A reader sends this report:

Russia’s Foreign Ministry says Moscow is not obliged to freeze a deal to deliver the S-300 missile defense system to Iran under the newly imposed UN sanctions. Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said Thursday that the deal is not referenced in the fourth round of UN sanctions imposed against Tehran which mainly target financial and military sectors. He stopped short of dismissing an earlier report by the Interfax news agency, which cited a Russian arms industry source as saying that Moscow is planning to renege on aits unfulfilled contract to sell the S-300 system to Iran.

It seems critical to Putin that Russia maintains its credibility. (“Tehran’s Ambassador to Moscow Mahmoud-Reza Sajjadi cautioned Russia over the S-300 deal, stressing that the country would lose ‘all its credibility as a reliable arms supplier’ if it failed to deliver the defense system.”) After all, if you show yourself to be unreliable, turn your back on allies, say one thing in public and another in private, what have you got?