Resetting U.S.-Russian relations with a new tone of cooperation and trust under the personal stewardship of Presidents Obama and Medvedev has been billed by many Russian commentators as the most significant foreign policy event of 2009. But there is one issue - Iran’s nuclear program and how to deal with it - that continues to elude consensus between Russia and the United States. Has there been enough trust accumulated between Russian and American leaders to allow for a cooperative approach on Iran? Will Iran be able to exploit the differences between Russia and the United States to continue its clandestine nuclear program? Is the “reset” in jeopardy?
Despite the failure to clinch the follow-up to the expired START Treaty by the year’s end, Moscow and Washington have managed to improve the atmosphere in their relationship and move over to tackling practical problems like the war in Afghanistan and climate change. But cooperation on Iran has proven more evasive.
Iran has been defying the international community on this issue for the past five to six years. It has built two clandestine uranium enrichment facilities – a huge plant at Natanz, and a recently exposed plant at Qom, all outside the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards (though the plant at Natanz is now under the agency’s supervision).
While denying the military nature of its nuclear program, Iran has been stonewalling international proposals to guarantee the international supply of nuclear fuel for its civilian power generating reactors. The latest deal, which Iran actually agreed to, envisaged shipping Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium to Russia and France for enrichment to reactor fuel grade level. The deal fell apart in November 2009 after Iran put forward additional conditions that showed its reluctance to part with its uranium stockpile.
U.S. President Barack Obama has called for a new round of UN mandated sanctions on Iran to delay Iranian progress toward a nuclear weapon and possibly to ward off an Israeli military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev in September 2009, at the height of the U.S.-Russian reset, indicated that Moscow might be willing to endorse a new set of sanctions against Iran if it remained uncooperative with the IAEA with regard to its nuclear activities. But toward the end of the year the Russian position became much more ambiguous, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov signaling Moscow’s annoyance with Washington’s push for new sanctions.
Russia and China may also seize on the Obama administration’s recent conclusions that the Iranian nuclear program has been thrown in turmoil and that a real “breakout option” to a workable nuclear weapon might be at least 18 months to two or three years away.
But if the new set of economic sanctions, which Washington wants to target more specifically at Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, is to work, Russian cooperation is essential. But any meaningful economic and trade sanction would seriously hurt Russia’s commercial ties to Iran, already strained by delays in Russian deliveries of S-300 antiaircraft missiles and work on the nuclear power reactor at Bushehr.
Will the U.S.-Russian “reset” survive the Iranian challenge? Will Moscow and Washington be able to forge a common approach to Iran, now that some divisive issues, like U.S. plans for missile defense in Eastern Europe, have been removed? Has there been enough trust accumulated between Russian and American leaders to allow for a cooperative approach on Iran? Will Iran be able to exploit the differences between Russia and the United States to continue its clandestine nuclear program? Is the “reset” in jeopardy?
Ethan S. Burger, Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C.:
It is misguided and out-of-date to assume that the reset metaphor reflects the present views of all the key U.S. institutions, government officials, politicians and opinion-makers who play roles in the formation of policy toward Russia. U.S.-Russian relations operate in multiple spheres simultaneously. Current relations reflect the lack of a consensus in both countries with respect to foreign and domestic policy.
Negotiating a new START treaty does not represent a major achievement given that there are no powerful domestic political groups in either country who are positioned to derail a new agreement. Resolving the current technical issues can be left to specialists in this area.
Developing a politically viable approach to the issue of climate change is not a bilateral U.S.-Russian issue, as the Copenhagen conference indicates. The world’s governments may not produce meaningful progress in this area until the environmental and climatic situation get worse and governments are forced to put the planet’s interest ahead of domestic business and international financial and trade concerns.
With respect to Iran, the Russian leadership might eventually appreciate that it does not want to be on the wrong side of history. The days of the current rulers of Iran are numbered. Most observers of the Iranian scene understand that the current unrest in the country reflects a real cleavage in society. It is not a situation that could be orchestrated from abroad by the United Kingdom and the United States. It is a dynamic situation where change is inevitable and thus irrepressible.
The Iranian opposition has rallied behind Mir Hossein Mousavi. His determination to bring change to his country has been fortified by the death of his nephew (as well as the death and arrests of others, both prominent and ordinary Iranians). Mousavi has declared that he is "not afraid to die" in defense of people's rights and has called for an end to the government crackdown on anti-establishment activists. His actions demonstrate true leadership and personal courage. Iran is already a country full of martyrs.
His pronouncements stand in sharp contrast to those of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and "President" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the rule of whom the late Iranian Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri described as a "dictatorship." This statement by one of the Islamic revolution leader Ayatollah Khomeini's inner circle has further eroded the legitimacy of the present government in the eyes of many if not most Iranian.
In 1775, Samuel Johnson said “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." Mousavi and Ayatollah Montazeri are depriving the Iranian regime's ability to invoke patriotism to justify its hold on power, which now depends on their internal security forces. The Iranian people cannot be fooled despite the government's control of the official media.
Unless Russia ceases to serve as the protector of an illegitimate regime, it is certain to be viewed by any new Iranian government as well as by the West as politically disruptive to world peace and human rights. Furthermore, it is indeed possible that Russia may find that neither the Iraqi or Iranian governments are terribly concerned about helping the Kremlin to suppress Islamic separatism in Russia.
