MOSCOW. (Vladimir Yevseyev for RIA Novosti) - U.S. President Barack Obama's first visit to Russia has produced several surprises. Nobody expected it to boost cooperation in the sphere of ballistic missile defense, yet the sides signed a joint statement on the issue on July 6. It stipulates the establishment of the Joint Data Exchange Center, which is to become the basis for a multilateral missile launch notification regime.
"If the threat from Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile program is eliminated, the driving force for missile defense in Europe will be eliminated," Obama said in his remarks prepared for delivery to graduates of Moscow's New Economic School on July 7.
Back in February, Obama wrote in a letter to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that the U.S. "would not need to proceed with the interceptor system" in Europe if Russia helped convince Iran to halt "any efforts to build nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles."
At that time, the Russian leaders rejected the possibility of such an exchange. But Washington persisted, for several likely reasons.
First, the United States cannot resolve Iran's nuclear problem single-handedly.
Second, Iran has greatly progressed in its nuclear and missile programs. As of the end of May, 4,920 centrifuges were actively enriching uranium at its Natanz secret nuclear facility, 2,132 centrifuges were installed and undergoing dry-run tests, and a further 169 machines installed but not spinning.
Third, Iran and North Korea continued cooperating in the missile and possibly nuclear spheres.
Fourth, the United States wants to enhance its security against the potential missile threats coming from Iran and other countries by deploying ABM systems outside its national territory.
No serious politician in Iran - not even former presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi - would dare demand an end to its nuclear and missile programs. Iranians are proud of these projects, and besides, billions of dollars have been invested in them.
However, the situation has not yet calcified into a stalemate. Despite its aggressive rhetoric, Tehran continues to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency and is so far producing only low-enriched, not weapons-grade uranium.
Iranian officials claim that they only want to have the capacity to independently produce fuel for the Bushehr nuclear power plant. If this is indeed so, the international community can help it by certifying its uranium as nuclear fuel.
At the same time, Iran has been energetically developing its nuclear infrastructure, which can be used as a research and technology basis for creating nuclear weapons.
At first glance, there are no serious reasons for concern, because Japan, Germany and several other countries have similar capabilities that can turn them into nuclear powers within months or years. But these countries have no conflicts with their neighbors, and therefore their nuclear infrastructure does not seem threatening.
But Iran is a completely different matter. It created its nuclear program secretly, with forays into the black market of nuclear materials and technologies and assistance from Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founding father of Pakistan's nuclear industry, who confessed in 2004 that he had been involved in a clandestine international network of nuclear weapons technology proliferation from Pakistan to Libya, Iran and North Korea.
Iran used that network to import its first gas centrifuges complete with technical documents, and its uranium enrichment facility at Natanz was designed as a high-security installation.
It would seem that Russian-Iranian relations should not be a cause for concern. However, the Iranian regime is highly unpredictable and its ideology is based on orthodox Khomeinism, the religious and political doctrines of the Ayatollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic in Iran in 1979. One of its features is support for radical Islamic movements.
At present, over 20 million Russians live within the range of Iran's Shahab-3 missile, which is a major potential threat to Russia. This is why the Kremlin has opposed the militarization of Iran's nuclear program and supported the international efforts to curtail its missile program.
In other words, the United States and Russia are both interested in a nuclear-free Iran, and this aspiration can be used as the basis for cooperation in this area. But Moscow does not see a direct connection between Tehran's nuclear ambitions and the U.S. missile defense plans for Poland and the Czech Republic.
Moreover, Iran is not the only Mideast country with an advanced missile program and an interest in creating a nuclear infrastructure.
This is why Russia insists that we should start by analyzing missile threats before taking a joint decision on ABM deployment. This approach allows for an easy integration of available information systems and selection of the best sites for the deployment of the requisite strike systems.
Vladimir Yevseyev is a senior researcher at the International Security Center at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of World Economy and International Relations.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
