Iran Looks to Russia As Global Mediator

[Ryan Ruck]

Iran Looks to Russia As Global Mediator

Iran wants Russia to help mediate in the standoff with the U.N. Security Council over Tehran's nuclear program, Iranian state radio said Sunday as a ranking Russian diplomat met with top Iranian leaders.

The radio said Iran was looking to Russia for "new proposals, such as enrichment of uranium on Russian soil," and expects Russia to "take a close stance with the international community" to help Iran resolve its nuclear standoff.

The Kremlin proposed last year that Iran move its uranium enrichment work to Russian territory, where it could be better monitored to alleviate international concerns that Tehran is trying to build atomic bombs in violation of its treaty commitments.

Iranian leaders had said they were interested in the idea, but nothing came of it as oil-rich Iran insisted its nuclear project is intended only to produce radioactive fuel for reactors that would generate electricity.

No details were released about the talks held Sunday between Igor Ivanov, Russia's national security adviser, and Iran's hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the foreign minister and the top nuclear negotiator.

In a rare reception for visiting diplomats, Ivanov also met with Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

State radio also said Russia has pledged to complete the Bushehr nuclear power station on schedule this year. Russia last year agreed to ship fuel to Bushehr by this March and start up the facility in September, with electricity generation to start by November.

As a U.N. Security Council permanent member, Russia last month forced the body to water down proposed punitive measures that would have imposed curbs on the Bushehr project. But the Kremlin then supported limited sanctions against Iran over its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment.

Enrichment of uranium, using centrifuges, can produce material usable both as fuel for electricity-generating reactors and for nuclear weapons.

Ivanov's visit came as Iranian officials issued contradictory statements about progress on expanding Iranian enrichment facilities by installing 3,000 centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear facility.

Hossein Simorgh, spokesman of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization public relations department, said that "no new centrifuges have been installed in Natanz," the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported late Saturday.

The remarks appeared to contradict lawmaker Alaeddin Boroujerdi, who said earlier Saturday that Iran was currently installing the 3,000 centrifuges.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini refused to elaborate on the discrepancy, saying Sunday only that the contradicting remarks were a "technical matter" that should be left to Iran's nuclear agency organization to "elaborate ... at a convenient time."

The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, had no immediate comment on the Iranian statements. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said recently he believed Iran planned to begin work in February on an underground facility to hold uranium enrichment equipment.

Iran faces the threat of additional Security Council sanctions unless it stops enrichment by the end of a 60-day period that ends next month.

A senior U.S. State Department official warned Iran on Friday against accelerating its atomic program.

"If Iran takes this step, it is going to confront universal international opposition," Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said. "If they think they can get away with 3,000 centrifuges without another Security Council resolution and additional international pressure, then they are very badly mistaken."

For now, the only known assembled centrifuge operations in Iran consist of two linked chains of 164 machines each and two smaller setups.

[Ryan Ruck]

Khamenei Proposes Anti-U.S. Alliance to Russia

During a meeting with Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov in Tehran, Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei was reported as calling on Monday for a cooperation between the two countries to halt US ambitions in the region. "The alliance between the Islamic Republic and the Russian Federation can stop US ambitions to conquer the region," Khamenei was quoted as saying by Iranian state television. Russia and Iran are close commercial allies and Tehran's Bushehr nuclear power plant is being built with Russian technology despite the staunch opposition of the US which fears Iran is trying to build atomic weapons.

"Our two countries can forge a tie able to influence the political and economic choices of the region and halt America's ambition to rule the world," Khamenei said, also suggesting the creation of a joint gas exporting group like OPEC based on their command of the world's largest natural gas reserves.

Iran's gas reserves are estimated at over 940 trillion cubic feet while estimates on Russia's reserves range from 1680 trillion to 2360 trillion cubic feet.

World reserves are believed to be between 6100 trillion and 7000 trillion cubic feet.

The UN Security Council approved last month a resolution imposing sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme if it failed to suspend sensitive nuclear work by 21 February.

Russia, a veto-holding member of the Council, had repeatedly vetoed sanctions and contributed in softening punitive measures in the final resolution draft voted on 23 December.

[Ryan Ruck]

Putin Sends Message To Iran's Supreme Leader To Strengthen Ties

Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent a message on expanding mutual ties to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the official IRNA news agency reported on Sunday.

The message was submitted on Sunday to Khamenei by Russia's Security Council Secretary Igor Ivanov, who arrived in Tehran Saturday night for talks with Iranian officials, IRNA said.

During his meeting with Ivanov, Khamenei said that Iran and Russia can serve as partners in the political, economic, regional and international domains.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran welcomes all-out promotion of relations with Russia, believing that capacity for expansion of ties between the two sides is higher than expected," Khamenei was quoted as saying.

