Barack Obama’s letter to Russia piles pressure on Iran

Tuesday, March 3. In a secret letter to his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev, Barack Obama has offered to halt plans to build a missile defence shield in central Europe if Russia helps America curtail Iran's nuclear ambitions.

In his first, rather guarded response, Medvedev said that although Russia would cooperate with America to deal with any Iranian nuclear ambitions there would be no quid pro quo arrangement. "No, issues haven't been put that way, it would be unproductive," said the Russian leader.

According to the New York Times, the letter was delivered by hand to the Russian President last month in reply to a message Medvedev sent to Obama shortly after he assumed office on January 20. Medvedev is in a position to influence Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad because of close trade links between the two countries and Moscow's involvement in aiding Iran's domestic nuclear programme.

Political commentators say that the letter is the latest evidence that Obama wants America to enjoy closer diplomatic ties with Russia than it did under George Bush.

It signals a return to "old fashioned diplomacy" according to Ben Smith on Politico. "Bush, after an initial romance with Putin, took a more confrontational line and [Presidential candidate John] McCain and his advisors believed that any negotiation with Russia on the missile shield would be taken as a sign of weakness and pocketed without any real gains to the US," he says. "Obama advisors think they can make deals with Russia on matters of common interest. This sort of clear, simple trade is a return to an approach that favours thatold-fashioned diplomacy over casting things as matters of good and evil."

And according to Ryan Grim on the Huffington Post, the ideas expressed in the letter were proposed to George Bush and then ignored. "At the White House in the spring of 2008, [Senator Charles] Schumer personally urged President Bush and Vice President Cheney to pursue such a deal... He was rebuffed." Grim also points out that Schumer then wrote an article for the Washington Post saying: "[W]e should tell Mr Putin we will cease building the ineffective antinuclear missile defence sites in Eastern Europe in return for him joining the boycott [of Iran]."

Russian officials have said that Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov would speak to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about missile defence shields when they meet in Geneva on Friday. Obama and Medvedev are scheduled to meet for the first time on April 2 in London at the G20 summit.

FIRST POSTED MARCH 3, 2009