Двойной крест

From Barack Obama's perspective, at least:

Denting President Obama’s hopes for a powerful ally in his campaign to press Iran on its nuclear program, Russia’s foreign minister said Tuesday that threatening Tehran now with harsh new sanctions would be “counterproductive.”

The minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said after meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton here that diplomacy should be given a chance to work, particularly after a meeting in Geneva this month in which the Iranian government said it would allow United Nations inspectors to visit its clandestine nuclear enrichment site near the holy city of Qum.

“At the current stage, all forces should be thrown at supporting the negotiating process,” he said. “Threats, sanctions and threats of pressure in the current situation, we are convinced, would be counterproductive.”

Mr. Lavrov’s resistance was striking given that, just three weeks before, President Dmitri A. Medvedev said that “in some cases, sanctions are inevitable.” American officials had hailed that statement as a sign that Russia was finally coming around to the Obama administration’s view that Iran is best handled with diplomacy backed by a credible threat of sanctions.

It also came after the Obama administration announced that it would retool a European missile defense system fiercely opposed by Russia. That move was thought to have paid dividends for the White House when Mr. Medvedev appeared to throw his support behind Mr. Obama on Iran, though American officials say the Russian president was also likely to have been reacting to the disclosure of the secret nuclear site near Qum.

Back in the real world, of course, this was not a "double cross" at all.  Russia does, indeed, act in its own interests, every bit as much as Barack Obama is acting against America's.  And Russia's interests turned against hours several years ago (at least).  Which, logically, makes The One an ally of Czar Putin against the country he's supposed to represent.

Nor, from the Russians' point of view, is this anything remotely new.  They've been the Iranians' nuclear patron since the days of Boris Yeltsin a decade and a half ago.  The reason are financial and geostrategic.  Moscow is in chronic need of hard cash, and the only commodities they have that anybody wants are oil, natural gas, and nuclear know-how.  The mullahs want nukes.  Kind of a no-brainer.  Figure in that Putinical Russia views the U.S. as a rival, if not full-fledged enemy, and benefits immensely from using Iran as a catspaw to tie us down in the Middle East while Vlad rebuilds his country's former eastern European empire, and the question is why ANY Western leader has EVER deluded themselves into thinking that Russia would or could EVER be an ally in disarming Iran.

With Obama, it isn't delusion, it's deliberate choice.  He's an ally of Putin and an enemy of the Czar's intended victims.  Whether the Russian strongman realizes it or not is of little practical value, as I imagine Vlad is indifferent to False Messiah's groveling friendship.  Particularly seeing as how the latter is coughing up one crippling, humiliating concession after another without the former having to lift a finger.  Hey, if your foe doesn't even have to be coerced into Finlandization and capitulating to your every whim and desire, why not let him?  Who knows when the American people will be so foolish as to elect such a Fifth Columnist again?

All the Russians care about is that they have a golden window of opportunity to regain immense chunks of strategic ground at our expense all around the world, and they're going to press that advantage as hard and fast as they can:

In an interview published today in Izvestia, Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Kremlin’s security council, said the new doctrine offers “different options to allow the use of nuclear weapons, depending on a certain situation and intentions of a would-be enemy. In critical national security situations, one should also not exclude a preventive nuclear strike against the aggressor.”

What’s more, Patrushev said, Russia is revising the rules for the employment of nukes to repel conventionally armed attackers, “not only in large-scale, but also in a regional and even a local war.”

Gulp. If I were in Georgia — or in any other country Russia considers part of its sphere of influence — that formulation would make me pretty anxious…

In the interview, he takes a swipe at the United States and NATO, saying that the alliance “continues to press for the admission of new members to NATO, the military activities of the bloc are intensifying, and U.S. strategic forces are conducting intensive exercises to improve the management of strategic nuclear weapons.”

"After Obama just pulled long-range missile defense out of Poland and the Czech Republic?"  Yes, indeed.  This is what is also known as "pushing against an open door".  If B.O. will voluntarily toss away a big bargaining chip by throwing the Poles and Czechs under the bus on missile defense, who knows what else Moscow can extort out of him if they start pushing in the same direction he's retreating?  Maybe they can get Ukraine and the Baltics gift-wrapped and stashed under Vlad's tree in time for Christmas.  And, contrary to AP's over-machiavellianizing, who in the blue hell would take an Obama "hawk" turn seriously, especially after witnessing his cut & run reflex revving up on Afghanistan by the day?  Did anybody take Jimmy Carter's seriously thirty years ago?