Tehran exploits US-Russian tensions

Jim Lobe
ASIA TIMES
Thursday, August 28, 2008

WASHINGTON – Iran could emerge as a big winner, at least in the short term, from the rapidly escalating tensions between the United States and Russia over Moscow’s intervention in Georgia, according to analysts here.

Whatever waning chances remained of a US military attack on Iran before President George W Bush leaves office next January have all but vanished, given the still-uncertain outcome of the Georgia crisis, according to most of these observers.

Similarly, the likelihood that Moscow will cooperate with US and European efforts to impose additional sanctions on Tehran through the UN Security Council, where Russia holds a veto, for
not complying with the council’s demands to halt its uranium-enrichment program has been sharply reduced.

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Not only has Washington’s confrontation with its old superpower rival displaced Tehran at the top of the administration’s and US media foreign policy agenda, but Tehran’s geopolitical leverage – both as a potential partner for the West in containing Russia and as a potential ally of Moscow’s in warding off Western pressure has also risen sharply as an incidental result of the crisis.

“When the US invaded Iraq, it didn’t do so to improve Iran’s power position in the region, but that was the result,” noted Gary Sick, an Iran expert at Columbia University who served on the National Security Council staff of former presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. “That wasn’t the purpose of the Russian invasion of Georgia either, but it, too, may be the result.”

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