Does Russia want Tehran to get nukes? – analysis

By YONAH JEREMY BOB

The IAEA’s leaked late Saturday report escalated its standoff with Iran over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

Already in March, the IAEA publicly condemned Tehran for the first time for failing to explain concealed nuclear material detected by the IAEA and for failing to allow it to inspect two nuclear sites.

The condemnation came on the backdrop of months of behind-the-scenes attempts to get explanations and access to the nuclear sites, to avoid a public escalation, since the IAEA would rather not embarrass the ayatollahs. It likely even dates back to late April 2018 or September 2018, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed to the world various Iranian nuclear violations discovered by a January 2018 Mossad operation inside Tehran.

Add to this that the IAEA has a new director, Rafael Grossi, who was not involved in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and that, together with the lapse of time, explains why the world’s normally quiet atomic energy inspectors are now raising the temperature with the Islamic Republic.

Yet, as the IAEA finds a rare backbone, its efforts are already being sabotaged by Russia.

Sticking to a script that is not interested in truth, but in whatever Moscow’s interests are, Russia’s Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov dismissed the reports that Iran has denied IAEA’s access to nuclear sites.

In uniquely Russian-style, he said that the extended refusal to grant access is not a “denial,” but simply what it looks like: Iran has not yet granted the IAEA access.

This re-defining of Iran’s blatant and clear denial of IAEA access might make sense if we were in February or earlier – around a couple weeks after the IAEA first made the request. But it is untenable after so many months have passed and when Iran has no explanation for its stalling.

Ulyanov’s statement, along with Russia’s continued ignoring of the US “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran, make it clear that his country has no interest in reining in Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

In fact, Ulyanov went even further, attacking the leaking of the report to the media, instead of dealing with the Islamic Republic’s potential nuclear violations.

Probably the only question now is how far Moscow would go in ignoring Tehran’s violations.

Are they just siding with Khamenei at tactical points in order to undermine the US pressure campaign and any agency or country that seems to be pushing Iran to comply with the 2015 nuclear restrictions?

Or are Ulyanov’s comments a sign that Russia no longer opposes Iran developing nuclear weapons?

Most analysts would probably say the former and that Moscow would still oppose Iran openly breaking out to getting nuclear weapons. This would simply be because Russian President Vladmir Putin does not like anyone else getting too powerful and would rather sell civilian nuclear items to Iran that have it become completely independent.

But if Khamenei continues to block IAEA inspections, how does the West or Russia know what progress Iran is really making?

The only “good” news from the IAEA’s latest report is that the Islamic Republic has kept its uranium enrichment quality at a level low. According to the leaked report, Iran jumped around another 500 kilograms in enriched uranium in three months and if they keep at that rate, they will probably have enough low-enriched uranium for two nuclear weapons three months from now.

But when Iran passed the low-enrichment nuclear weapons threshold in March, The Jerusalem Post learned that top Israeli officials were not in crisis mode because Tehran had stayed away from medium enrichment levels like 20% or 60%, let alone the weaponized level of 90%.

From that perspective, even as Iran’s nuclear uranium enrichment stock continues to grow, they are not getting any closer to a nuclear bomb as long as they keep all of their uranium at low quality levels.

The assumption has been that Khamenei will not make any other major moves in any direction before the November US presidential election.

The only question now is whether IAEA versus Iran tension will boil over before then? And, and if not, will that tension frame the nuclear standoff post-election, or will Russian support for Tehran blunt the impact of this new pressure?