UN Security Council, Iran and the Basmanny Court

Last Saturday, all 15 members of the UN Security Council, including Russia, unanimously approved resolution 1747, which provides for the imposition of sanctions against Iran. The next working day, Monday, Iran transferred money to Russia for the construction of the Bushehr nuclear power plant.

If we translate from diplomatic language into commercial language: Russia has extracted money from Iran, using the UN Security Council in approximately the same way as it usually uses the Russian prosecutor's office.

In order to understand why Russia is actively helping Iran’s nuclear program, they usually resort to complex geopolitical explanations: they say, this is our response to the United States, an attempt to resist a unipolar world.

However, a simpler explanation can be offered. Russia is a commercially very active country in which the pragmatically thinking circle of President Putin is ready, in accordance with the best commandments of Adam Smith, to sell any product to any buyer.

There are two main players in the Bushehr contract. One is the Atomstroyexport company. Once upon a time, Atomstroyexport was a private company owned by Kakha Bendukidze. Then Kakha Bendukidze was appointed Minister of Economy of Georgia, which became an actual proposal for Russian business to buy up Georgia. But, instead of buying up Georgia, the Kremlin decided to do something different: absorb Kakha Bendukidze himself.

Atomstroyexport was charged with tax debts (it was such a small, underground and very quiet YUKOS), and Bendukidze sold it for $26 million. Gazprombank. Almost immediately a letter was sent to the president. In it, the new owners of the corporation pointed out its large debts to the state and reported that if Atomstroyexport did not resume construction in Bushehr, it would face bankruptcy.

And so, after the Atomstroyexport company came under the control of Gazprombank, Russia resumed construction in Bushehr.

The other main actor in the contract is the Techsnabexport company. Its current general director is Vladimir Smirnov, one of the co-founders of the Ozero cooperative, along with Putin, Yakunin and Kovalchuk. Before joining Techsnabexport, Vladimir Smirnov managed to work as the head of the St. Petersburg Fuel Company, which is under the control of Tambov, and then headed the State Unitary Enterprise for supplying products to the Presidential Administration.

It is difficult to say what happened between the two respected sides - Iranian and Russian - two weeks ago, when Russia suddenly announced that it had not been paid for Bushehr since January, and Iran said it had transferred all the money it was owed.

But it is obvious that such a showdown is impossible between two great powers and even between two respectable companies. It’s impossible to imagine Microsoft and IBM bickering over who got $100 million from whom. But this kind of conflict constantly breaks out between gangs: “Hey, we paid you for cocaine!” “Nope, we didn’t receive this money, you hid it.” It is difficult for an observer from the outside to judge which particular gang stole the money (or, perhaps, the money was transferred and the sideline was forgotten), but the nature of the activities of both parties is beyond doubt.

Russia can sell Iran not only uranium. She also has something else that is certainly of interest to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Namely, the right of veto in the UN Security Council. In this situation, voting in the Security Council becomes a trump card (like the Basmanny Court), which Russia may or may not use against Iran, depending on its commercial flexibility.

And on Saturday, Russia brutally took revenge on the Persians for the untransferred money, unconditionally joining the resolution against Iran. Iran got the hint - the money was transferred immediately.

We can say that Atomstroyexport won the difficult geopolitical struggle.