News that Vladimir Putin’s regime will proceed to fueling Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor on August 21st is the strategic equivalent of a high-Richter-scale tectonic shift. It is likely to trigger the most far-reaching shockwaves with incalculable repercussions.
For starters, this Russian action offers the latest and most compelling evidence that there has been no real, two-way “reset” of US-Russian relations. Taken together with Russia’s providing advanced anti-aircraft systems, refined petroleum and political protection to Tehran, even the immediate rationale for U.S. appeasement of Moscow – i.e., the Kremlin’s help with the Iranian nuclear program – has not panned out.
In fact, all we have to show for this unilateral reset is systematic accommodation by the United States and business-as-usual by the Kremlin.
In addition, Putin has been: cracking down at home on human rights activists, the political opposition (such as it is) and journalists; intensifying pressure on Georgia, Ukraine and others in the so-called “near-abroad”; and interfering in Khazakstan with a view to squeezing the US logistical pipeline to Afghanistan.
Russia has also been intensifying its own nuclear weapons activities in ways completely at odds with Obama’s denuclearization agenda – and compounding the folly of his New START Treaty. For example, the Kremlin is comprehensively modernizing its nuclear arsenal and delivery systems, sending its strategic bombers to probe US/Canadian air defenses and conducting exercises involving the simulated use of tactical nuclear weapons.
Russia is continuing to spy and otherwise engage in influence operations against the United States; the 11 spies rolled up here recently were just one manifestation of a program continuing at least at Cold War-levels.
Far worse, of course, is the fact that, while the President has indulged in the delusion that he was meaningfully resetting relations with Russia, his administration was simply buying time for the mullahocracy of Iran to realize its nuclear weapons ambitions. The perils associated with the latter error are being compounded by the mistaken belief that we can “live with” a nuclear Iran.
As former UN Ambassador John Bolton has pointed out, unless somebody acts within the next eight days, we are going to be well on our way to testing that dubious proposition. After all, the then-fueled reactor will become much more difficult, if not as a practical matter impossible, to destroy without dispersing radioactive material.
The Iranian reactor fits the profile of a facility that provides cover for the training of the corps of scientists, engineers and technicians needed to build a nuclear arsenal. Its fuel predictably will also provide, in due course, the plutonium needed to make more, and more powerful, bombs.
Consequently, Bushehr is proof positive of the utter futility of the Faustian deal inherent in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’s promise to provide the technology needed to get into the nuclear weapons business to any nation that simply promises it won’t get into that business. Bushehr will also be a model to the many nations in the Middle East – including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Jordan – that say they too are now going to acquire “nuclear power.”
In short, the dangers associated with Bushehr coming on-line extend beyond the enabling of the terrifying nuclear ambitions of a messianic regime – a regime convinced that the return of its long-awaited 12th Imam can be triggered by the sort of apocalyptic conflagration Tehran will soon be in a position to trigger: What is arguably the world’s most unstable region will soon be awash with nuclear weapon state wannabes, only intensifying the prospects that such arms will be used with devastating effects.
Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen has said publicly that we have the contingency plans in place that may allow us to prevent such a nightmare by attacking Iran. Sadly, but unmistakably, it is time to execute them.