Ankara’s purchase of the Russian S-400 systems has been a major factor souring relations with the United States, which says the system is not compatible with NATO defenses and poses a threat to Lockheed Martin’s F-35 stealth fighter jets.

The provincial governor’s office announced on Sunday that the Turkish Air Force F-16s and other aircraft will conduct low- and high-altitude flights over Ankara on Monday and Tuesday to test an air defense system project.

Broadcaster CNN Turk and other media said specifically that the flights were to test the S-400 radar system. Ankara began receiving the S-400s last July but they are not yet operational.

Dealers said the reports had a negative impact on the lira, which weakened to 5.7380 against the dollar from a close of 5.7140 on Friday, Reuters reported. Tensions in US-Turkish relations played a major role in a near 30% slide in the lira’s value last year.

As recently as last Thursday, a senior US State Department official told reporters Turkey needed to “get rid of” the system. Those comments came after President Tayyip Erdogan met US President Donald Trump at the White House.

Trump said their talks were “wonderful” but it was unclear if the two NATO allies made any breakthrough on the S-400 issue and Erdogan subsequently said US pressure to get rid of the S-400s was an infringement of sovereign rights.

Washington has suspended Turkey from the F-35 program, which it was a buyer and producer of, to punish it for the S-400 purchase. It has warned of possible US sanctions over the deal but has not yet imposed them.

Trump has told Erdogan the United States is ready to sell Ankara US Patriot systems if it drops the Russian system.

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Direct comparisons of defense spending between Arab states and Iran are difficult. While a superficial reading of public statistics shows Saudi and Emirati spending far outstrips Iran’s as a proportion of GDP, it would be a mistake to take public Iranian statistics at face value. Still, post-revolutionary Iran has long embraced asymmetric strategies.

Historically, many Middle Eastern countries have approached technology with suspicion, but Iran has been the exception. In the early twentieth century, for example, Saudi clerics resisted first the introduction of the telegraph and then radio. Into the 1970s, some Saudi clerics complained that television was a plot dreamed up in the West to separate Muslim children from God.

The Iranian Shah Nasir al-Din (r. 1848-1896) sponsored his own telegraph line in Tehran just over a decade after Samuel Morse laid America’s first long distance line. Both the Iranian government and public readily embraced almost every new generational technology. The same dynamic has been true regarding the internet. Many Arab countries initially rejected or sought to suppress internet access as much for cultural reticence as politics. In 1993, Iran became the second country in the Middle East after Israel to connect to the internet.

As the Iranian leadership embraces new technologies, its whole-of-government approach means that its work occurs not only on military bases, but also in Iran’s universities and nominally civilian companies.

There is a persistent tendency within Washington to underestimate Iran. Simply put, Iranian engineers and scientists are adept at developing cutting edge military technologies. It has been ten years, for example, since Iran successfully launched its first satellite into orbit. In the decade since, Iran’s space agency has successfully launched more than a half dozen satellites; more satellite launches are slated for this year. Of course, satellite launch technology can provide cover for advanced ballistic missile work. Perhaps this is why last year Iranian scientists developed a gyroscope to augment inertial navigation in Iran’s ballistic missiles.

The Iranian government has also encouraged nanotechnology investment. On January 31, 2015, for example, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei visited a nanotechnology exhibition and, claiming that Iran ranked seventh internationally in nanotechnology, urged even greater progress. “You should move forward and you should not abandon the thought of making progress—in this area—on a daily basis,” he said.

Iranian students subsequently joined a rigorous nanotech education program, and the Iranian government has sponsored nanotechnology Olympiads in which top students can compete against each other and which the Iranian government can use for recruitment.

A recent incident with the US Navy in the Persian Gulf has also highlighted Iran’s unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) work. Iran put its first drone into operation in 1985, a decade or two before many other regional states did.