For a country well-known for producing many of the world's finest chess players, Moscow seems incapable of thinking three moves in the future. It is a mistake for Russia to quibble about when the current Iranian regime will be able to produce a nuclear weapon as part of the debate about sanctions, especially since Russia's major cities will be within range of Iranian rockets.
Vladimir Belaeff, President, Global Society Institute, Inc. (USA):
One should commence with a dispassionate review of the “reset” concept, which is an American initiative – part of a wider PR process to improve U.S. influence in the world. The “reset” was invented by Vice-President Biden, who a few months earlier was very public in his support of Georgia’s government, with demands to punish Russia for her actions in defense of her soldiers, stationed in the region under a 1994 international agreement.
When they wish, American politicians are masters of nuance, a fact that may escape even experienced non-native speakers of English. “Reset” does not mean “improvement;” in this case it only means a restart of the relationship between the United States and Russia. The quality and productivity of this “reset” are not promised. Those who are optimists and not very attentive to words, might be assigning to “reset” many more positive attributes than their American counterparts actually meant.
The above might explain why the “reset” so far has produced few public results of a tension-reducing nature. For example, the deployment of ABM systems in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe has not been cancelled, but only postponed sine die – and can be revived at any moment. Patriot missile batteries will be delivered to Poland; new START negotiations are not progressing as quickly as expected by some observers; America is re-arming and training Georgian military in the face of explicit Russian concerns. There is a view that the American “reset” is mostly a PR smokescreen, which is not currently producing the tangible and positive results that some expected from this initiative. Some wits are noting that the label “peregruzka” (overload) rather than “perezagruzka” (reset) on the ridiculous gift was not necessarily a gaffe at all – but a studied carelessness, a snub to the Russian counterparts, perceived to be so eager for a fresh approach.
Indeed, under Obama’s predecessor there seemed to be no meaningful responses from the United States to Russia; now with the “reset” a dialogue appears to exist – but whether this dialogue is meaningful remains to be proven.
Therefore, Iran’s present actions may not be such a significant test of the U.S.-Russian “reset” – because the “reset” itself does not appear a highly productive process.
Iran’s nuclear intentions are indeed very suspicious and their overall impact is apparently underestimated in many capitals. If one considers the growing political instability in Iran, and the possibility that some of Iran’s present leadership may be clinically psychotic – then one must admit the seriousness of Iran’s present danger.
The magnitude of the task confronting the international community in Iran is often glossed over. It is nothing less than compelling Iran to permanently abandon all policies and activities, and to dismantle all equipment which would result in the production, deployment and delivery of nuclear weapons. A very tall order, indeed.
The issue is how to convince or force Iran to perform the changes indicated above. In that regard there are indeed some differences between Russia and the United States (though the gap is narrowing) but it must be noted that these differences are not unique to Russia – many important members of the world community have grave concerns about the efficacy of the methods proposed by America to achieve the goal defined immediately above. America’s experience in Iraq is a present and on-going case example – and Iran is a tougher target than Iraq, by several orders of magnitude.
The U.S.-Russian “reset” (trivial as this process may currently be) and the grave world-wide problem posed by Iran’s nuclear ambitions are inherently different matters and so events on the Iranian theatre are not likely to influence the “reset” very much, or vice versa.
Professor Stephen Blank, The U.S. Army War College, Carlyle Barracks, PA:
I, for one, have always been quite skeptical that the Russian government is prepared to countenance meaningful sanctions on Iran.
There are too many reasons for it not to do so.
It enjoys and benefits form the spectacle of Washington being preoccupied with Iran yet unable to bring it to heel. Its atomic energy lobby benefits from contracts with Iran, as do its arms sellers.
Its energy lobby benefits immensely from the fact that an anti-American Iran is shut out of Western energy markets, leaving the field open to Russia to dominate them.
It also benefits from the fact that an anti-American Iran is not disposed to make trouble for Russia in the Caucasus and Central Asia, which it could easily do if it chose to.
Lastly, it benefits from anything that impedes the consolidation of a Middle Eastern international order that is pro-American and pro-Western, as this creates an opening through which Moscow can return to the Middle East as the great antipode to Washington, and pretend to itself that it is a great power.
Given these conditions and the intrinsically anti-American drift of Russian foreign policy (and let's not assume for a minute that President Dmitry Medvedev is calling the shots, as policy on Iran shows), why on earth should Moscow act against Iran and the interests of key elites who pretend that they are defending Russia's national interests?
After all, As Alexei Arbatov wrote in a manuscript that the U.S. Army War College published in 2009 (from a 2008 conference), Russia, rhetoric aside, does not take proliferation seriously as a threat, least of all when Washington is the main loser from it.
I personally find this to be a myopic, self-serving policy that will ultimately explode in Moscow's face (hopefully not literally). Nonetheless, the arguments for doing nothing to seriously encumber Iran are obvious to all who care to see them, and the belief that U.S. diplomacy, charm, or anything else is going to alter the weight of those calculations and interests that govern Russia's current policy strikes me as naive and unproven.
The widespread argument that we need Russia to take down Iranian nuclearization is based on the fundamentally misconceived notion that Moscow shares our threat assessment.
Nothing could be farther from the truth, as is displayed in years of Russian diplomacy. And those who make this naive argument ought to know better.
