Anti-Missile Defense and Iran's Nuclear Intentions

Two bits of news deserve the rubric: How far do you intend to push this game of chicken?

Missile Defense: U.S. anti-missile defense policy has been misguided. It continues to argue the system’s merits for placement in Poland and the Czech Republic despite the failure of the technology so far when decoys are employed. Yet Russia has been similarly imprudent. Its latest rhetorical fusillade comes from Armed Forces chief Yuri Baluyevsky, who said over the weekend that any missile fired from the anti-ballistic system could inadvertently trigger an automated strike by Russia’s own defenses. Vladimir Putin has been vocal but articulate. Baluyevsky’s remarks, by contrast, are Soviet-era blather.

Iran: And now is the news that Russia has delivered the first nuclear fuel rods to an Iranian power station that’s at the center of Western concerns regarding the country’s enrichment of uranium. In statements today, Russia and Iran confirmed the shipment to the plant near the city of Bushehr. The plant can start six months after the final shipment is made, and it’s not clear when that will be. Meanwhile there’s talk in Russia and the West that this is part of Putin’s plan to get Iran to cooperate with international inspectors, and stop enriching uranium. I’ve argued previously that Putin would like to win the diplomatic prestige to be accorded any person who can resolve the Iranian-Western standoff. Putin must be confident of what he’s doing. But it’s a perilous game.

Photo: Fuzzy Gerdes
Rights: Creative Commons

Blow to Bush: Russia Says No New Sanctions on Iran

Russia today joined China in a public rejection of the Bush administration's effort to increase sanctions on Iran. In Moscow, Russian and Iranian officials announced that they moved closer to finalizing Russian construction of a $1 billion nuclear power plant near the southern Iranian city of Bushehr.

The agreement in itself is unimpressive -- another of those interim pacts in which the parties agree to do something later, in this case to finalize a timetable for completing the plant, which is at the heart of Western concerns about Iran's uranium enrichment program.

But it puts meat on Vladimir Putin's resistance to further Iranian sanctions after a U.S. intelligence estimate last week said Iran had stopped trying to develop nuclear arms four years ago. The Bush administration has continued to push for stepped-up sanctions, saying the new intelligence doesn't mean that Iran is less dangerous.

The Russian position makes it even harder for Bush to get agreement since China on Sunday made its feelings on the matter known when Sinopec, the Chinese oil company, signed a $2 billion oil contract with Iran.

Photo: Daniella Zalcman
Rights: Creative Commons

Russia: Note to Presidential Candidates

This week's U.S. reversal on Iranian nuclear aims is a wake-up call on multiple fronts for those who will run American foreign policy for the next few years.

Among them is this: Vladimir Putin isn't a simple gadfly. Instead, he's one of the most important leaders the U.S. can cultivate over the next few years. Why? Because he's engaging and challenging the U.S. on issues that both countries care about, and happens to get it right -- and the U.S. wrong -- at important times.

As we learned this week, Iran is one. For years the U.S. tried to stampede him into supporting ever-escalating sanctions, leading to possible war, against Iran. But he resisted, asserting that President Bush's claims about Iran's nuclear weapons capability were overblown, and according to the new U.S. intelligence estimate it is Putin's judgment that was correct.

The new Iran intelligence highlights another needed correction: Putin in fact isn't inaccurate -- nor belligerent -- when he asserts that the U.S. presumes to know the only way on foreign policy.

U.S. policy on Russia currently amounts to this: You hurt my feelings.

It would be better to focus on issues, and the main one is energy, the foundation of Russian -- and Putin's -- power, how he's asserting Moscow's prerogatives in Europe and elsewhere.

As readers of this blog know, I think that one of the most potent instruments of power in Europe today is control of the flow of oil and natural gas. Putin has learned the lesson of the momentous U.S. foreign policy triumph last year with the completion of the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline and is conducting his own, much more ambitious pipeline policy.

Putin's strategy is market-oriented -- to cement and increase Russia's current control of 30% of Europe's natural gas market. It so happens, in my opinion, that that aim is incompatible with European and U.S. interests in a more diversified natural gas supply so that no one can dictate terms.

The U.S. is attempting to counter the Russian pipeline thrust, but is late to the game. U.S. energy bureaucrats led by Steven Mann are meeting in Sofia tomorrow and Friday to talk over how the U.S. can polish its strategy, and it'll be interesting to know the outcome.

I personally think that the new intelligence assessment on Iran -- like the previous one -- sounds too smugly certain. Anyone who has read Tim Weiner's excellent Legacy of Ashes can see that the intelligence business is barely manageable at best, like herding cats as the saying goes. But the fact that the intelligence services did not have rock-hard evidence before on Iran's intentions gives little comfort to those reading this week's abrupt, contrary assertions.

And it's equally discomfiting to those who have watched American policy on Russia amount to finger-pointing.

Photo: a2gemma
Rights: Creative Commons

Putin's Churchillian Aspirations

Ninety-dollar-a-barrel oil is wonderful for one's self esteem, as well as for stimulating the deference of one's acquaintances. But can it earn genuine respect?

That is Vladimir Putin's challenge. His best chance of securing that much-craved legitimacy is to pull off a diplomatic miracle. One such as resolving the Iranian crisis.

His high-minded actions and statements with his Caspian Sea neighbors in Tehran this week imply that Putin recognizes this. But can he do it?

One piece of intriguing news involves Putin's meeting with Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. According to Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, Putin gave Khamenei a "message" of which the nuclear issue was a component, and that "we are now examining it."

Yesterday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad undercut Larijani by saying that Putin had not even mentioned the word "nuclear."

Still, let's take Larijani at his word. One enormous factor calling for optimism is that the two parties involved -- Russia and Iran -- would love to resolve the nuclear issue in a way that raises their own diplomatic credentials while diminishing the West's.

It's not known what Putin's message was. But we can imagine. For instance, on the difficult issue of electricity-production, he might have suggested a Russian agreement, for example, to build, supply and manage a self-contained nuclear power facility for Iran. In order to make Iran feel both safe and part of a bigger club, Putin might have suggested a comprehensive mutual defense accord building on the declaration that the Caspian republics made Tuesday. Putin definitely would have included a face-saving measure that allowed Iran to climb down on the nuclear issue without appearing to have done so.

Any agreement that gets Iran to renounce nuclear weapons-making ambitions would catapult Putin, and Russia, into a different and higher global sphere, while improving Iran's image as well.

Putin would not be spending so much diplomatic time and effort simply being a spoiler. He would receive -- and deserve -- genuine deference.