Russia announced that it will begin loading fuel into Iran's Bushehr reactor this week, marking a further shift in the Iranian nuclear question, writes Amani Maged Following a volley of angry exchanges between Tehran and Moscow, Russia increased its rhetoric against the Iranian nuclear programme last month. However, this has since been forgotten, with a spokesman for Russia's nuclear agency, Sergei Novikov, announcing on 13 August that Russia would begin loading fuel into Iran's Bushehr reactor, the country's first nuclear power plant, on 21 August. At the same time, the Vienna Group made up of the US, Russia and France apparently accepted Tehran's declarations on its nuclear programme as a basis for negotiations, even as the US unveiled further moves to tighten the noose on the Iranian financial system. What accounts for these apparent mixed signals? The Russians began building the Bushehr reactor in southern Iran in the 1990s, with construction dragging on for years and enabling Moscow to use the project to put pressure on its erstwhile adversary, Washington, as well as on Tehran in the hope of gaining concessions on Iran's nuclear ambitions. However, the plant edged its way towards completion in 2009, with mutual interests between Moscow and Tehran ultimately prevailing over historical rivalry between Moscow and Washington. Russian cooperation with Iran on the latter country's nuclear programme should not come as a surprise. The volume of trade between Russia and Iran reached $3.6 billion in 2009, and it is expected to top $5 billion by the end of 2010. The two countries are also exploring 130 projects that would raise their level of bilateral trade to $200 billion over the next ten years, with economic cooperation extending well into the realm of energy. The Russian Gazprom and Lukoil firms are engaged in major oil and gas projects in Iran, and in 2008 Gazprom signed a deal with Iran that would give the company the rights to develop Iranian gas fields, build refineries, and take part in the construction of gas pipelines from Iran to India and Pakistan. Russian-Iranian military cooperation is also an important component of relations between the two countries. Iran is the third-largest buyer of Russian arms, with Tehran buying $6.3 billion worth of Russian military equipment. Over the past few years Russia has exported $9.14 billion worth of arms, military equipment and vehicles to Iran. Under an agreement signed in 2005, Russia committed itself to supplying Iran with S-300 air defence missile systems, and in a subsequent agreement in late 2007 it agreed to sell Iran an SA-15 surface-to-air missile defence system, as well as 30 air defence missile systems to defend the Bushehr reactor. Russia has also agreed to supply Iran with another air defence system, the short-range Tur M-1, at a cost of some $700 million. However, nuclear energy remains the most important, or at least the most sensitive, item in Russian-Iranian cooperation. Moscow has long been instrumental in the development of Iranian nuclear capacities, since the signature in 1995 of a 10-year deal between the two countries committing Russia to supplying the Bushehr plant with fuel and training its staff. Although Iran received the last shipment of the nuclear fuel necessary to operate the plant in 2008, and in spite of the hundreds of millions of dollars Russia has received in payment, the plant has yet to go into operation. Not only did Moscow drag its feet on the construction of Bushehr and on the necessary fuel deliveries, it also skipped promised deadlines for the launch, occasioning flare-ups of temper between the two sides. As a result, the Russian announcement that it will now begin loading fuel into the reactor is actually long overdue in terms of its contractual agreement with Iran. In finally going ahead with the launch of Iran's first nuclear reactor, Moscow has argued that it is helping to prevent Iran from pursuing its own uranium- enrichment programme, since Russia can meet Iranian fuel needs for the plant. With Russia ending a long period of hesitation over the inauguration of the Bushehr reactor, the Vienna Group, too, seems to have overcome qualms of its own with regard to the Iranian nuclear question. However, while the group has finally approved the Iranian declaration signed between Turkey, Iran and Brazil as a basis for negotiation with Iran, the logic that prevailed here was not one of mutual interests but rather one of carrot and stick. While the Vienna Group has offered negotiations by way of a carrot as Iran contends with a number of domestic problems, most notably with regard to its gasoline supplies, Washington has also furnished a stick in the form of further sanctions against Tehran. In its drive to up the economic pressure on the Iranian regime, Washington has announced a new set of regulations that would effectively bar foreign entities from the US financial system if they deal with companies and individuals proscribed by US and UN sanctions. In addition, the US Department of the Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey toured the UAE, Lebanon and Bahrain recently, in order to strengthen support for the sanctions against Iran and to explore ways to promote more effective implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1929. For its part, Tehran has shrugged off the latest step in the American-led sanctions drive. According to a senior Iranian armed forces official, the sanctions will have no effect, and the US itself is uncertain that they will succeed. Washington, he said, had put tremendous time and effort into winning the support of UN Security Council members for Resolution 1929, but all it had reaped so far was failure. According to the official, some of the countries that voted for the sanctions against Iran were still doing business with Tehran clandestinely. Clearly, there has been another shift in the intricate game of the Iranian nuclear question. It is difficult to envision a departure from the triangular logic of mutual interests and carrot and stick, even if this does not rule out the possibility that Russia, the Vienna Group or the US will change their game plans.
