03/01/2012 01:50
By
REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin
Russia provided Israel
security codes to access Iran’s
Tor- M1 air-defense systems in exchange for an Israeli handover of codes to
“hack” drones sold to Georgia,
according to a leaked email from a private American intelligence company.An employee for Stratfor wrote the report, dated February 2009, and cited a “Mexican source,” described as a former police officer and a current military analyst.
“I inquired more about the compromised Israeli UAVs. What he explained was that Israel and Russia made a swap – Israel gave Russia the ‘data link’ code for those specific UAVs; in return, Russia gave Israel the codes for Iran’s Tor-M1s,” the email said.
The Tor-M1 defense system is made up of launch vehicles carrying batteries of surface-to- air missiles. It can detect and track up to 48 targets in the air, and can operate in an “intensive aerial jamming environment,” according to the Defense Update website.
Iran purchased 29 systems from Russia in 2005, the website said.
The Mexican source said he did not think Moscow would sell the advanced S-300 aerial defense system to Iran, the report continued, adding that Israel and Turkey had been “collaborating very closely” on studying the platform.
“He explained how about 8 years ago when Russia sold S- 300s to Greece to base in Crete (which were supposed to protect Cyprus), Russia delivered those with a carrier so that Turkey wouldn’t try to sink them. (things got a bit noisy so i may have misheard some of this), [sic]” the email said.
“The gist of what he said is that Turkey has been cracking the S-300 since the Crete sale and has been sharing intel on the S-300 with the Israelis to ensure that they retain an advantage over Iran should Iran get them from the Russians,” it added.
