The Russia-China Axis. Douglas E. Schoen

its partner China, Russia has steadily argued against a military strike on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure while thwarting the effectiveness of UN sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program, sanctions that Moscow itself has voted for.³² Sergei Ryabkov, the Russian deputy foreign minister, even published a 2012 study in a Russian security journal titled “Further Sanctions Against Iran Are Pointless.”

      That’s a handy self-fulfilling prophecy: Sanctions against Iran have proved as pointless as Russia and China can make them. Neither power supports sanctions that would genuinely force the Iranian regime to reconsider its nuclear policies; they block sanctions that would impose embargoes on energy or arms. Instead, Russia and China put their stamp of approval only on narrowly tailored penalties that would supposedly prevent Iran from weaponizing its nuclear energy.³³ Yet even this goal has not been achieved.

      “Today is a historic day and will be remembered in history,” said Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization in August 2010, as he marked the start-up of the Bushehr nuclear power plant, a core component of Iran’s “peaceful nuclear program.” As Salehi spoke, trucks rumbled into the site, carrying tons of uranium to be loaded into the reactor, signaling the beginning of its operational capacity. Over the next two weeks, the trucks loaded 80 tons of uranium fuel into the reactor core.³⁴ The 1,000-watt reactor began providing electricity to Iran in 2011.

      The Bushehr reactor, situated on the Persian Gulf coast, wouldn’t exist today without Russia. Its construction, development, and operation are the product of nearly two decades’ worth of Iranian cooperation with the Russian business and scientific establishments. And Russia is considering whether to help the Iranians build a second reactor there.

      Meanwhile, clandestine Russian involvement has been essential to Iran’s development of a heavy-water reactor in Arak, which at full capacity will be capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium. Russian support for the Iranian program is so extensive that some Iranian facilities are simply adapted from Russian designs. This is the case for the Arak reactor, based on a design by NIKIET, the same firm that designed the Soviet Union’s first reactors. The Arak reactor, and the enlarged version of it planned at Darkhovin, will be capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium.³⁵

      Iran has refused to cooperate with UN inspectors’ requests for information about the Arak reactor’s design and other specifications while insisting that it has no intention of weaponizing these capabilities.³⁶ The United States is asked to take such claims on faith—despite Iran’s long history, especially under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, of making threats to annihilate Israel and otherwise confront the Western democracies.

      The Russian-Iranian alliance is rich in irony, given a long history of antagonism between the two nations that lasted until the end of the Cold War. After the Cold War, however, the old adversaries came to realize that they had more goals—and more fears—in common than not. Today, three core concerns hold the alliance together:

       • A mutual wish to reduce American influence in Central Asia, where both countries would like to increase their clout—a goal that seems more attainable with the U.S. strategic retreat under President Obama

       • A mutual interest in opposing radical Sunni movements, such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Though these organizations are best known for their opposition to the West, their historical and religious roots make them anti-Shia (Iran is a predominantly Shiite nation) and anti-Russian as well.

       • A mutual desire to oppose and defeat secessionist movements—in Iran, from the Kurds, and in Russia, from the Chechens—and to clamp down on internal dissent against their own regimes³⁷

      Understanding these shared interests is crucial if the United States is to grasp fully why the Russians act as they do. From the U.S. perspective, Iran is simply a rogue regime: It is working to develop nuclear weapons, despite UN sanctions; it is the world’s leading nation-state sponsor of terror, especially of Hezbollah in Lebanon; it is the staunch ally of the Assad regime in Syria; and it oppresses and even kills its own people when they attempt political expression. To be sure, President Rouhani has made substantial headway in dispelling this image of Iran. In pitching a new, moderate Iran, Rouhani told the United Nations General Assembly in September 2013, “No nation should possess nuclear weapons, since there are no right hands for these wrong weapons.”³⁸ He made a sharp contrast with his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who came to New York last year to criticize Israel, deny the Holocaust, and suggest that the 9/11 attacks were the handiwork of Americans. That said, Rouhani called on Israel to give up its nuclear weapons and sign the Nonproliferation Treaty while insisting on Iran’s right to a civilian nuclear program.

      The Obama administration has tried repeatedly to get Moscow’s help in increasing pressure on Iran. And although the Russians cooperated at the negotiating table in connection with the November 2013 Iranian nuclear accords, the agreement, as we noted in Chapter 1, is fatally flawed and will do nothing to halt or even hamper Iran’s nuclear program. Benjamin Netanyahu justifiably called the agreement “the deal of the century” for Iran.³⁹ Somehow American negotiators saw fit to allow Tehran to continue enriching uranium and proceed with major components of its nuclear program—centrifuges, weaponization, and ballistic missiles—all while Iran continues to deny access to its military sites, particularly the Parchin base, where weapons work is believed to have taken place.⁴⁰ Yet the United States is moving ahead with its $7 billion in sanctions relief.

      But the Russians see things differently. For them, Iran is a bulwark against American meddling and influence. Tehran’s intransigence and its challenge to U.S. regional prerogatives force the Americans into enormous expenditures of capital, resources, and diplomatic energies. As Russian scholar Alexei Arbatov notes, Moscow views Iran as a growing “regional superpower” that can balance the power of Turkey and American military and political encroachment in the Black Sea/Caspian region and the Middle East.⁴¹ Vladimir Putin also places Iran at the center of American plans to intervene in the Middle East. He believes, according to former Kremlin adviser Sergei Markov, that the U.S. is actually trying to destabilize the region, and he is convinced that the best policy is to bolster Iran and assure its leadership that it will not meet Libya’s fate.⁴²

      The Russian-Iranian relationship has many components. Economically, the two countries have a trade relationship worth about $4 billion annually, much of it military trade. Russia is Iran’s biggest source of foreign weapons, supplying $3.4 billion in arms sales since 1991. The trade has helped Iran modernize its defenses while serving as a shot in the arm for Russia’s military-industrial sector, helping it survive many lean years.⁴³

      Putin and the former Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, not only collaborated to protect the Assad regime in Syria, they also worked “to dominate Iraq—Russia, by signing oil and arms contracts; Iran, by bribing politicians and tribal chiefs and maintaining sleeper cells in the Shiite-majority provinces,” argues Amir Taheri. He points out that Iran hosted a Russian naval task force that was making a “goodwill” call on the Strait of Hormuz, through which passes a quarter of the world’s oil. If Russia and Iran together gain the upper hand in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, they could secure “a contiguous presence from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.” All of this would also put more pressure on NATO ally Turkey and weaken the West in the region.⁴⁴

      But the nuclear alliance is most worrisome. The Russian-Iranian nuclear relationship began in the 1990s, when a troubled Russia began transferring nuclear technology and expertise to Iran. Russian scientists were soon traveling to Iran as part of an extensive, clandestine network, offering the Iranians assistance with missile and nuclear-weapons programs. A mid-2000s CIA report issued this finding: “Despite some examples of restraint, Russian businesses continue to be major suppliers of WMD equipment, materials, and technology to Iran. . . . Specifically, Russia continues to provide Iran with nuclear technology that could be applied to Iran’s weapons program.” The head of Israeli intelligence accused the head of the Russian Atomic Energy Ministry of using Iran as a source of employment for Russian nuclear scientists and also as a source of foreign reserves, desperately lacking in Russia at the time.

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