U.S., Russians divided on how to push Iran

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin sharpened that point Wednesday during a visit to Beijing. He said talking about sanctions is premature.

“We believe that we should treat this issue with caution, and there is no need to scare the Iranians,” Putin said.

Iran's nuclear program, partly enabled by Russia, has been a source of friction between Washington and Moscow for more than a decade. Both, however, say they strongly oppose Iran becoming a nuclear power — an ambition that the Iranians deny.

Doubts about Iran's claim of a purely peaceful purpose for its nuclear program were deepened by the disclosure last month that it was secretly building a second facility to produce nuclear fuel.

Since then, Iran has agreed to open that uranium enrichment facility to international inspection on Oct. 25 and to ship a large portion of its enriched uranium to Russia for further processing and use in a Tehran research reactor. Those moves are seen as positive but not conclusive steps in the right direction.

Andrew Kuchin, senior Russia analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in an interview Wednesday that Medvedev's apparent openness to sanctions does not necessarily contradict the skepticism from Lavrov and Putin.

“The accent is somewhat different but there is some consistency,” he said, since the Russian government's basic stance is that imposing further sanctions should be a last resort after other options fail.

In the U.S. view, the threat of further sanctions — backed by Russia — would be a powerful incentive for the Iranians to comply with demands for unfettered inspection of their nuclear facilities and for freezing production of enriched uranium.

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