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Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met in Moscow on Sept. 12 to discuss the upcoming completion of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant. The plant has been scheduled for completion for a long time; the latest startup date given by Russia’s Atomstroiexport, which is working on the project, is February 2009.
Russia’s resurgence and subsequent confrontation with the West over the intervention in Georgia has given Tehran a new card to play in talks with the United States. Iran now has the option of using Russia’s renewed belligerence toward the West to get the nuclear technology and weapons it actively seeks. However, the geopolitics of Iran create barriers to a full-fledged alliance with Russia. Tehran therefore really has two options: a close relationship with Moscow or an accommodation with the United States that is further entrenched by an energy relationship with Europe. Either way, Tehran will have to decide which serves its interests best.
Iran’s geography and demographics determine its geopolitical imperatives. It is a multiethnic country (with significant Kurdish, Arab, Azeri, Baluchi, Lurs and Turkmen minorities) with a considerable Sunni minority but dominated by a Persian Shiite majority. Iran’s key geopolitical imperative is to secure its borders and prevent a foreign power from inciting internal challenges to the ruling regime or disunity between various ethnic groups. The key mountainous borders to the north and the west serve to check potential influence from Russia and Turkey — the two main regional powers Iran historically has been most concerned with. Iran also has an interest in controlling the Shatt al-Arab, the swampy confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that separates Iran from its Arab neighbors in Mesopotamia and the Gulf.
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