Nyet on Iran?

When U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld meet their Russian counterparts in late September, stopping Russia’s assistance to Iran’s nuclear and missile programs will be at the top of their to-do list. But can Powell and Rumsfeld succeed where their predecessors have failed? They will have their work ...

When U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld meet their Russian counterparts in late September, stopping Russia's assistance to Iran's nuclear and missile programs will be at the top of their to-do list. But can Powell and Rumsfeld succeed where their predecessors have failed?

When U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld meet their Russian counterparts in late September, stopping Russia’s assistance to Iran’s nuclear and missile programs will be at the top of their to-do list. But can Powell and Rumsfeld succeed where their predecessors have failed?

They will have their work cut out for them. Deadly Arsenals: Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction, the newest book from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Non-Proliferation Project, offers details of Iran’s extensive shopping list from Russia. The big-ticket item is an $800 million deal to complete a nuclear power plant being built at the southern port city of Bushehr that could be completed as early as next year. Although the facility will only run on low-enriched (nonweapons-grade) uranium, there are concerns that the project could give Iran the technological know-how to construct nuclear weapons. And Russia and Iran signed an arms agreement to deploy an air defense system around the reactor. Russian technological assistance is also critical to the development of Iran’s Shahab ballistic missile series, which could eventually be fitted with a nuclear warhead and have the range to strike targets in Europe.

In July, reports the Washington Post, Russian officials drafted a proposal to build Iran five additional reactors — a plan that could produce billions of dollars for Russia’s nuclear power industry and would greatly amplify U.S. concerns about Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

In the past, the United States has placed sanctions on Russian companies and research institutions accused of aiding Iran’s nuclear missile efforts, with limited results. Current thinking about how best to end Russian assistance to Bushehr ranges from staging a preemptive strike on the plant to forgiving all of Russia’s Soviet-era debt if it ends nuclear cooperation with Iran. Two former government officials — former National Security Council official Gary Samore and former Assistant Secretary of State Robert Einhorn — have laid out one possible solution in the Summer 2002 issue of Survival: Under the eyes of international monitors, Iran would send all spent fuel from the reactors back to Russia and abandon pursuit of plutonium extraction technology. Russia would agree to tighten enforcement of laws restricting the export of missile technology, especially to Iran.

Perhaps the new, close personal and political relationship between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush might pay off where coercive measures have failed. But while that outcome might be a triumph for personal diplomacy, it would be a minor irony for an administration that criticized former U.S. President Bill Clinton for overly personalizing U.S.-Russian relations with former Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

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