Russia, Iran, and the Reset
Photo: Defencedog
In addition to improving cooperation on other issues, one of the goals of the Obama Administration's effort to "reset" Russian-American relations was to obtain greater help from Moscow with regard to the Iranian nuclear issue. In 2010, it appeared that this policy was highly successful. In June 2010, Russia joined with the US and most other members of the UN Security Council in imposing increased sanctions on Iran for its continued non-cooperation on the nuclear issue. And in September 2010, Russian President Medvedev announced that Moscow would not be shipping the S-300 air defense missile systems to Tehran that it had earlier agreed to do. So far in 2011, though, Moscow has been backpedaling on Iran. President Medvedev has reverted to the earlier Russian line that there is no proof that Tehran seeks to acquire nuclear weapons. Foreign Minister Lavrov has made clear -- repeatedly -- that Moscow not only does not support further sanctions against Iran, but thinks that the time has come to ease them. What could explain this change in Russian behavior? Two developments in particular may have contributed to this. The first was the 2010 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (known as "New START"). For Moscow, the New START treaty was an especially high priority. With Russia not modernizing its nuclear weapons arsenal at the same rate that America has been doing, Moscow was desperate to get the US to agree to the limits imposed by New START since it would be difficult for Moscow to match the American strategic nuclear arsenal if Washington did not. But while Presidents Obama and Medvedev signed this treaty on April 8, 2010, the US Senate's ratification of it was very much in doubt due to Republican concerns about Russia. Russian cooperation with the US on imposing additional UNSC sanctions against Iran in June and Moscow announcing in September that it would not ship S-300s to Tehran may well have been motivated to some degree by a Russian desire to allay these Republican concerns. But once the Senate ratified New START on December 22, 2010, Moscow's incentive to appease the Republican minority there declined -- at least for now. The second factor has been the democratic uprisings that have shaken the Middle East since the start of 2011. Moscow did not seem to be perturbed by the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia in January. Nor did it seem unduly upset by the overthrow of Egypt's Mubarak in February. But when serious opposition to the regime of Muammar Qaddafi arose in Libya, Putin and Medvedev expressed opposition to the democratic uprisings throughout the Middle East. Indeed, Medvedev implied that these uprisings were instigated with the purpose of fostering a similar phenomenon in Russia as well as to break Russia up. Democratic uprisings have also occurred -- to a greater or lesser extent -- in Iran and several other Middle Eastern countries (including Yemen, Oman, and Bahrain). In mid-2009, when the Green Movement burst forth in Iran to protest the widely disbelieved announcement that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won re-election as president on the first ballot by an overwhelming majority, Moscow immediately congratulated Ahmadinejad on being elected to a second term. Moscow had no desire to see a democratic revolution succeed in Iran then -- or now. What accounts for Moscow's more sanguine view of democratic revolution in Tunisia and Egypt but opposition to it in Libya and Iran? This may be due to how Moscow views the differing geopolitical impacts on Russia of change in these countries. The authoritarian regimes that were ousted in Tunisia and Egypt had been closely allied to the US. If the new governments in these countries remain closely allied to the US, there will be no geopolitical change. But if they move away from it, there may be an opportunity for Russia to gain some influence -- or at least some more business -- in them. Libya, though, is a different story. While Qaddafi's relations with the US have improved since 2003, Russia has had much better relations with him than Washington has. A democratic revolution in Libya, then, threatens to increase American and decrease Russian influence in Libya. Russian analysts have long worried that an Iranian-American rapprochement could result not only in Western firms crowding out Russian ones in Iran, but Washington working with Tehran to provide an alternative to Russia as an export route for Caspian Basin oil and gas. A democratic revolution in Iran, then, could have -- in Moscow's view -- profoundly negative geopolitical consequences for Russia and positive ones for America. This being the case, it is not surprising that the Putin/Medvedev leadership wants to strengthen the Khamenei/Ahmadinejad regime in Iran, and not weaken it through imposing additional sanctions -- especially since Moscow views these democratic uprisings as being inspired, or even orchestrated, by Washington. We cannot, of course, be completely positive that the US Senate's December 2010 ratification of New START as well as the 2011 democratic uprisings in the Muslim Middle East are what caused the Kremlin to back off from its previous support for the Obama Administration's policy toward Iran over the nuclear issue. Nor does Moscow's backing off from supporting the Obama Administration on the Iranian nuclear issue in 2011 mean that it won't be more supportive in future. The New START experience suggests that if Senate ratification is needed for something else that Moscow values, it might become more supportive once again. Further, if the democratic uprisings are crushed, spread no further, or bypass Iran, Moscow may once again become more comfortable with joining Washington in pressing Tehran on the nuclear issue. But whatever the explanation for Moscow backtracking on its support for sanctions against Iran, one thing is clear: the Kremlin was not persuaded by American and European arguments about the urgency of the Iranian nuclear issue or of any necessity to continue imposing sanctions against Tehran in order to deal with it. In terms of the Iranian nuclear issue, the Obama Administration's hopes for the reset have not been realized -- nor are they likely to be so.
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