Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post has a new column which digs up a number of quotes from American officials over the years which illustrate how often they have been willing to assume a certain level of rational thinking going on inside the Kremlin with regard to Iran.  Just because it is technically in Russia’s interests to not have Iran possessing nuclear weapons, doesn’t mean that they will act on those interests.

It might be, for example, that Russia understands the value of keeping
Iran nuclear-free, but values even more the fruits of its commercial
and military trade with Iran.

It might be that Russia believes that the stalemate status quo is
pretty close to ideal. Iran can be delayed in its progress toward
nuclear status but also prevented from normalizing relations with the
United States and the West. And as long as those relations are sour –
and the West won’t buy Iran’s natural gas — Russia’s leverage over
Europe, as Europe’s main gas supplier, is enhanced.

Perhaps Russian leaders are not united on the question. In the early
1990s, Clinton administration officials persuaded themselves that
President Boris Yeltsin accepted their Iran logic but that he wasn’t
strong enough to control his nuclear-industrial complex, which wanted
trade with Iran. Today the theory is different: Russian President
Dmitry Medvedev may see the light but is stymied by Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin.

Or maybe the Russians accept the logic — but don’t believe Iran can
be dissuaded. In that case, their smartest policy would be to hold out
hope to the Obama administration that they can be brought along –
thereby continuing to win U.S. concessions on missile defense, arms
control and other matters for as long as possible — while seeking a
privileged position in Tehran for the day when Iran goes nuclear.

Their smartest policy, in other words, would look very much like the one we’re seeing today.

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