DAR AL HARB - RUSSIA: WHY HAVE THE NEO-SOVIETS SIGNED ON TO FIRMER SANCTIONS AGAINST IRAN ?!?

Little Sweaty Fist Why is Putin now getting tough on Iran?
BY BRET STEPHENS

"This is very easy to understand," said Russian President Vladimir Putin last year, explaining his idea of an energy policy. "Just think back to childhood when you go into the street with a sweet in your hand and another kid says, Give it to me. And you clutch your little sweaty fist tight around it and say, What do I get then?"

So why, when it comes to the Iranian nuclear file, has Mr. Putin finally opened his little sweaty fist, signing on--with no apparent compensations--to additional U.N. sanctions on the Islamic Republic while calling a halt to Russia's construction of the nuclear reactor at Bushehr?
That's the $64,000 question to which nobody seems to have anything better than a partial answer. Nearly from day one of his presidency, Mr. Putin has been Iran's best friend at the U.N. and, not so coincidentally, the leading supplier of its advanced conventional weapons. In 2000, the Kremlin tore up the so-called Chernomyrdin Agreement, a secret protocol negotiated by then Vice President Al Gore, in which Russia pledged to stop selling arms to Iran within five years. In 2002, deputy foreign minister Vyacheslav Trubnikov went out of his way to state that "Russia does not accept President George W. Bush's view that Iran is part of an 'axis of evil.'"
Since then, Russia has openly supplied Iran with sophisticated surface-to-air missiles. There are reliable reports that Russia has also assisted Iran covertly with its ballistic-missile technology. The Bushehr deal, itself valued at $1 billion, was intended as just the first of five planned reactors, worth $10 billion. Russian diplomats have diluted to near-insignificance the sanctions imposed so far by the U.N. In January, Russian Security Council Secretary Igor Ivanov paid a call on Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. It seems the meeting went well: "The Islamic Republic," said the Ayatollah, "welcomes all-out promotion of relations with Russia, believing the capacity for expansion between the two sides is higher than expected."

And then, on March 19, Iranian, European and U.S. sources reported that Russia had informed Iran that it would not supply the reactor with the uranium it needs to function unless Iran complied with U.N. resolutions calling on it to suspend its enrichment program. And citing a payment dispute, the Russians also began pulling some of their 2,000 personnel from the site, while officially claiming it was a routine staff rotation. At the Security Council, U.S. diplomatic sources confirmed that Russia had been remarkably cooperative in negotiating Saturday's unanimous resolution on Iran, going so far as to blunt an attempt by some of the nonpermanent members to insert language calling for a nuclear-free Middle East--code for disarming Israel.

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Finally, there is the "little sweaty fist" hypothesis. Critics of the Putin government were dismayed last year when the Bush administration agreed to Russian membership in the World Trade Organization, apparently for nothing in return. The Bushehr volte face may be the delayed (and disguised) payoff. Alternatively, Russia may expect that its sudden pliancy on the Iranian file may yield dividends on the things it cares about most, particularly in what it considers its rightful sphere of influence. In a recent Los Angeles Times op-ed that may have also served as a trial balloon, the Nixon Center's Dimitri Simes proposes two prospective giveaways: The breakaway Georgian "republics" of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which Mr. Putin has long regarded as rightfully Russian, and the looming question of Kosovo's independence, to which Russia is vehemently opposed.

In the meantime, the Kremlin preserves all its options, a reminder, as Glen Howard of the Jamestown Foundation observes, of an old KGB maxim: First create a problem, and then offer to be part of the solution. On that score, at least, Mr. Putin is nothing if not true to type.


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1) Little Sweaty Fist