Thursday, June 10, 2010

Who Bought the Time

To the president's credit, he managed a 12-2 vote in the Security Council on new Iran sanctions over Iran's nuclear programs. Only Turkey and Brazil voted against the measure and Lebanon abstained.

As a bonus, Russia says they've suspended an anti-aircraft missile deal with Iran:


Russia is freezing a contract to deliver S-300 air defence missiles to Iran after the adoption of the new UN sanctions against Tehran, a source told the Interfax news agency on Thursday.

I didn't think that Russia and China would both refrain from using their veto if the sanctons were truly damaging to Iran. Were their votes in favor a sign that our diplomacy notched a major success or are the sanctions too weak to affect Iran in time to halt their nuclear weapons plans?

Iran may have bought time  to go nuclear even as Washington is congratulating itself on its triumph of diplomacy.

On the other hand, if Iran can't get the S-300s, we've also bought time to keep Iran vulnerable to a military strike if we have to do that.

So who can make use of the time they bought? Iran or America?

We won't know for quite some time.

UPDATE: Oh well, I tried to give the president credit for the S-300 cancellation, but I guess this isn't a solid, after all.