After Obama backed away from missile defense, with the news of Iran’s newest nuclear revelations, the President had received signs from Medvedev that Russia might consider sanctions against Iran. However, today in Russia they clearly brushed Clinton off.
That noise you hear is Liz Cheney and her “Keep America Safe” characters clucking over it. As you’ll see in the video, complete with comic voiceover, they’re ready. No doubt the Kremlin’s behavior will incite Liz and her benefactor, Bill Kristol, the father of revolving neocon groups, to ratchet up the chatter against Obama even more.
Secretary Clinton met with Foreign Minister Lavrov in Russia and after the meeting both were asked about sanctions on Iran. The Washington Post reports Lavrov’s response was cool at best:
Emerging from four hours of talks with Clinton, Lavrov told reporters that “threats, sanctions and threats of pressure” against Iran would be “counterproductive.”
State Department has Clinton’s side of the news conference:
QUESTION: On Iran, what did you ask the minister with regard to pressure and sanctions, and did you receive any assurances? … ..
SECRETARY CLINTON: [...] I think what President Medvedev said was that they may be inevitable, not that they are inevitable. He said that they’re not always preferable, but they may be inevitable. But we are not at that point yet. That is not a conclusion we have reached, and we want to be very clear that it is our preference that Iran work with the international community, as represented by the P-5+1, fulfill its obligation on inspections, in fact, open up its entire system so that there can be no doubt about what they’re doing, and comply with the agreement in principle to transfer out the low-enriched uranium. Those would be confidence-building measures, and that would give us an opportunity to take stock of where we are on the diplomatic track.
According to what’s being reported, it seems clear that Russia believes Iran has made concessions worth not only acknowledging, but also rewarding with softer language that pushes sanctions from the discussion, as far as they’re concerned.
Cue Liz Cheney.
That’s just how these things work.
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