Russia should keep its word on selling a missile defence system to Iran, an influential parliamentarian was quoted by Iranian media as saying on Sunday.

Moscow has not followed through on proposals to supply high-grade S300 air defence missiles to the Islamic state. Reports says Moscow delays its words under Western and US pressure.

"If Russia does not keep its promises to deliver the missiles, then it would be a negative point in our relations," Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of parliament's foreign policy and national security committee, said in comments carried by official news agency ISNA.

"Avoiding delivery of S300 defence system to Iran, if that is Russia's official stance, would be a new chapter in breaking promises by the Russians."

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said last month "there have been no such deliveries to date".

The truck-mounted S-300PMU1, known in the West as the SA-20, can shoot down cruise missiles and aircraft. It can fire at targets up to 150 km (90 miles) away and travel at more than two km per second.

Iran says it enriches uranium for civilian applications and that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it has a right to the technology already in the hands of many others.

However, most experts estimate that Israel has at least between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads, largely based on information leaked to the Sunday Times newspaper in the 1980s by Mordechai Vanunu, a former worker at the country's Dimona nuclear reactor.

Israel, which has initiated several wars in the region in its 60-year history, has not denied having nuclear weapons, but has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and open its facilities for IAEA perusal.

Israel also often threatens Iran an attack over its nuclear sites.


Agencies