Is Russia About To Publicly Support Iran In It's Nuclear Talks With The West?

Representatives of Iran and the six powers hold nuclear talks at the UN headquarters in Vienna on March 18, 2014. Press TV

Russia To Back Iran In Nuclear Talks - Moscow’s “April Surprise” For Western Sanctions Over Ukraine -- Debka

As the Six Power group and Iran prepared for their third round of nuclear talks in Vienna next week (Tuesday-Wednesday, April 8-9) Tehran frankly admitted to exploiting the holes in the six-month interim deal they forged in Geneva last November. And Moscow looks like making good on its threat to back the Iranian case, in retaliation for Western penalties for its annexation of Crimea.

In a closed meeting in Tehran Wednesday, April 3, Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Nuclear Energy Commission said: “We have 19,000 centrifuges of which 9,000 are in operation [for enriching uranium]. Our advice is not to discuss the number of centrifuges, rather to discuss the unit’s isolation power." He explained there are different types of centrifuge.

This was a candid admission that Iran had found a way to get around its commitment under the interim deal - which US Secretary of State John Kerry held up as his greatest diplomatic achievement - not to build or activate its most advanced centrifuges for speeding up enrichment.

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My Comment: As in the case of Syria, Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, etc. .... this US State Department has been pursuing a policy of pushing the process rather than sitting down and working out the details in a negotiated agreement. As a result .... the only thing that is being accomplished is a longer time frame because the hard-core decisions that need to be done are always delayed into the future. Unfortunately ... when that future is now .... a breakdown is always the result. We are seeing it in Syria (where all peace talks have essentially collapsed), we saw it happen this week in the Israeli - Palestinian peace talks, and we will see it later this month in the Iranian nuclear talks. As to the role and reaction from Russia .... that is just the "icing on the cake".