The Iranian supreme leader pointed out that Iran and Russia hold half of the world's total gas reserves and "the two countries through mutual cooperation can establish an organization of gas exporting countries like the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)."

For his part, Ivanov said that Putin believes the two countries should use all their capacities for promotion of strategic relations and cooperation at bilateral, regional and international levels.

Calling his talks in Tehran "positive," Ivanov said Moscow believes prospect of cooperation between the two countries is "very good and promising."

However, the IRNA report did not mention whether Khamenei and Ivanov discussed Iran's controversial nuclear issue, although the Russian security chief's visit came amid increasing international tension over Tehran's atomic program.

During his visit on Sunday, Ivanov had also held talks with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani.

In his meeting with Mottaki, Ivanov stressed his country's pledge to complete Bushehr nuclear power plant project on the scheduled date, according to IRNA's earlier report.

[vector7]

Is Russia Becoming Iran’s Diplomatic Godfather?

Ariel Cohen

November 2, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Moscow has shown yet again that it is determined to protect Iran’s controversial nuclear program. Russia and China have asked Yukiya Amano, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) director general, to stall U.S.-backed plans to publicize information on Iran’s nuclear program. This information is available in a diplomatic note acquired by the Associated Press.



As the leaked IAEA document suggests, Moscow and Beijing should not provide international cover to Tehran’s burgeoning nuclear program. Even the Soviets knew better than that.

The “reset” policy paradigm between U.S. and Russia continues to struggle.

Principal irritants between Washington and Moscow remain intact, making the “reset” a charade. As The Heritage Foundation repeatedly warned, the “reset” program has been a “bet on the wrong horse”—President Dmitry Medvedev, little more than a placeholder for Putin, has deluded Washington with conciliatory rhetoric aimed to build trust in the Kremlin. The now-imminent return of Vladimir Putin as Russia’s president could expose the “reset” for what it is as he toughens Russia’s foreign policy stance, including on Iran. Emphasizing relations with Medvedev was a bad bet.

A diplomatic note from Russia and China to Amano reveals serious disagreements between East and West in the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) on handling Iran’s nuclear activities. The U.S., Britain, and France demand that Amano share all the information available, including on Iran’s suspected experiments with nuclear weapon components. They suggest that he reveal the details at the upcoming IAEA Board of Governors meeting in November, which includes representatives from 35 member states.

Meanwhile, Russia and China are doing their best to conceal the damning information. Moscow and Beijing issued a joint statement urging Amano to “exercise caution,” warning that making the information public would be “untimely and inappropriate, because that would drive Iranians into the corner, and their willingness to cooperate on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program may disappear.”

Moscow has longstanding trade and diplomatic connections with Iran and thus attempts to pose as the middleman in the six-party nuclear talks that include U.S., China, Russia, Great Britain, France, and Germany (known in the diplomatic lingo as P-5+1, after the Permanent Five members of the UNSC).

However, as we wrote last year, the Kremlin was reluctant to make any compromises with the White House on Iran, even when Russia agreed to support the watered-down UNSC sanctions and cancelled the S-300 anti-aircraft missile sale to the ayatollahs. Today as before, Moscow is trying to fly diplomatic cover for Tehran, which is a Russian arms customer and a geopolitical battering ram to pound the U.S. and its allies in the Persian Gulf.

Moscow’s efforts to protect Iran from international pressure actively undermine weapons of mass destruction (WMD) nonproliferation efforts, which used to be an area of active cooperation between Russia and the West. Even the USSR refrained from sharing or selling its nuclear “know-how”—with the exception of China in the 1950s—as a part of its nuclear deterrence strategy based on the UNSC P-5 monopoly.

That has changed in the last 20 years. Even though last year Russia supported sanctions against Iran and cancelled the deal to sell the S-300 missile complex to Tehran, today the progress is being reversed, to the satisfaction of the Russian military-industrial complex.

This course of action by Moscow increases the danger of Iran actually acquiring nuclear weapons. This may prompt Western powers and Israel to launch a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which would destabilize the entire region and send oil prices skyrocketing.

Therefore, the U.S. and its democratic allies should not allow the Kremlin to become a diplomatic godfather for Iran’s dangerous nuclear program.

Preventing nuclear proliferation is one of the basic responsibilities of any great state. The USSR’s leaders understood that, and so should the current administration in the Kremlin. If the Obama Administration believes that the “reset” was about cooperation on Iran, now is the time to get frank with our Russian partners, exposing the dangers Iran poses to its neighborhood and the whole world.