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Iran : Victim of a partial deal about AMB
19.09.2009

In 2008, Obama offered Putin to reject AMB project if he would accept sanctions against Iran. He denied the offer but this week he partially accepted it and two days after, AMB was partially rejected… | Decoding of a partial deal |



AMB and Russia | On spring 2006, we saw Washington negotiating with Poland about the installation into this country and other former soviet countries of a system of interception of Iranian or North-Korean ballistic missiles (anti-ballistic missile defense base). However North Korea -which was forgotten into the explanations given by Obama- has never obtained any success related to ballistic field and Iran has never carried out any test in this field.

Putin immediately strongly opposed this project because he perceived it as a way to contest Russian ballistic supremacy. The project scared him because it’s by involving Soviets into some costly arms race that Americans exhausted USSR in order to hasten its fall. In order to not bring back the same failure, Putin strongly went against such project by attacking its reason to be : the Iranian ballistic threat. He stated continually that such threat was nonexistent.

AMB secret mission | Washington didn’t pay attention to such remarks because thanks to this so-called ballistic threat it managed to obtain also on spring 2006 the transfer of the Iranian nuclear file to the Security Council. Thus it confirmed the Iranian nuclear threat in order to assent to the necessity to adopt sanctions against Iran. The Security Council adopted a first resolution combined with sanctions against missile industries because it thought then it was involving the United States into some multilateral action that would thus prevent a situation such as Iraq’s one from happening again. The Security Council mistaken because Washington wanted solely to assent to threat as well as sanction necessity in order to make unquestionable its own future economic sanctions against Iran’s trade partners –actually Russia, China, France and United Kingdom, i.e. the other members of the Security Council.

It’s in November 2007 that those countries understood their mistake when right after it implemented the sanctions it considered as useful, Washington revised downwards Tehran’s nuclear capacities in order to dispose of some longer delay to exhaust the mullahs by inches and wring them the magical agreement that would allow the access to Central Asia’s gas reserves. The first ones to understand the trick were the British who would then lose their leadership on oil international market if the United States would manage to be successful. Since then they fight fire with fire by proclaiming Iranian nuclear and ballistic threat on the rooftops.

This trick to make the Security Council members vote against their interests was so enormous that we forgot what the constituents of such trap were : the combination of rumors about the mullahs’ supposed nuclear and ballistic capacities ! We forgot that the AMB project has been since its start a tactical tool ! The United States doesn’t lose anything by rejecting it and they do so in the same way they nuanced the nuclear threat in November 2007 by basing on a new report from American intelligence services.

Consequences for Iran | In the present case such as in November 2007, it’s also question of some nuance : “after the latest -American- piece of information, they -the mullahs- concentrated further on the development of short and medium range capacities”, declared the Pentagon’s spokesperson. This means that Washington regional allies -Israel, countries of Persian Gulf and Egypt- remain threatened : thus there will be no reduction of the sanctions that would be proportional to the reduction of missile range.

Thus Tehran won’t benefit from AMB rejection. Actually, it could even suffer from it because it’s question of a deal between Washington and Moscow : AMB rejection against the end of Russian opposition to sanctions against Iran.

The Deal | Indeed one year ago, Washington offered Moscow to reject AMB project in exchange of the Russian support of the American sanctions against Iran. This is what Moscow just did this week ! Actually it’s almost done because Medvedev announced all of a sudden that he would vote shortly some sanctions against the mullahs at the Security Council !

We can mention some secret deal because Washington didn’t make any comment about such shift although it did so much to obtain it directly via Obama or else via Kouchner or Sarkozy.

It’s not what Washington expected for -support of its sanctions- but this is something important because UNO sanctions legitimate unilateral American sanctions. This is for Washington the insurance of the continuation of its current Iranian policy that involves unilateral sanctions and agreement offers. So we are very far to get an appeasement as it is written by some experts who declare themselves as specialists of Iran.

Heading to new sanctions ? | Russia maybe imagined that the deal wouldn’t benefit to the American policy boost of unilateral sanctions in the absence of ballistic threat. It mistook. Right after this deal which softened on the other hand Iranian ballistic threat, Washington compensated the lack of reasons to get new sanctions with the spreading by the new AEIA management and its AP press agency of a note stating that the mullahs’ nuclear capacities were on the increase ! According to AP, “the experts of the Atomic Energy International Agency -AEIA- assess that Iran disposes of the ability to manufacture an atomic bomb !”

Normally such information should have made Israel jump. This was not the case : with a perfect synchronism, the Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak stated that Iran didn’t represent a threat to Israel’s existence right before he added that he was a supporter “of diplomacy and sanctions hardening !”

Russia is undoubtedly bluffed by such dispositions ! It had been had by Americans. However it should not be complained. It didn’t lose anything into such exchange because it became the arbiter of the future of the mullahs’ regime. Besides the latter didn’t understand anything since they changed their attitude with Moscow by appearing more patient notably regarding Bouchehr delivery date -the alibi of their nuclear program. The mullahs don’t demand anymore any precise date. In parallel, this week, Russians also announced they would settle for half a century in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. This didn’t raise Washington’s wrath. This is highly probable that both Georgian provinces were included into the American deal as a complementary insurance to avoid Russia’s last minute swift. The latter thus obtained two wonderful presents in exchange of its veto lift. It seems that there’s a smell of trouble for the mullahs !

Conclusions | Actually in this issue each one got what it wanted except from the mullahs who lost on every aspect -towards the United States but also towards their dependence on Russia. As they are sure to be sanctioned and unable to proceed to any appeasement under the effect of sanctions because this would appear as the confession of some helplessness that the Arab street would sanction severely, the mullahs didn’t find any other alternative than heading to confrontation. This solely highlights the revolutionary radicalization of their rulers’ speech.

This is what makes trail of strength between Tehran and Washington so charming. Its outcome is complex. Washington does this to keep a hold on the sanctions and avoid any escalation. Shortly it will need to adopt more severe sanctions it doesn’t wish because of its own revelations and the ostentatious uncommunicative attitude of Tehran !


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The french version of this article :
- Iran : Victime d’un deal partiel sur l’abandon de l’ABM
- (19 Septembre 2009)

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| Mots Clefs | Décideurs : OBAMA |

| Mots Clefs | Enjeux : Sanctions (américaines) en cours d’application |
| Mots Clefs | Enjeux : Rétablir les rel. avec les USA & Négociations directes |

| Mots Clefs | Zone géopolitique / Sphère d’influence : RUSSIE |
| Mots Clefs | Pays : Alliance IRAN-RUSSIE |
| Mots Clefs | Enjeux : Alliances Régionales d’ordre stratégique |