December 27, 2005, 17:44 Politics

Iran didn't have enough letters...

Vasily Sergeev ...to understand what Russia wants from him. On Tuesday, Tehran explained why it cannot accept Russian proposals to resolve the crisis over its nuclear program. The Russian anti-crisis package seemed vague to Tehran. This information was disseminated from Tehran by the Iranian Fars agency.

Tehran has started an information game with Russia and the whole world. On Tuesday, Iranian authorities organized a leak to the semi-official ( Reuters expression ) Fars agency. An anonymous source from the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad explained the reasons why his country does not consider Russian anti-crisis proposals serious and effective.

The official, in particular, said that the Iranian Foreign Ministry actually received an official note from Moscow the other day. However, according to him, this diplomatic message fit on one A4 page, where only one and a half lines were devoted to the creation of an Iranian-Russian joint venture for uranium enrichment.

“Russian proposals turned out to be vague. They did not specify either the mechanism of cooperation or its framework. Therefore, we cannot comment on the Russian note,” said the anonymous author.

This leak is certainly an information blow to Moscow, which, as Gazeta.Ru has repeatedly written, is trying to get Iran to agree to enrich Iranian nuclear fuel on Russian territory.

Earlier, we recall, the Iranian authorities completely denied the fact of receiving any dispatches from the Russian Foreign Ministry . On Sunday, the Iranian Foreign Ministry explained that the issue of partial transfer of nuclear production from Iran to Russia, if discussed with the Russian side, was only in general terms and only verbally. The representative of the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Hamid Reza Asefi, emphasized that Tehran considers optimal the recent proposal of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to create a consortium of foreign states to implement Tehran’s nuclear program on Iranian territory.

The Russian Foreign Ministry spoke out in connection with the dispatch to Iran on Saturday. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Troyansky confirmed that a Russian official note was transmitted to Tehran, which confirmed that proposals to create a Russian-Iranian joint venture and enrich uranium on Russian territory remain in force. Let us recall that the Russian option amounted to sending Iranian uranium raw materials to our country and enriching it at Russian enterprises with the subsequent return of the concentrate enriched to the stage of peaceful use to the Iranian nuclear power plant in Bushehr.

Iran's complaint about the vagueness of Russian anti-crisis proposals is quite understandable.

For Tehran, this is a formal reason not to discuss the issue of transferring part of its nuclear cycle to Russian territory. Iranian leaders have previously repeatedly stated that enriching uranium on their own is an inalienable right and a priority task of the Iranian government. At the same time, Tehran, apparently, is hedging its bets and is in no hurry to respond to Moscow with a direct refusal. Such a move would clearly strain relations between the Ahmadinejad government and the EU and the United States and would make the prospect of UN sanctions a real possibility.

However, Tehran still has the opportunity to win back the situation. Today's statements by an anonymous government official can always be refuted, especially if detailed proposals on nuclear cooperation are received from Russia. Most likely, clarity will be brought to relations between Moscow and Tehran at the beginning of the new year, when the Iranians will have to explain their refusal of the Russian anti-crisis package officially, in negotiations with the EU.