Blogentry
Russia stands to lose nothing by helping advance Iranian nukes
- IAEA makes vague allegations that Russian may be aiding completion of an Iranian nuclear weapon: Paper
- Russia to boost staff at Iran’s Bushehr reactor, but Moscow’s head diplomat urges less fanfare
- Russian fuel delivery to Iran and promises to Libya puts Moscow on map as big Middle East nuke peddler
- Russia preparing fuel for shipment to Iran despite western concerns
- Putin okays Iranian nuke plans, calling Tehran’s programme ‘peaceful’
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Where's the downside? From Russian President Vladimir Putin's point of view, there isn’t one.
With Russia's obstructive tactics in the UN Security Council encouraging Iran to plunge ahead in their nuclear ambitions, he may count on the notion – now widely under discussion in Washington - the Americans will eventually strike Iranian nuclear installations. Bush would probably get a smattering of applause from around the world, and advance the cause of his now famous vanity about the legacy of his administration being a tough (some would argue, rightfully, disproportionate) response to the Iranian nuclear threat.
Still, if a prospective American strike does eradicate the Iranian nuclear programme, that's fine, too. Russia's oil and gas prices are sure to shoot up because of the choke hold Iran would put on oil traffic in the Persian Gulf, which United States war planners have themselves taken into account
What has been given less consideration is Russia’s key positioning – with its construction of the Bushehr reactor and promises to build more - to become the main reconstruction contractor for Iran, thereby setting a claim on international righteousness and by articulating the anti-imperialist anxieties about America that most of the world is suffering from. In other words, Russia’s new construction boom in yet another Middle Eastern country mistreated by Bushite pugilism is seen as a peace-maker – or at least a haven for the huddled masses.
What's irrational about the above scenario? Or its counterpart - that Russian now calculates the United States in the end will sit on its hands concerning Iran?
Nothing. Multiple versions of them get discussed within the Bush Administration, all stamped, “plausible.”
It's an example of America’s miserable situation after eight years of unmitigated international aggression, and the hope that it would continue to have support from Russia that it never, even after the demise of the Soviet Union, ever earned.
On one hand, the Bush Administration sticks to the notion – recalling Bush's magnanimous first-term reading of Putin's soul in his KGB eyes - that somehow, someday, and in the nick of time, the Russians are going to come around to joining an international effort to halt Iran's nuclear drive.
On the other hand, important circles in the administration are offering a hardened – and far more realistic - assessment of what Russia ultimately wants.
After a couple of years of talking about how Putin's richer Russia (reasonably) craved respect, a senior administration policymaker, cited anonymously in the International Herald Tribune, now asserts the "overwhelming evidence" is a Russia that seeks to weaken the United States. Wherever possible internationally, he told the IHT, Moscow will work to stop America from achieving success.
The hitch is that concerning Iran, these two Bush Administration notions, expecting good from Russia while at the same time regarding it as a growing menace, are totally incompatible.
This summer’s events surrounding the politics of a nuclear Iran emerging with Russia’s help showed just how incompatible.
In June, the Americans said they expected a UN Security Council resolution in July that would add a new round of modest sanctions to those already in effect against Iran. It never happened. The Russians, with Chinese assistance, derailed the measure, while at the same time maintaining the right to be the single country in the world allowed to export nuclear technology to Iran – a concession from the Security Council for the inconvenience of earlier sanctions it put in place. Reality now thus shows that the UN is not going to be the place where Iran's nuclear dreams are sent to die.
Russia clearly feels this new upper hand, to the point of planting, with a comic flourish, a Russian flag on the seabed beneath the North Pole in an effort to stake some of the most disputed oil rich territory in the world.
As the US gets more and more bogged down in Iraq, why shouldn't Russia see the Iranian nuclear issue as a strategic hole for achieving a new global status?
It will be recalled that Jacques Chirac had a vision of a multi-polar world that consigned America to a position of everyone’s opponent – a point of view met with a standing ovation in Moscow. Chirac argued in the last few months of his presidency that a few nuclear bombs in Iran shouldn’t cause night sweats for any who shared his view of a new world order with American curmudgeonly sitting on the sidelines.
And though he didn’t put it in so many words, Chirac was shooting for a rationalisation that a limited number of atomic weapons in Iran is a reasonable diplomatic price for dismantling a US-dominated world order that he, like Putin, despises.
There are, on good evidence, officials within the Bush administration frustrated by its own bungled approach to Iran - hoping that the Russians will turn responsible after their "elections" next year while acknowledging Moscow is now in full confrontational mode.
It took France’s new president Nicolas Sarkozy, to finally say in words what Bush will only say in gesture: that if sanctions fail, the price for the bomb in Iran will be bombing Iran. He further placed the blame for Iran’s advances squarely on Moscow, noting that its maneuvering to cosset Tehran’s ambitions were marred by “certain brutality.”
But as far as Russia is concerned, these are no longer issues that are of interest for it to discuss, especially not at the UN. A successful strike on Iran means an outlet for Russian oil, further enhancing the superpower status of Putin’s “managed democracy.” An unsuccessful bomb run on Iran promotes Russia to Iran’s main contactor in reconstruction, elevating the status of Russia’s “managed democracy” to altruistic interventionist. No bombs at all, and Russia still has its fuel multi-million dollar nuclear fuel deal and the promise of a repeat reactor customer in Tehran.
The US administration’s failure to take the Russian variable into account sends a strong, and quite opposite, signal to Tehran: whatever they do, they are, with Russia’s help, home free.
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