Part II: What's Up with Iran and Russia?
Filed under: Middle East ~ Russia
Last week, we asked what readers thought of the current brouhaha over the Bushehr nuclear station Russia is building for Iran -- Russia has claimed Iran isn't making its payments and is threatening a pullout. Assuming the problems are not coming from Iran's side, we asked, what's the explanation? Over 120 votes were cast and the overwhelming majority felt that there weren't actually any problems, but rather only a publicity stunt designed to deflect Western criticism of Russia. The next most likely possibility, readers thought, was that Russia was fooling with Iran's head in order to maximize its influence. Few readers thought Russia had come to its senses on Iran or had never actually intended to make Iran a nuclear state and just duped Iran, and indeed recent news reports do seem to indicate that Iran and Russia are quickly making it up -- so the readership may well have pegged it correctly.
But just for the sake of argument, let's flip the coin: What if the problems are coming from Iran's side? Given Iran's lust for nukes, they'd have to be pretty serious, and therefore quite interesting. Three possibilities are evident: (1) Iran duped Russia, and never intended to allow anti-Muslim, Chechnya-bashing Russia to achieve deep influence over its energy sector, but just used Russia to get the ball rolling; (2) Despite oil revenues, Iran really is strapped for cash due to mismanagement; (3) Iran is in the throes of internal political chaos.
What's your view? We'd like to know! We welcome alternative theories in the comments section.
del.icio.us | 
digg | 
technorati | 
stumble upon | 
furl | 
reddit