Interesting - Russia decides not to send promised game changing S-300 air defense system to Iran in compliance with present sanctions regime, or so they say. Seems odd if not questionable that after several years of playing chicken with this issue, keeping pretty much everybody wondering what their real intentions were and if there was a hidden strategy at work - seems dubious to me they just suddenly wake up convinced of what the right thing to do is. But what then? They trying to encourage a strike by Israel to drive up oil prices? Or is it really just a practical matter of them deciding that they'd have more to lose than gain by completing the sale?
Of further interest now will be waiting to see if China steps in to fill the void - their missile defense batteries are based on [stolen from] the Russian system so would probably prove an able replacement - but how would China view the long term strategic implications of such a move? They already are the most important enabler of Iran viz the nuke standoff - but the machinations of that game are fairly easily covered, buried behind rhetorical obscurantism - delivering a missile system would be a much more overt inserting of themselves into the political fun-house of the Middle East and could potentially be interpreted as an open challenge to America's dominance in the region.
