Russia: Obama's Deal

Exchange the anti-missile shield with Iran’s nuclear program. This essentially is the content of the message sent by Barack Obama to Dmitri Medvedev. According to the New York Times, the President of the United States proposes to his Russian counterpart to abandon the project of the American shield in Europe if Moscow will put pressure on Iran to end its nuclear activities.

After the new economic “New Deal,” Barack Obama is next working on the diplomatic “Great Deal.” The New York Times revealed on Tuesday the content of a secret letter that the American president is supposed to have sent to his Russian counterpart, Dmitri Medvedev. The missive was supposedly sent to the very hands of the resident of the Kremlin three weeks ago, during a visit to Moscow by high-ranking officials in the Obama administration.

In it, the Democrat proposes to renounce deploying the American anti-missile shield in central Europe if, in exchange, Russia will help Washington prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The terms of the exchange were confirmed by a high-ranking American official interviewed Tuesday by Reuters. “We can confirm that President Obama addressed a letter to President Medvedev. The letter seemed to deal with several subjects, such as anti-missile defense and the manner in which it interacts with the Iranian threats,” he also stressed. “I hope that the new American administration will approach this issue (the anti-missile shield) in a more creative way,” said Dmitri Medvedev on Monday. Here it is.

Moscow, economic partner of Teheran

Russia finds itself to be among the few economic partners of the Islamic republic. In this capacity, Moscow has participated since 1995 in the construction of a nuclear center in Bouchehr, where the testing phase began last week. The Kremlin sustains the arguments of Teheran, according to which the Iranian nuclear program has purely civil motives. But the rest of the international community – the United States and the European Union at the head – fear that the activities of enrichment of uranium are hiding a desire to acquire the atomic bomb.

Questioned on CNN Sunday, the Chief of Staff of U.S. Arms, Admiral Michael Mullen, said himself that he was persuaded that Iran had sufficient fissile material to create this equipment. However, according to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates: “They are far from having an arsenal, they are far from having one single weapon at this stage.” Five resolutions have now already been adopted by the Security Council of the United Nations against Iran, three of which were sanctions, which essentially dealt with the freezing of assets of certain entities or the ban on traveling abroad for certain officials. Without much effect, since the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, repeats to those who want to hear that his country will continue its nuclear program.

What do we expect from Moscow?

It remains to be seen what the new American president exactly expects from Moscow. Does it have to do with asking the Kremlin to use its influence toward Iran to convince it to give the necessary proof of its peaceful intentions? Or rather, where appropriate, to abandon its nuclear program? By weighing the project of the anti-missile shield in Poland and in the Czech Republic – very expensive in the eyes of the White House and perceived as a challenge to the national security of Russia –Barack Obama surely expects more. That Moscow vote on more stringent sanctions in the U.N. – an embargo on weapons and on oil – for example, since it has until now brandished the threat of the right of veto to prevent any agreement of the sort.

One thing is sure: this letter marks a decisive step in bilateral relations between Moscow and Washington, degraded under the Bush era by the anti-missile shield, the war in Georgia, and the enlargement of NATO toward the East. On February 4th, the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, and the American Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, were committed in this, evoking “mutual interest in developing a positive agenda of relations.” With this deal, Barack Obama treats Dmitri Medvedev as an equal, when George W. Bush and Condoleeza Rice accused him of all evils at the height of the Georgian crisis. On the Russian side, the Kremlin was only expecting this. On the American side, the White House is favoring realpolitik to move the files that have been blocked for many months. Dmitri Medvedev, however, believed Tuesday afternoon that it wasn’t constructive to tie the two questions together, declaring himself in favor of a “common” anti-missile child to fight against “global threats.” Both men will have the chance to speak to each other in person on April 2nd, on the sidelines of the G20 summit in London.