions of dollars on modern American and Western military equipment,” Alireza Nader, a senior international policy analyst with a focus on Iran at the Rand Corporation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said.
The landmark agreement officially went into effect Sunday, and without a nuclear arsenal, the formerly alienated Middle East nation was prompted to take inventory of its ability to defend itself against perceived threats from regional neighbors such as Saudi Arabia as well as Israel, which has long considered Iran to be a terrorist state. Pushed by a combination of its own outdated military equipment and the formidable military buying power of its oil-rich Middle East rivals, analysts said Tehran is urgently plotting to upgrade and replace its own antiquated defense technology in favor of Russian- and Chinese-made military equipment by spending oil revenue that’s been trapped in an assortment of banks worldwide for the last three years…
