Neither is This Just a U.S. or Even Merely European or Israeli Concern

Neither is this just a U.S. or even merely European and Israeli concern. Although Russian leaders argue with Washington that there is no Iranian threat because they have their own motives in mind with regard to missile defenses in Europe, in fact they are increasingly apprehensive about Iran’s program. Since 2005, Moscow has advocated a revision of the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, urging that it be globalized to include all missile powers lest Russia withdraw from the treaty. As President Putin told Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2007, “We need other international participants to assume the same obligations which have been assumed by the Russian Federation and the U.S. If we are unable to attain such a goal --- it will be difficult for us to keep within the framework of the treaty in a situation where other countries do develop such weapons systems, and among those are countries in our near vicinity.”

Obviously Putin was talking about Iranian and Chinese missiles. But Russia dare not announce that its “allies” represent the most immediate security threat to it. Even so Russian military men also acknowledge the Iranian threat. Both Deputy Prime Minister and former Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and former Chief of Staff, General Yuri N. Baluyevsky have also acknowledged Iran’s threats. Indeed, in 2002 Baluyevsky publicly admitted that Iran had tactical or what the Rusians call non-strategic nuclear weapons.  Commenting on Iran’s launch in early 2007 of a sub-orbital weather rocket, Lt. General Leonid Sazhin stated that, “Iran’s launch of a weather rocket shows that Tehran has not given up efforts to achieve two goals – create its own carrier rocket to take spacecraft to orbit and real medium-range combat missiles capable of hitting targets 3,000-5,000 miles away.” Although he argued that this capability would not fully materialize for 3-5 years, it would also take at least that long to test and deploy the American missile defenses that are at issue. Equally significantly, Major-General Vitaly Dubrovin, a Russian space defense expert, said flatly “now Tehran has a medium-range ballistic missile, capable of carrying a warhead.” Naturally both men decried the fact that Iran appears intent on validating American threat assessments. Since they wrote in February 2007, Iran has developed the Ashura Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile with a 2000Km range. Indeed Putin’s 2007 proposal for joint use of the Gabala air and missile defense installation in Azerbaijan implicitly acknowledged the validity of the U.S. threat perception concerning Iran. 

For these reasons the issue, then, is not whether or not Iran should have nuclear energy. If it fully complied with its voluntarily accepted treaty obligations and allowed full inspection of its programs this would not be a question. But Iran cannot claim simultaneously that it has the right to break the rules of treaties that it has voluntarily accepted and yet claim that it stands on its rights and will defy the United Nations.  This is not the behavior of a state that has nothing to hide. But it is the behavior of a state that truly does have much to hide.