At last week’s hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State John Kerry very breezily and somewhat condescendingly dismissed as “exactly wrong” the concern of Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) about our Russian “partner” in the Iran negotiations.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) shakes hands with Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani during their meeting in Ufa, Russia, July 9, 2015. REUTERS/Alexander Nemenov/
In his opening statement, Kerry had appealed to the authority of “our P5+1 partners.”
…this isn’t just the United States of America. These are other nuclear powers. France, Britain, Russia, China, they have a pretty good understanding of this field and of the challenges…So you’re not just looking at what [the US team] negotiated, you’re looking at what the international community, the P5+1, under the auspices of the United Nations, negotiated. And they’re not dumb…And they’ve signed off on this agreement.
Barrasso questioned whether “Russia truly is our partner in this. We’ve pressed the reset button,” he said. “We saw how that failed. We saw Putin’s belligerence around the world. I believe Russia and Iran teamed up against the United States during these negotiations.”
“You’re exactly wrong,” Kerry replied. “Actually, the Iranians were furious at the Russians on any number of accounts. The Russians, they felt, were not cooperative with them and didn’t help them.”
Without knowing the specific “accounts” of disagreement to which Kerry refers, it is difficult to judge his claim. What seems clear, however, is that the Russians had one large interest that transcended everything else, namely to have sanctions on Iran lifted so Moscow could sell weapons, primarily S-300 Surface to Air Missiles, and nuclear reactors to Tehran. This in turn would provide Iran with more resources to support their common ally with Russia, the Assad regime in Damascus. Moscow’s goal, therefore, was to get any deal that ended sanctions, and thus it didn’t matter much whether it was a good deal or a bad one.
So, Barrasso was right. Even if the Russians may have pressed the Iranians to compromise on some points, they weren’t truly “our partners”.
If Kerry really believes that they were, and wasn’t simply scoring debating points, then it seems that he failed to understand his “partner’s” motivation and consequently underestimated his own leverage. If the Russians believed the US wanted a deal more than they did, there was no reason for them to help us hold out for a better one.
So, the next time Secretary Kerry claims that the Russians were truly our partners because the Iranians were “furious with them on any number of accounts,” the secretary should be pressed to explain why they were furious. Was it because the Russians were being helpful to the US? Or, was it a bit of theater for bargaining purposes? Was the agreement improved at all by Russia’s involvement?
from AEI » Latest Content http://ift.tt/1fHY5fk
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