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Arab/Muslim States

Israel, Russia on collision course after Moscow fuels Iranian nuclear plant?


By Stan Goodenough
December 18, 2007

When, in an effort to stop Iran from reaching the status of nuclear military power, Israel attacks the sites housing that country's nuclear program, it could find itself on a collision course with Russia.

This possibility emerged Monday amid reports that Russia had delivered what an unnamed Iranian official called a "first batch" of 82 tons of nuclear fuel to the Iranian plant at Bushehr.

According to the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, Russia announced its intention to supply the fuel just days after the publication of a US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) which concluded that Iran had stopped trying to build a nuclear bomb four years ago.

Hailed as a victory by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the NIE report led to an immediate evaporation of the international pressure on Iran to end its quest for nuclear arms, leaving Israel standing alone against the threat.

In a statement that might return to haunt him, US President George W. Bush said he supported Russia's supplying of the nuclear fuel because it removed any reason the Iranians might have for continuing to enrich its own uranium.

But Israeli officials are deeply concerned.

Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Liberman told the Knesset Monday afternoon that Iran needed only a few months to make the transition "from a civilian nuclear energy track to a military one."

A day earlier, Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter had warned that the NIE report could pave the way for "another Yom Kippiur War."

And Ynet quoted an unnamed senior political-defense source as saying that "Iran will do anything to continue (developing nuclear technology) while attempting to confound the Western World."

Russian President Vladimir Putin has strategically aligned his country with Iran, resisting US requests to join an international embargo against the Islamic Republic and instead entering into a historic covenantal relationship with it.

This deepening relationship will only complicate any plans Israel has to strike Iran's facilities.

When Israel took out the French-sponsored Iraqi nuclear reactor called Osirak in 1981, it triggered a crisis with President Francois Mitterrand, who immediately vowed to rebuild the plant. Although he never kept his word, France did supply Iraq with five highly sophisticated fighter bombers armed with Exocet missiles.

Before Osirak, Israel's relations with France were seldom more than cordial. By contrast, its often tense relations with Soviet Russia have brought the Middle East to the brink of nuclear war on at least one occasion.

While the USSR is no more, analysts believe Putin seeks to re-establish the level of influence in the Middle East once enjoyed by the Soviet Empire.

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