Despite recent and repeated assurances from Obama Administration officials that Russia remains a productive and essential ally of Western efforts to secure a permanent nuclear deal agreement with Iran that keeps the Islamic Republic from obtaining the means to develop a nuclear weapons capability, there evidence appears to indicate that rather than helping the West prevent Iran from developing a nuclear infrastructure, Russia is in fact accelerating its efforts to help Iran develop that infrastructure.
In addition to ongoing negotiations between Tehran and Moscow on a $10 billion Iranian oil for Russian food and nuclear technology barter deal, Iran announced on Sunday that the two powers have opened a new round of negotiations on electric power deals.
Iran’s state controlled Mehr news agency reported that Iran’s energy minister met in Moscow on Sunday with his Russian counterpart to discuss Russian assistance in the construction of hydro-electric power plants and the possibility of Iran importing up to 500 megawatts or Russian produced electric power.
The interim nuclear deal between Iran and the P5 Western group that includes Russia has opened a floodgate of commercial traffic between Tehran and Moscow as businesses rush at the change to re-establish and grow economic ties.
Meanwhile back in Iran, leaders of the Islamic Republic are offering scant support to Western apologists who argue that prospects for a permanent deal that truly does curb Iran’s nuclear program remain strong. Since signals from Iran are very much to the contrary, those signals remain largely unreported in the West.
Rather than preparing Iranians for any compromises with the West on its nuclear program, Iran’s leaders are promising and doing the opposite: they are intensifying their promotion of Iran’s nuclear weapons program by expanding construction of national shrines built to memorialize Iran’s nuclear scientist the regime claims have been executed by Israeli agents and spending tens of millions of dollars to build a national Holy Defense Museum in the picturesque hills 20 miles north of the capital.
Museum displays include blood colored shrouds draped over the shells of what the regime says are cars destroyed by Israeli planted car bombs.
Speaking to a large crowd in a sermon recently broadcast on national television, the head of Iran’s nuclear agency said that supporting Iran’s nuclear program is as important a religious obligation of every Iranian citizen as is helping the poor and observing laws of sexual piety. Marking last week’s official “National Nuclear Technology Day” state holiday, Iran’s Supreme Leader declared that Iran’s nuclear progress and achievements to be “unstoppable.”
The US and its Western allies have already significantly backed off their original demand that Iran comply with UN resolutions that forbid the Islamic Republic from having and nuclear fuel production capabilities; that it dismantle its nuclear facilities and destroy or export all of its previously illegally enriched uranium. Now, all they hope to achieve is to perhaps get Iran to slow down its nuclear fuel production capability.
Ali Akbar Salehi, the Chairman of Iran’s Atomic Energy Administration responded to those hopes by announcing that Iran rather than slowing down its nuclear fuel production capabilities, Iran would instead be constructing and installing at least 30,000 new state-of-the-art uranium enrichment centrifuges.
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