Page 1 of 2 Russia softens stance on Iran
'smart' sanctions By Kaveh L
Afrasiabi
As the year winds down to a
close, the United Nations Security Council's move
to adopt a resolution that will impose "smart
sanctions" on Iran aimed at a travel ban and
freezing the assets of some 23 entities involved
in Iran's nuclear program is the clearest
indication yet that Iran's diplomacy is not
working.
Immediate measures to address the
various shortcomings of this diplomacy, including
the avoidable, self-inflicted wounds, are
called for. Otherwise the
risks to Iran's national interests will only grow.
Concerning those risks, it comes as no
surprise that on the day when President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad addressed a conference on the
Holocaust and reiterated his call for Israel to be
wiped out, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
finally let the cat out of the bag by making a
veiled nuclear threat in a supposed "slip" of the
tongue that was more likely a calculated move on
his part.
Olmert stated: "Iran openly,
explicitly and publicly threatens to wipe Israel
off the map. Can you say that this is the same
level, when you are aspiring to have nuclear
weapons, as America, France, Israel, Russia?"
Interestingly, while Moscow has called
Olmert's comments "irresponsible", no one in
Washington, London or Paris has uttered a word of
criticism, focusing their energy instead on
castigating Iran's president for his anti-Israel
statements.
This was led by British Prime
Minister Tony Blair, who only last week prodded
President George W Bush to engage Iran
diplomatically. Expressing his disgust at the
gathering of "Holocaust deniers", including an
American, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke,
in Tehran, Blair's new line is: "When I look at
the region ... everything that Iran does is
negative."
Echoing Blair, Germany's
conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel has also
gone on the offensive, stating categorically that
"Iran must never get the bomb ... That is why the
time has come ... not just to think about, but to
work on sanctions". The fact that Russia is now on
board at the Security Council means that it is now
just a matter of time before the preliminary
sanctions are imposed on Iran.
A survey of
the Russian press indicates that Ahmadinejad's
radical brand of politics has made it all but
impossible for Russia to resist the combined
US-European Union pressure to overcome its
objections to sanctions on Iran.
Whereas a
mere six months ago Russian Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov categorically objected to any
sanctions on Iran, today that firm position has
wilted considerably to a verbal objection to
"blanket sanctions". Expressing his enthusiasm for
the draft resolution, Lavrov told Interfax: "The
new draft does not provide for blanket sanctions."
Last week in Brussels, Lavrov expelled any
fear that Russia would sabotage the proposed
sanctions, stating that Moscow now supported a ban
on deliveries of technology and material related
to Iran's uranium-enrichment program: "We find it
necessary to approve a proposal on the prevention
of deliveries of such technology, material and
services to Iran."
The slow yet steady
evaporation of Russia's opposition to sanctions on
Iran, predicted by this author in earlier
articles, was actually sealed by President
Vladimir Putin and Bush last month, when both
leaders instructed their respective officials to
"coordinate their activities" regarding the
proposed sanctions on Iran. This move was
interpreted as nothing short of Russia's
"betrayal" of Iran by certain pundits in Tehran,
who have cited the US support for Russia's
accession to the World Trade Organization as a
reward for Moscow toeing the line on Iran.
Be that as it may, various Russian
analysts have written that Iran's own
"anti-diplomacy" is partly responsible for such
developments, now threatening the expensive
Russian-built power plant in Bushehr, in spite or
reassuring words by the head of Russia's Atomic
Energy Agency (Rosatom), Sergei Kiriyenko, in his
recent visit to Tehran. "Russia sees no political
obstacle in the completion of the Bushehr power
plant ... We shall do it as quickly as possible
from the technical point of view."
To many
Iranians, Kiriyenko's assurance rings hollow, as
they have heard it repeatedly over the past seven
years, in light of the repeated delays in the
completion of a project that was initially slated
for grand opening in 1999. Indeed, even Lavrov has
hinted that the proposed UN sanctions may hamper
Iran's "legal nuclear program".
Of course,
there is nothing "illegal" about Iran's pursuit of
an independent nuclear-fuel cycle, sanctioned
under the terms of the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT), but given the new alarms raised in
the US about Bushehr's potential use for making
plutonium bombs, there is every expectation now
for further delays in Bushehr's completion. This
is because of the UN-imposed restrictions on the
travel of nuclear officials and scientists and the
transfer of "dual purpose" technology.
Since the mid-1990s, Russia has been
educating Iranian scientists at the Moscow
Kurchatov Institute of Nuclear Energy
