TEHRAN, March 4. /TASS/. Iran’s Air Defense conducted a successful test of the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system it has purchased from Russia in an exercise involving local experts, the Tasnim News Agency wrote on Saturday.
"In the drill, dubbed Damavand and attended by a number of high-ranking military commanders and officials, Iran’s Air Defense tested the Russian-made missile system to assess its performance against a broad range of aerial targets," the news agency wrote.
"Local servicemen employed the S-300 system to hit various aerial targets with a small cross-section, counter ballistic threats, and evaluate their capabilities in running the sophisticated system.
"The system was also used in simulated electronic warfare conditions to detect, track, intercept and detonate aerial targets with actual launch of missiles.
"When Iran took delivery of the missiles in July 2016, it became obvious that a revised contract between Tehran and Moscow was specifically on the purchase of S300-PMU2 model," Tasnim wrote. "In the same month, Iran’s Air Defense Commander Brigadier General Farzad Esmaili announced that S-300 would be fully brought into operation until end of the current Iranian year (March 20, 2017)."
Russia and Iran inked the contract in 2007, but it was suspended to 2010. In summer 2015, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin lifted off Iran the ban for receiving S-300, and in November of that year the contract came into force. In October, 2016, the federal service for military-technical cooperation reported Russia had completed supplies of the systems to Iran. Head of the state-run Rostec Corporation Sergey Chemezov said the contract’s value was about $1 billion.