While Washington is concerned about Russia selling missiles to Iran, arguing it would “greatly boost Iran’s air defenses,” Moscow is seriously considering going further in arming the United States' top ally in the region, Saudi Arabia. This possibility raises questions over the role Russia wants to play in the regional security framework in general and how its arms export policy serves its foreign policy in particular.

Historically, Russia (including when it led the Soviet Union) has been one of the world’s largest arms exporters. Today, like any manufacturing industry, arms production has a sound economic significance to the sanctions-crippled Russian economy. The industry is made up of 20 companies, including the air defense giant Almaz-Antey, with a total revenue of $12.25 billion as of 2009. The industry provides about 20% of all manufacturing jobs in the country and employs around 3 million people. In a critical time for the industry, President Vladimir Putin has ensured it is not only export-oriented but serves state defense orders, making it one of the drivers of the Russian economy and a symbol of national pride. As a result, in 2007, Russian defense orders amounted to 302.7 billion rubles ($12.35 billion at the 2007 exchange rate average) — skyrocketing from 62 billion in 2002 ($1.9 billion at that year's exchange rate average).

Nevertheless, the export part has remained a key component for the industry, making it, above all, an important political tool of the Russian state. In 2009, Russia became second to the United States in the financial value of new contracts signed with developing states at $10.4 billion (a double jump from $5.4 billion in 2008). Russia’s only state intermediary agency for the country’s exports and imports of defense-related products — Rosoboronexport — insisted the real sum was $15 billion ($9.4 billion in 2008). But whichever figure is correct, it is symptomatic of two trends: First, it is a record high in Russia’s post-Soviet military history, and second, by the latter part of the first decade of the 21st century, it reached the point where it wouldn’t ease up its production if not for some external factors.

From 2006 to 2009, the Middle East as a region was the largest market for Russian arms. Within that period Russian military suppliers sold 50 supersonic fighter jets, 270 tanks and self-propelled guns, 20 anti-ballistic missiles, 10 helicopters, 10 surface-to-surface missiles and more than 150 armored vehicles. Among various reports, the most controversial and diverging figure was the exact number of surface-to-air missiles, which revolved around 5,500.