While diplomats continue to focus on Iran’s nuclear program, the next generation of military technology involves hypersonic weaponry, robotics, and autonomous systems. There is no indication that the Islamic Republic has the ability to engage in hypersonic work, nor are their allies in China and Russia willing to trust them with such data and technology.

Russian leaders, especially, seem willing not only to export technology to Iran, but also to allow Iranian scientists to manufacture it themselves. Just this year, Tasnim News, an outlet affiliated with the IRGC, announced that Iranian engineers were seeking to manufacture a version of Russia’s Pantsir anti-aircraft missile system inside Iran. Robotics might be the next target of Russo-Iranian cooperation. On June 24, 2019, Iran’s deputy defense minister visited Moscow to attend a “Military-Technical Forum” attended by over twelve hundred Russian and foreign companies, many of which work in robotics.

Russia might be willing to share, but Western technology remains the gold standard.

The IRGC has recently drilled “Fuji assaults” in which artificial intelligence helps coordinate boats, planes, tanks, and drones in a broad attack. The IRGC used similar tactics during the battle against the Islamic State in the eastern Euphrates region.

On June 12, 2019, Iranian Air Defense Force commander Alireza Sabahifard announced a new air defense system that can detect stealth UAVs and which may also utilize some basic artificial intelligence in its operation. The Iranian authorities successfully downed a US drone just a month later suggests that Iranian advances should not be easily dismissed.

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The administration chose one of three sets of actions devised to inflict varying degrees of pain under the Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act, the people said, without identifying which set had been chosen. The plan needs Trump’s approval.

One of the people said the intention is to announce the sanctions late next week. The administration wants to wait until after Monday’s anniversary of a 2016 coup attempt against Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to avoid fueling further speculation that the US was responsible for the uprising, as Erdogan’s loyalists have claimed.

The plan was developed after days of discussions between officials at the State and Defense departments and the National Security Council. It awaits a sign-off by Trump and his top advisers, the people said, requesting anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. A State Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

Turkey on Friday began receiving parts for the Russian-made S-400 missile system, which the US has said puts at risk the Pentagon’s costliest weapons program, the F-35 fighter jet built by Lockheed Martin Corp. Turkey turned to Russia after failing to reach agreement with the US on defense systems.

The deliveries make it almost certain the Middle East’s largest economy will be subject to punitive US action. By law, Trump needed to pick at least five out of 12 different sanctions — ranging from mild to harsh — under the sanctions act, once delivery was certified.

The administration has been weighing when to punish Turkey, according to a person familiar with the deliberations who asked not to be identified discussing the sensitive situation. Washington is wary of announcing sanctions too close to the anniversary of the July 15, 2016, coup attempt that Erdogan blamed on Fethullah Gulen, an ally-turned-enemy now in exile as a Muslim cleric in Pennsylvania.

The US says the Russian system is designed to shoot down North Atlantic Treaty Organization aircraft and can collect critical intelligence that could compromise stealth capabilities of the fifth-generation fighter. In an attempt to dissuade Turkey, the US said in June it was winding down Turkey’s participation in the F-35 program. Turkish manufacturers have been helping to build parts of the jet.

Turkey has been adamant that it needs an advanced air defense system and was forced to buy it from Russia because NATO allies, including the US, failed to meet its defensive needs on Turkish terms. After meeting with Erdogan on the sidelines of a Group of 20 nations summit in June, Trump blamed problems between the countries on his predecessor Barack Obama’s failure to make a deal with Turkey.

The relationship between the US and Turkey has deteriorated over the course of the civil war in Syria, where US backing for Kurdish militants has frustrated Turkey, which considers the group an extension of the separatists it’s fighting at home. Erdogan has also criticized the US for not extraditing Gulen, whom he accuses of masterminding the coup attempt.

Acting US Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Friday that Washington’s position that Turkey can’t have both the F-35 and the Russian missile system “has not changed.” Esper spoke with Defense Minister Hulusi Akar in the afternoon, and the Turkish government said in a statement that a US delegation would visit next week to keep discussing the issue.

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