Color the atomic ayatollahs happy. Today, Russia’s Foreign Ministry announced that the country had begun supplying nuclear fuel for Iran’s Russian-designed power station at Bushehr. The shipment of enriched uranium will take place in several stages over the course of two months. The first delivery—weighing 80 tons—was completed this Sunday.
Sundays are now lucky for Tehran. The previous Sunday Sinopec Group, one of Beijing’s state energy giants, signed a $2 billion final contract with Iran’s oil ministry to develop the massive Yadavaran field in the southwestern part of the country.
The inking of the Chinese deal comes more than three years after the initial agreement. Moscow’s delivery of uranium was postponed for about nine months. Why the long delays? Atomstroyexport, the Russian state monopoly, blames Iran’s failure to make payments, and Sinopec cites disagreements over rates of return on its investment. Yet whatever is the truth, both long-running squabbles were indisputably—and I would add “miraculously”—settled within days after the issuance of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear intentions and capabilities.
The most important finding of the NIE relates to Iran’s susceptibility to pressure. Referring to the regime’s nuclear weapons program, the estimate states: “Our assessment that the program probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue than we judged previously.” If in fact this judgment is correct, then it follows that a failure to maintain such pressure could lead to a restarting of Iran’s covert efforts to weaponize the atom. (Here contentions blogger Emanuele Ottolenghi comes to a similar conclusion.) These recent deals with Russia and China, therefore, look like green lights that get the nuclear weapons program back on track (assuming, of course, that it ever went into remission in the first place).
If nothing is done to undo Iran’s business contacts with Russia and China, it will become exceedingly difficult to convince Europe and Japan to curtail their commercial relations with the Islamic Republic. After all, the Russians and the Chinese will fill any order, make any purchase, or commit to any investment that others refuse. Iran is still under two sets of UN sanctions, and, whatever they say, the Russians and the Chinese are helping the ayatollahs weather them.
Can Washington convince Russia and China to end their commercial relations with Iran and rally the rest of the international community? To borrow the stilted phrasing of the NIE, I judge with high confidence that this is the critical question of our time.
