Iran seems to be bringing all sorts of old enemies closer

First it was Sunni Arab states offering to carve out a peace accord with Israel if only that would put resolution of the long-running Israeli-Arab conflict beyond the grasp of the region's would-be hegemon, the Shiite regime in Iran.

Now former Cold War enemies, Russia and the United States, are talking about cooperating on a missile defense to shield Europe from, you guessed it, Iran.

The New York Times reports:

After months of angrily rejecting a White House plan for missile defense in Europe, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia surprised President Bush on Thursday with an offer to build a joint system in the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan.

The proposed system, designed to guard against a missile attack from Iran, poses serious diplomatic and technical challenges, experts said. But the fact that it was suggested by Mr. Putin, and not immediately rejected by Mr. Bush, indicated a desire on both sides to cool the hostile exchanges that in recent months had driven relations to a low point in the post-cold-war era.

As the Times continued:

For Mr. Putin, the offer seemed to accomplish two goals: giving the appearance of willingness to compromise on missile defense while calming jitters over his recent threat to again aim missiles at Europe. “This will make it impossible — unnecessary — for us to place our offensive complexes along the borders with Europe,” he said, speaking through an interpreter. . .

Experts say that Mr. Putin’s proposal faces a number of daunting, and possibly insurmountable, hurdles. Russia leases but does not own the radar station in Azerbaijan, and it is an early warning system, not the X-band radar that is used to guide antimissile interceptors, and which the Bush administration wants to build in the Czech Republic.

Trust between the nations is also an issue. The plan would require the kind of intense cooperation in which only the closest allies could engage. With the two sides already embroiled in disputes over the future of Kosovo, the state of democratic institutions in Russia and how to deal with Iran’s nuclear program, some experts raised questions about whether Mr. Putin was serious — and, if he was, whether the White House would ever accept the offer.

As the Times recalled, trust isn't exactly at an all-time high between the two former Cold War enemies:

In recent weeks, the Russian president has made a veiled comparison between the United States and the Third Reich, complained of “diktat and imperialism,” and, most recently, threatened to once more aim Russian missiles at Europe if Mr. Bush went through with his missile defense plan.

Earlier this week in Prague, Mr. Bush chided Mr. Putin for backsliding on democratic reforms — an issue that Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, said did not come up at Thursday’s meeting.

As the Times went on to report, Democrat and Republican administrations have been trying to secure this kind of cooperation from Russia for some 17 years. Go figure why it was this Bush administration to finally see some progress.

Rumors are circulating that Cheney may not be Svengali afterall

Jim Hoaglund in today's Washington Post says that speculation is increasing, inside and out of the Beltway, that Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has now replaced Vice President Cheney as the person with the most influence over President Bush.

Rice, according to Hoaglund's sources, is supposed to have "told Bush in January that he should devote his final two years in office to seeking diplomatic agreements with North Korea and Iran and an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord. That account emphasizes that Rice is not simply outflanking Cheney in intermittent internal policy battles but has won full agreement and support from the president on the strategic goals and methods she and her diplomats are pursuing."

Hoaglund points out that "Bush has always been much more the decision maker than the Cheney-as-puppeteer image conveyed" and to prove his point, he cites a number of occasions on which Bush clearly did not follow Cheney's lead. He didn't take Cheney's advice to go back to the UN to get a second resolution to sanction the use of force in Iraq back in 2003. He didn't listen to Cheney in the aftermath of the invasion either, taking instead, as Hoaglund says, the "distastrous" counsel of proconsul L. Paul Bremer and others.

Hoaglund also claims that Cheney has had a "more relaxed attitude" towards Iran since he entered office because of his tenure at Halliburton, the implication being it was probably not Cheney who was urging Bush to take a hardline stance vis-a-vis the Islamic Republic.