Iran ready to produce locale-made S-300 air defense missile system Bavar 373 by 2015 1502145.

Commander of Khatam ol-Anbia Air Defense Base Brigadier General Farzad Esmayeeli told FNA that bottleneck problems for the construction of Bavar 373 infrastructures have been resolved, adding that development and construction of the highly advanced anti-missile defense system would be accomplished by the end of Iran's Fifth Five-Year Development Plan (2010-2015).

“We hope to witness a very good system with higher capabilities than the (Russian) S-300 in our air defense structure by the end of the (Development) Plan”, added the General.

Another senior Iranian military commander announced last May that the country would soon unveil the home-made long-range air-defense missile system which is similar to the Russian S-300.

"This system, dubbed as Bavar 373, is being developed in the country and will be officially unveiled soon," Lieutenant Commander of the Iranian Army's Self-Sufficiency Jihad Rear Admiral Farhad Amiri said in May, 2013.

He noted that the Bavar-373 missile defense system has reached the production stage and its subsystems have been already tested.

In 2007, Iran signed a contract worth $800mln to buy five Russian S-300 missile defense systems.

But the deal was scrapped in 2010 by then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who was unilaterally expanding on sanctions against Iran imposed by the UN Security Council.

Iran filed a $4bln lawsuit against Russia in the international arbitration court in Geneva, which is currently pending review.

Moscow has struggled to have the lawsuit dropped, including by offering the Tor anti-aircraft systems as replacement, media reported in December, adding that the offer was rejected by Tehran.