Sergey Lavrov says he can’t understand what all the fuss is about. In interviews in the last few days, the Russian foreign minister has asserted Moscow’s obligation — never mind its right — to honor a contract to supply President Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria with advanced S-300 air defense batteries, state-of-the-art systems that can intercept fighter jets and cruise missiles.

The four-part reasoning Lavrov advances: (1) Russia’s arms sales credibility would be shattered were it to renege on the deal; (2) Russia has never made any secret of its various contracts with Assad; (3) these are defensive missile systems, not offensive weapons; and (4) the sales are not in breach of international law or Russia’s own ostensibly stringent arms sales regulations.

Lavrov, to put it politely, is being disingenuous. His narrow legalistic reasoning collapses in the face of a grisly reality in which his client, Bashar Assad, has spent the past two years clinging to power by massacring his own people (and the often extremely unsavory “rebel” forces who have joined the fight to oust the Assad regime). Russia’s weapons sales to Assad are enabling that ongoing bloodshed. And supplementing the regime’s arsenal with one of the world’s most sophisticated air defense systems will make the butcher of Damascus, who has remarkably managed to out-murder even his ruthless father, more impregnable.

The wise and experienced former head of IDF military intelligence, Amos Yadlin, remarked over the weekend that, for all Lavrov’s bullish insistence that the S-300 sale will go ahead, he is not convinced that Moscow will actually deliver the missile batteries. Rather, in Yadlin’s assessment, the S-300s are just one piece in the complex face-off over Syria now playing out between Moscow and Washington.

Read this article in full at the Times of Israel.