Kremlin says sanctions against Iran unlikely

By Guy Faulconbridge

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Wednesday sanctions against Iran were highly unlikely in the near future, the latest signal that Russia is not yet ready to raise the heat on Tehran to allay Western fears over its nuclear program.

Iran is one of the few countries where the Kremlin still has considerable clout, making Russia a major player in big power efforts to force the Islamic Republic to be more open about its nuclear activities and to stop enriching uranium.

But Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has warned Western powers that they will gain nothing by trying to intimidate Tehran and Russian officials have refused to publicly back the United States in threatening tougher sanctions against Iran.

"Sanctions in relation to Iran are hardly possible in the near future," the Kremlin's top foreign policy aide, Sergei Prikhodko, was quoted as telling Russian reporters by Interfax news agency. Foreign reporters were not invited to the briefing.

When asked whether Russia would support further sanctions against Iran, Prikhodko quoted an answer given by Kremlin chief Dmitry Medvedev last month after talks with U.S. President Barack Obama in New York.

"Sanctions seldom lead to the required result but in some cases the use of sanctions is inevitable," Prikhodko said. "This formulation remains in force."

Russia's ties with Iran -- which include oil, nuclear and arms deals -- give it rare influence with the Islamic Republic's rulers.

The Obama administration is trying to enlist that influence to force Iran to negotiate properly with world powers about its nuclear program, which many Western nations and Israel believe is aimed at creating a nuclear weapon.

But Russia, a veto-wielding member of the United Nations Security Council, has always urged restraint and only supported previous sanctions against Iran after insisting on amendments softening the measures.

NO MISSILE DELIVERIES YET

Apart from sanctions, diplomats say Russia has two major levers with Iran: the Bushehr nuclear power station which Moscow says it will start up for Iran before the year end and a contract to supply S-300 air defense missile systems to Iran.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said on Wednesday that Russia has not so far supplied the missile systems to Iran.

"There have been no such deliveries to date," Ivanov, who oversees the defense sector, told reporters in the town of Fryazino, just outside Moscow.

Israel says the S-300 systems could be used by Tehran to defend Iranian nuclear facilities against potential air strikes. Any delivery of the S-300 to Iran would likely seriously raise tensions between Israel and Iran.

The truck-mounted S-300PMU1, known in the West as the SA-20, can shoot down cruise missiles and aircraft. It can fire at targets up to 150 km (90 miles) away and can travel at more than 2 km per second.

(Additional reporting by Denis Dyomkin in Fryazino, editing by Dmitry Solovyov and Elizabeth Fullerton)