As expanded negotiations over Iran’s contested nuclear program (including direct U.S. participation for the first time on October 1) get under way, Russia’s participation is seen as key. After the US change of plans on the anti-ballistic missile shield in Europe, Russian president Dmitri Medvedev said at the UN in New York that “sanctions are seldom productive but they are sometimes inevitable.” His comment made headlines and instilled cautious optimism in Washington. Is the Kremlin changing its mind about Iran and will Russia’s cooperation help resolve the nuclear issue?

As long as Moscow gains from the ongoing standoff between Tehran and Washington, its participation in these new six-party talks will hardly be constructive. To be sure, the nuclear-armed Islamic Republic poses a threat to Russia due to geographic proximity and Russia’s large and disgruntled Muslim population. However, Moscow has no interest in resolving the nuclear problem quickly.

First, if the six-party talks drag on as the previous discussions with the EU countries did, Russia will reap economic benefits. On the one hand, Iran’s large natural gas reserves remain out of European reach, reinforcing the EU’s reliance on Russian energy. On the other hand, Iran is itself becoming more dependent on Russia for trade and investments. Russia supplies Iran with advanced conventional arms and is its sole nuclear partner. Having purchased Bushehr nuclear reactor from Russia in 2005, Iran promised to buy more, which would help Russia’s struggling nuclear industry. The volume of trade between the two countries reached $3.7 billion per year in 2009. An integration of Russian and Iranian energy economies would bring Russia even more profit. In fact, Russia could even capitalize on even extreme measures like a US or Israeli military strike on Iran, as it would raise the oil prices and bring international opprobrium on the United States.

Second, Russia shares Tehran’s distrust of the West, fear of US hegemony, and resentment of the double standards in the international system. Right before G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh, the United States criticized both Russia and Iran over human rights violations. The memories of US and EU sanctions against Russia as well as their condemnation of the Russian-Georgian War last August are also fresh. All this makes Moscow’s allying with the West against Tehran highly unlikely.

Third, Iran’s significance on a regional and global scale makes it a great friend and ally, and Russia is not averse to enhancing its prestige in the Middle East at the expense of the United States. Unlike Washington, which, at least from the Russian perspective, is encircling Russia with NATO, inciting separatism along its borders, and meddling in its internal affairs, Iran overlooks Moscow’s roughshod treatment of Muslims in Chechnya and Dagestan and does not seek to foment ethnic nationalism in Russia’s southern regions. Moreover, Washington’s recent gains over Moscow in the former Soviet Union underscore the need for Russia to compensate for its losses and avenge its wounded pride by encroaching on the US interests elsewhere.

As a result, Russia will continue using Iran as a bargaining chip vis-à-vis the United States. Well aware of the value of its support in solving the Iranian nuclear issue, Moscow will try to win maximum concessions from the United States on issues like NATO enlargement, strategic arms reduction, and missile defense. As long as Iran plays along, Russia will continue its balancing act between Iran and the West, playing both sides and keeping all options open.

Given its interest in prolonging the negotiations, Moscow’s meaningful participation is likely to cost excessively high. Even if the United States foots the bill for Russia’s supporting yet another round of sanctions, Iran’s nuclear ambitions will not diminish. In fact, Moscow did support, however half-heartedly, three previous Security Council injunctions against Iran. Nevertheless, Iran braved the international obloquy and its economic consequences and, one could argue, even gained from the sense of injustice and anti-Westernism the sanctions cultivated.

Therefore, the expectations of Russia should be very low. Moscow will not play an active and constructive role in resolving Iran’s nuclear crisis. Even if the “reset” in the US-Russian relationship actualizes, the potential of the six-party talks seems to have reached its limits. Today, even the four Western negotiators – the United States, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom – fail to agree on the imminence of the Iranian threat, including Tehran’s progress in designing a nuclear warhead. With Russia and China at the same negotiating table, generating a concerted effort to stop Iran’s nuclear program is unlikely to succeed.

Thus, the only way to achieve progress is for Washington to engage in direct negotiations with Tehran, if not on the basis of mutual interests, then at least on the basis of quid pro quo, and start repairing its relationship with the Islamic Republic. Among other things, the two states could discuss a possibility of US-Iranian cooperation in economic matters – not as a reward for Tehran’s concessions but as a foundation of a relationship, in which concessions would be more easily made. The Obama administration should capitalize on the popularity and goodwill it has enjoyed in the international community to circumnavigate Russia’s intentional duplicity and go to Iran directly. If successful, this approach would help the United States to create stronger bonds in Islamic world, put the nuclear issue into a broader context, increasing Tehran’s costs of incompliance, and eventually make the attainment of US foreign policy goals less dependent on the fickle commitment of states like Russia.

An important aspect of the US-Iranian relationship could be the very issue that divides the two states now. It is time to realize that Iran’s nuclear program can hardly be stopped – even Ahmadinejad’s political opponents did not dispute its realization. Iran may or may not be seeking to build a nuclear weapon; the near future will hardly bring enough evidence proving Tehran’s intentions. While the United States can hardly read Ahmadinejad’s and Ayatollah Khomeini’s minds, it can certainly work on ensuring that “nuclear Iran” will not come to mean nuclear-armed. Like Moscow, Washington could work with Tehran on the development of Iran’s civil nuclear program, including enrichment activities on the Iranian territory, provided they are conducted in a transparent manner. An IAEA-monitored enrichment facility in Iran could help monitor its nuclear progress, put a check on Russia’s influence on the Iranian nuclear industry, and potentially prevent weaponization of Iran’s nuclear program.

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