All Blog Posts from World Watch

Saudi Arabia is looking to purchase billions of dollars in weapons from Russia in an effort to get the Kremlin to scrap plans to sell surface-to-missile Iran, according to a Financial Times story this week.

But official Russian sources have not confirmed the Kremlin's willingness to agree to such a deal, reports CBS News' Alexei Kuxnetsov. In fact, even analysts with knowledge of the Kremlin’s policies sounded rather skeptical.

Back in 2007, Iran announced plans to acquire Russia's S-300 weapons system for upwards of $1 billion. Since then, Russia has been facing pressure from the United States not to go through with the sale.

According to the Financial Times, Saudi Arabia's offer to buy the latest version of the system, the S-400 – akin to the U.S. Patriot missile defense system – for $2 billion is the latest attempt to get Moscow to back out of its deal with Tehran.

“The U.S. pressure is the stick, and a huge Saudi arms package is the carrot,” Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies in Moscow, told the Times.

Pukhov said the deal may actually go as high as $7 billion.

Alexander Khramchikhin, a senior analyst with the Institute for Political and Military Analysis in Moscow, told Kuznetsov that while a deal between Russia and Saudi Arabia could be theoretically possible, a "number of stumbling blocks" make its probability near zero.

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As the international community feared, North Korea has launched a long-range missile over Japan. As a result, Japan immediately called for emergency U.N. Security Council consultations on Sunday to deal with the launch, to condemn North Korea, and to possibly strengthen sanctions on Pyongyang.

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President Obama sent a secret letter to his Russian counterpart offering to drop U.S. missile defense plans for installations in Eastern Europe in exchange for Russia convincing Iran to stop any long-range or nuclear weapons development, according to a report in the New York Times.

The Times' report, which cited "American officials" speaking to the newspaper on Monday, said the letter was hand-delivered to President Dmitry Medvedev (at left) by Obama administration officials in Moscow last week.

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A very important test launch of the naval-based Bulava intercontinental missile failed Monday night. The test was to become the final exam before the missile would have been commissioned by the Russian Navy. Regrettably for the military, the third stage of the missile misfired and the missile self-destructed. The failure calls into question the future of one of the newest and advanced Russian ICBMs – Bulava has had quite a long record of faulty launches which has made it impossible to put it into service even despite the support of such Russian political heavyweights as vice premier and former defense minister Sergei Ivanov. More tests will be held in 2009.

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Russia may drop a number of modernization programs for its strategic nuclear forces if the Obama administration revises plans to go ahead with the missile defense shield in Central Europe, Colonel-General Nikolay Solovtsov, Commander of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces, said Friday.

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