Russia faces important strategic setbacks if the Iran nuclear issue is referred to the UN Security Council and will fight behind the scenes to prevent this, despite public comments suggesting Moscow was moving closer to the West on the issue, experts say.
In addition to its high commercial stakes in Iran, Russia is also striving to retain its footing in the volatile Caucasus and Central Asian regions which could be upset dramatically and quickly if relations with Tehran soured, as they would if Moscow joined the West in a UN referral for Iran.
"The main goal of Russian diplomacy at present is to prevent the Iran issue from going to the UN Security Council," said Vladimir Yevseyev, coordinator of the nuclear non-proliferation program at the Carnegie Moscow Center political research institute.
"Russia does not want to lose Iran. Russia will do whatever possible to stop this decision," he said.
Confident assertions by European and US diplomats that Russia has dropped its long-standing resistance to referring Iran to the Security Council are ill-informed and reflect a misreading of the Russian political mix predicating Moscow's policy on the issue, experts say.
Moscow's continued reticence about referring Iran to the UN Security Council was underscored on Tuesday by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who said that sanctions were "not the best and by no means the only way" to resolve the Iran nuclear standoff.
In addition to payments reportedly in excess of US$1 billion that Russian state and private firms will receive under contracts to help Iran build and launch its first civilian nuclear power station, Moscow is determined to nurture its long-term business and economic interests in Iran.
Chances for doing so would disintegrate quickly and permanently if Russia were to walk away from Iran now, the experts explain.
"In attempting to curb Iran's nuclear program, Western countries are also deciding another issue: the removal of Russia from Iran's lucrative energy market," said Radzhab Safarov, director of the Moscow-based Center for Iranian Research and an adviser to the Russian State Duma.
"Construction of the Bushehr nuclear plant is not only economically profitable for Moscow -- it also strengthens its long-term influence in Iran, a key country in the Islamic world and a strategic partner for Russia," Safarov said in an interview with the daily Vremya.
"It is not hard to imagine how Tehran will react, and what will happen to Russia's image, if, in this difficult period for Iran, it sides with the West and votes for sanctions," he said.
Referral of the Iran nuclear issue to the UN Security Council represents a no-win situation for Russia as this could lead to a vote on sanctions against Tehran, forcing Moscow into a stark choice between staying friendly with the West or protecting its many other interests linked to Iran.
For Moscow, that choice is by no means the "no brainer" that some Western officials seem to think it should be, as the Kremlin sees, in its relationship with Tehran, direct links to stability on Russia's southern flanks in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
For instance: Iran, around one-third of whose population is of ethnic Azeri origin, has de facto influence on stability in the ex-Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, which in turn plays an important stabilizing role in the wider Caucasus region, including inside southern Russia itself.
"Iran could easily destabilize the situation in Azerbaijan," Yevseyev said.
He added that good ties between Moscow and Tehran helped keep in check moves by the US to boost its own presence there.
Another example: Iran has particularly close ties with the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan, where much of the population in the south and west of the country derives from ethnic groups also indigenous to Iran.
"Both Russia and Iran have interests in Central Asia and Russia does not want to see Iran's position grow stronger there," Yevseyev said.
He noted that Russia was also facing increasing competition from China for influence in the region.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs