U.S. shouldn’t overrate Russian gamesmanship

The Blade

Beware of Russians bearing gifts.
But not too much.

Disguised as a goodwill gesture, Russia’s plan to restart nuclear talks with Iran is in fact a tit-for-tat ploy. It is designed to annoy the United States for imposing visa restrictions last month on Russian officials implicated in the death of a lawyer who had unearthed evidence of massive corruption perpetrated by the regime of Russian Prime Minster Vladimir Putin, who previously served as president.

The plan is Russia’s barely veiled threat to drop its reluctant support of international sanctions imposed on Iran for its apparent efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

It is not the first time Russia has tried to spite Washington in the wake of the visa restrictions imposed after a lawyer for Hermitage Capital Management, once the largest foreign investor in Russia, died in police custody on trumped-up charges of tax avoidance. In fact, he was arrested for alleging a $230 million state-orchestrated fraud.

To the Kremlin, those visa restrictions were like adding insult to injury.

Sergei Magnitsky’s death has become an embarrassment to the Kremlin, which is striving to inspire investor confidence in Russia as the economic downturn threatens the country’s fuel export-dependent economy. While the United States is targeting the implicated mid-to-high-level police with its visa restrictions, the message is that such corruption is impossible without complicity at the very top of the Russian regime, members of which may be the next on the U.S. State Department’s blacklist.

Russia’s initial response this month to the U.S. visa restrictions announcement was laughable.

The Kremlin simply drew up a list of U.S. officials to be barred from entering the country.

This time around, the Kremlin followed up with a measure somewhat less impotent than its initial knee-jerk reaction, but not terribly so.

To be sure, Russia still has some pull in Iran simply because it is in a position to give Iran nuclear assistance that is otherwise next to unavailable.

That’s in spite of the fact that Russia is not even among Iran’s five top trade partners and that Iran has been irked by Russia dragging its feet in starting a nuclear reactor that Russia has been building in Iran’s city of Bushehr for the last 15 years.

On a more threatening note, Iran has promptly announced that it is going to see the Bushehr project through.

Western experts maintain that the plant would be capable of feeding low-grade uranium to Iran’s 3,000 centrifuges that they say are enough to produce nuclear weapons.

The good news is that Russia is likely bluffing.

Even though looting their own country — not the country’s national security — remains the Russian elite’s top priority, arming a neighboring Islamic theocracy with nuclear weapons would be too dicey even for those plutocrats.

The critical part of the Russian elite’s game is to maintain appearances internationally so they can continue with money laundering and maintaining the possibility of fleeing from the wrath of their people should the handouts to loyalists and social programs dwindle once the fossil fuel bubble bursts.

The U.S. leadership would be wise not to overrate the Russian antics.

It would be prudent to continue to play hardball with the Russian kleptocracy and Iranian theocracy — two autocratic regimes that respect and yield to force, not sweet talk. срочный займ unshaven girl https://zp-pdl.com/fast-and-easy-payday-loans-online.php https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-in-america.php hairy woman