Word: putin
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Monday's news that Iran has postponed Moscow talks, scheduled to start Thursday, on having its uranium enriched in Russia, and has instead resumed its own enrichment activities, was hardly stunning - except, perhaps, to Russian President Vladimir Putin...
...Putin had expected a cash windfall from Iran for the Russia-supplied nuclear capacity; the laurels of a global power-broker for defusing the Iranian nuclear crisis; and the praise of his increasingly nostalgic citizens for restoring the lost empire's glory...
...From his own experience, Putin should have known better: Back in 2000, the Russian president had told a G-8 summit in Japan that he had convinced North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to abandon his missile program. Sounded good, until Kim explained he was joking. This time, Putin seems to be the butt of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's practical joke...
...Instead, he looks hapless before the specter of a nuclear-armed militant clerical regime that looms beneath the veil of a peaceful nuclear energy project. Putin's massive supplies of conventional weapons to Iran, including air defense missiles and armor, have strengthened that specter - much to Russia's own peril...
...China have been stalling the West's efforts to refer Iran's nuclear program to the UN Security Council. Last week, Russia finally backed an IAEA resolution to do so, only upon the condition that the Council doesn't take up the issue until March. Meanwhile, pundits believe, Putin had hoped to defuse the crisis by persuading Iran to shift its uranium-enrichment to Russia, which would deny it the ability to use such facilities on its own soil to produce weapons-grade material...