Firstly, we need to acknowledge that Russia does not want Iran to possess a nuclear arm, even if they enjoy running interference on the issue.
I don't think this can be understood without taking a look at what Iran wants to accomplish, and how the Russians are in many ways in competition with these interests.
If you followed the development of the Bushrer nuclear facility, we can see that this warm friendship can go cold pretty quickly.
Why shouldn't Washington attempt to develop better relations with Iran by engaging? Forget about "rescuing Europe" for a moment and just consider that Tehran and the United States are in many ways natural allies. I think it is a brave, intelligent, and unpopular argument to engage with Iran.
This position by Nasr is utterly ridiculous. Firstly, Iran doesn't give a damn about America's objections to the flow of Iranian gas to Europe. If the Europeans need gas and Iran is prepared to sell it to them, then the USA will be ignored anyway. As far as engaging Iran in talks, Iran has offered to do so many times and the USA has rebuffed it. Now Iran is the one that needs to be courted by the Americans, except the Iranians don't like the Americans at all and may simply refuse to bend to any American propositions. As for the USA accepting building the planned new pipelines on the back of Iranian gas, again, whether the Americans accept this or not is immaterial. It's strictly a matter between the Iranians and Europeans and if they want the gas, they wll build the pipeline, no matter what the Americans have to say about it. The line about "Freeing Europe of Russia's clutches" is garbage. Russia has no designs on Europe - what the problem for the USA is if Russia starts flooding Europe with oil and demanding payment in Euro, breaking the cosy petrodollar scam. Then the Europeans can dump the US dollar because they won't need it to buy oil via NYMEX and IPE and the American economy will go into freefall. That's what the Americans are worried about, because if this happens and the Iranians keep selling their oil for Euro too, the US dollar will lose its reserve currency status and the Americans might actually be forced to pay for oil in real valuta, rather than just printing up their Monopoly money and getting oil by forcing the rest of the world to take their debt. It's all too late for the Americans - they had many chances to be the paternalistic superpower and they blew it with their stupid and belligerent foreign policy. Now they are facing the abyss.
I don't think that "containing" Russia will produce any good results. Remember Nazi Germany? We will just push Russia to extreme path that no one in normal mind would like. Russia is not attacking anyone militarily (don't count Georgia. They asked for it by ignoring everybody else advises and warnings). Russia is trying to find it's new powers economically. So, may be, we should compete in civilized ways instead of choosing a path of confrontation.
Regarding Iran. We get some US politicians saying that Iran is looking to build a nuclear bombs, but at the same time we get independent reviews from UN and US organizations contradicting these claims. What if all this Iran bomb story is nothing more than propaganda? Let's finish research first, and keep all politicians out until we get some real facts.We had enough lies with Iraq.
I don't think this can be understood without taking a look at what Iran wants to accomplish, and how the Russians are in many ways in competition with these interests.
If you followed the development of the Bushrer nuclear facility, we can see that this warm friendship can go cold pretty quickly.
Why shouldn't Washington attempt to develop better relations with Iran by engaging? Forget about "rescuing Europe" for a moment and just consider that Tehran and the United States are in many ways natural allies. I think it is a brave, intelligent, and unpopular argument to engage with Iran.
Russia plays chess close its chest. It doesn't reveal it's grand strategy in the press, for example.
Regarding Iran. We get some US politicians saying that Iran is looking to build a nuclear bombs, but at the same time we get independent reviews from UN and US organizations contradicting these claims. What if all this Iran bomb story is nothing more than propaganda? Let's finish research first, and keep all politicians out until we get some real facts.We had enough lies with Iraq.