Home |
Site Index |
FAQs |
Contact |
RSS
|
Podcast
home > by publication type > daily analysis > Iran’s Power Brokers
Email
| Author: |
|---|
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad meet in Tehran in October 2007. (AP/Vahid Salemi)
Amid another round of crisis diplomacy on Iran’s nuclear program, Russia and China appear to hold ever more potent cards. Energy-rich Iran has turned to them for financial and political help. U.S. and EU negotiators, meanwhile, need Russian and Chinese support on the UN Security Council to levy tougher international sanctions—or at least a promise not to veto them. The stakes continue to move higher. In March, Iran applied for full membership to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, an intergovernmental security organization headed by Russia and China. Pyotr Goncharov, a political commentator for the Russian news agency Novosti, writes that Iran has more than enough economic cause to gain entry. The real issue, he says, is whether China and Russia are willing to look past (Middle East Times) the nuclear question.
In many ways, they already have. China is Iran’s second-largest importer of crude oil, accounting for 335,000 barrels a day in 2006, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Beijing recently inked a $2 billion deal to develop the Yadavaran oilfield in southern Iran, and is considering investing in Iran’s natural gas sector. Overall trade volume has spiked in the last decade, up from $1.2 billion in 1998 to what an Iranian official said was $20 billion (Press TV). Moscow, for its part, maintains close military ties with Tehran (AP) and sells the country nuclear fuel (Reuters). A visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to Iran in October 2007, capped by a rare welcome from Iran’s supreme leader, was seen as a blow to U.S.-backed efforts to isolate Tehran (CSMonitor).
Talks this week in Shanghai involving Russia, China, the United States, and EU powers yielded no clear end to the impasse (AP). China and Russia favor enticements that would reward Iran for abandoning its enrichment activities; the United States and Western allies, which suspect Iran is developing a nuclear weapons capability, prefer a sanctions-based approach. The UN Security Council approved a third round of sanctions in March, increasing the monitoring of Iranian financial institutions, extending travel bans, and freezing assets. But critics who considered the measure too soft aren’t holding out hope for tougher moves in China this week. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has already said she doesn’t expect major changes.
Nonetheless, there are signs Moscow and Beijing are softening to U.S. pressure. President Bush, who met with Putin on April 6 in Sochi, praised the Russian leader for his commitment to resolving the Iranian nuclear issue. China has also hinted at cooperation. The Associated Press reports that Beijing supplied the International Atomic Energy Agency with information about Iran’s nuclear program.
Amid the stepped-up diplomacy, Iran is hardening its nuclear posture. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced on April 8 that Tehran is installing an additional six thousand centrifuges (Fars) at its Natanz uranium-enrichment facility. Some nuclear experts are skeptical of Iran’s claims (RFE/RL), since past Iranian pronouncements have proven exaggerated. Still, others see reason to tighten the noose. In an editorial, the New York Times writes that while there is consensus Iran is moving closer to the technical know-how to build a bomb, “the big powers can’t come up with a strategy” to put the brakes on.
Beyond the outcome of the Shanghai meetings there is the question of long-term U.S. policy toward Iran. International Herald Tribune columnist John Vinocur argues the Bush administration’s diplomatic blunders have pushed the Iranian problem to the next president. But by 2009 Iran’s ties with regional heavyweights will be further entrenched. An analysis of the blossoming relationship between Iran and China, published by the Asia Pacific electronic journal Japan Focus, argues that U.S.-backed sanctions on Tehran have essentially pushed Iran into Asia’s arms. Kathy Gockel of the Stanley Foundation sees that same trend with Russia.
Weigh in on this issue by emailing CFR.org.
In Termites in the Trading System, Jagdish Bhagwati reveals how the rapid spread of preferential trade agreements endangers the world trading system.
America Between the Wars explores how the decisions and debates of the years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Twin Towers shaped the events, arguments, and politics of the world we live in today.
In The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, Noah Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the sharia—the law of the traditional Islamic state—in the modern Muslim world.
Complete list of CFR Books.
This report argues that the United States must lead with domestic action on climate change and proposes a U.S. negotiating strategy for a global UN climate agreement that includes commitments from all major economies, while also promoting a less formal Partnership for Climate Cooperation that would focus the world's largest emitters on implementing aggressive emissions reductions.
This Task Force report examines changes in Latin America and in U.S. influence there, while taking account of the region's enduring importance to the United States. The Task Force offers an agenda for U.S. policy toward Latin America and identifies four critical areas that should provide the basis of a new U.S. approach.
About Independent Task Forces at the Council.
After two decades of liberalization, many countries around the world are adopting new restrictions on foreign direct investment (FDI) that could retard continued progress. The authors make recommendations for correcting this protectionist drift by proposing guidelines for how countries can better regulate FDI yet still reap its economic benefits.
In this Council Special Report, the authors make a strong case that the Bush administration’s policy of diplomatic isolation of Syria is not serving U.S. interests, and offer informed history and thoughtful analysis of the country and its external behavior.
Complete list of Council Special Reports.
To order Task Force reports, Council Special Reports, and Critical Policy Choices, please call, fax, or order online from our distributor, the Brookings Institution Press: phone +1-800-537-5487, fax +1-410-516-6998.
For information on other reports that are not for sale, or for general publications information, please call +1-212-434-9516 or email publications@cfr.org.
To request permission to reuse Council materials, please email publications@cfr.org or fax +1-212-434-9859.
Please include the complete information of the requested work—author, title, sections/pages to be copied or reprinted, and number of copies to be made—along with a brief description of where and how you would like to reuse the work.
You may also request permission for Council material through Copyright Clearance Center. For more information, please click on the logo below.
Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All Rights Reserved.
