Russia’s state-owned weapons company is marketing an advanced heavy flamethrower to foreign militaries in the midst of a diplomatic fight with the United States about arms sales to Iran.
“Such equipment is not produced anywhere in the world except Russia, and we are proud to show it to our foreign partners,” Rosoboronexport’s Director General Alexander Mikheev said Monday in a press release. “The system has repeatedly shown its impressive capabilities to destroy well-protected terrorist groups in real combat conditions in the Middle East.”
Russian forces have been deployed to Syria alongside Iranian ground forces, as Moscow and Tehran have partnered to prop up Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s regime. The TOS-1A system fires a fuel-air explosive from a tank chassis, the company said. Each firing of the weapon releases a cloud of fuel into the air around a given target before an explosive charge detonates the fuel.
Human Rights Watch has warned for decades that “in urban settings, it will be impossible for the Russians military to limit the destructive effect of this weapon to combatants and very difficult for civilians to take shelter.” Yet, Russian analysts have touted such weapons as a more efficient way to capture a city than the tactics used by American forces.
The company did not identify which governments attended the demonstration, but the Russian government has a history of selling weapons to countries such as Iran, India, and several other former Soviet client states that are now American allies. Congress has passed legislation that imposes sanctions on entities that conduct a “significant transaction” with Russian weapons manufacturers, but U.S. officials expect Russia to sell an array of new weapons to Iran later this year if the United Nations Security Council fails to extend an arms embargo that is scheduled to expire under the terms of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
