As Russia becomes increasingly isolated over its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow still holds a card it can leverage over the US and the international community. Washington held many discussions with Russia’s envoy to the Iran nuclear talks, and Moscow might be able to use this for leverage amid the Ukraine crisis, it was reported last week.
The report by The Guardian indicated that Russia is seeking to exploit the negotiations for its own benefit. America’s reliance on Russia in the talks may now put Russia in the position of squeezing both the US and Iran to get what it wants.
“Russia has been accused of trying to take the Iran nuclear deal hostage as part of its wider battle with the West over Ukraine after it threw a last-minute spanner into plans for an agreement to lift a swath of US economic sanctions on Tehran,” The Guardian reported.
Iran’s Tasnim News Agency published a report on the subject that appears to confirm this. Although Tasnim claimed it was relying on The Guardian report, Iranian media don’t just rely on foreign reports for all their information; when they publish information, it is based on an agenda.
That means Iran’s media, which are linked to the government, have an agenda to expose Russia’s double-dealing.
In Iran’s view, Russia has supposedly been on its side at the negotiations in Vienna. But Moscow may be exploiting the hold it has over Iran to squeeze more things out of the deal for itself.
It is already using nuclear blackmail in its invasion of Ukraine, whispering to the pro-Russia lobby in the West that any escalation with “nuclear-armed Russia” could lead to increased conflict. The Kremlin even talked about putting nuclear forces on alert. Moscow now wants to use Tehran as well.
“After months of negotiations in Vienna, a revised deal was expected to be reached within days under which US sanctions would be lifted in return for Tehran returning to full compliance with the 2015 nuclear nonproliferation deal,” The Guardian reported. “But diplomatic efforts have been sent into a tailspin by Russia’s unexpected demand for written guarantees that its economic trade with Iran will be exempted from US sanctions imposed on Russia since its invasion of Ukraine.”
Russia wants “its rights” under the nuclear deal. The curtain is now removed from what has been going on in Vienna. The US was relying partly on Russia, which was playing its own game for its own benefit. This has now been revealed to be a Russian method of using the nuclear talks for its own profit.
Bizarrely, the US administration didn’t see this coming.
“We requested that our US colleagues... give us written guarantees at the minimum level of the secretary of state that the current [sanctions] process launched by the US will not in any way harm our right to free, full-fledged trade and economic and investment cooperation and military-technical cooperation with Iran,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, according to the report.
IRAN IS nonplussed to be treated like a shield by Russia and being used to get Moscow out of the sanctions levied against it because of its aggression in Ukraine.
“The Russians put this demand on the table at the Vienna talks two days ago,” an Iranian official was quoted as saying by The Guardian. “There is an understanding that by changing its position in [the] Vienna talks, Russia wants to secure its interests in other places. This move is not constructive for [the] Vienna nuclear talks.”
The news comes days after reports that Prime Minister Naftali Bennett flew to Moscow amid the Ukraine crisis and rumors that a new kind of Iran deal or sanctions relief was on the way. Russia is only one of the players in this story. France, Germany, the UK and China are ostensibly involved as well.
The Tasnim report said Lavrov wants trade between Iran and Russia to be exempt from sanctions, which means the West would reject the deal. Moscow holds a veto over the deal as well.
Iran doesn’t seem happy. Although it has feigned disinterest in the deal and says it has managed to get around sanctions, it doesn’t want to be used by Russia. The Islamic Republic already has a plan to blackmail the West and now sees Moscow trying to exploit it for its own blackmail.
But Tehran has another agenda. “Iran produces more than two million barrels per day of oil, and if this oil enters the market, its price increase will slow down,” the report said.
Russia benefits from the price increase. Talk of the US banning Russian energy imports would ostensibly drive prices up. Then America would have to ask the Gulf states to compensate for the price increases by increasing supply.
Iran is saying, “Wait a sec, we have lots of oil to sell. Don’t let Russia strong-arm you.”
That is one interpretation. Or Iran and Russia may be playing “good cop, bad cop,” with the latter now playing the bad cop and the former pretending to be good. Either way, “Russia, the world’s largest oil producer, intends to put pressure on the Western economy by raising oil prices further and boosting its production,” Tasnim reported.
Russia has now been exposed not only as an unreliable country in terms of unchecked aggression against Ukraine but also as unreliable in the Iran nuclear talks.