Obama Missile Move Appears To Get Russians Closer To Iran Sanctions

President Barack Obama's decision to undo the Bush Administration's plan to base interceptor missiles in Eastern Europe appears to already be paying dividends.

The Russian government was always hostile to the idea of siting such missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic to counter a theoretical threat from Iranian long-range missiles.

The Russians complained the missiles would change the strategic balance in the region. Thus it welcomed Obama's announcement that missile interceptors would be based elsewhere.

Now the New York Times reports that the Russians seem more willing to talk about potential sanctions against Iran for pursuing nuclear weapons than was previously true. That new inclination on Russia's part appears to be the fruit of Obama's revamped missile plan.

As the New York Times reports:

Earlier this week, Mr. Obama's discussions with President Hu Jintao of China on Tuesday and his meeting with President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia on Wednesday focused largely on Iran, administration officials said. During his meeting with Mr. Medvedev in particular, Mr. Obama pressed his case, expressing pessimism that talks scheduled for next week with the Iranians over the nuclear issue would yield much progress, administration officials said.

 

"The president made clear that while he was willing to engage, he was also clear-eyed about the prospects of that engagement," a senior administration official said.

Mr. Obama had, by that point, made a giant step toward getting Russia more amenable to the idea of sanctions against Iran — something Moscow does not like — by announcing last week that he was replacing President George W. Bush's missile defense with a version less threatening to Moscow. That issue, one administration official said, completely changed the dynamic during Mr. Obama's meeting with Mr. Medvedev.

While it is unclear whether Mr. Obama briefed Mr. Medvedev about the Qum facility during that meeting at New York's Waldorf Astoria Hotel, the two leaders nonetheless emerged with Mr. Medvedev promising, for the first time publicly, that Russia would be amenable to tougher sanctions.

One administration official said that the United States was hoping that with Russia agreeing to tougher sanctions, China would follow. Mr. Obama is planning to visit Beijing and Shanghai in early November, just around the same time that a sanctions resolution is expected to be introduced at the Security Council.

Obama was castigated, particularly by conservatives, for the missile decision. Some accused him of appeasing not only the Iranians but the Russians. Some critics suggested the Russians would do nothing to reciprocate and the early Russian reaction seemed to justify this point of view.

But if Obama's missile decision gets the Russians and Chinese on board for tougher sanctions against Iran, then the U.S. may get a greater near-term strategic payoff from a further crackdown on Iran than it would have gotten from the scrapped missile interceptors.