Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post has a new column which digs up a number of quotes from American officials over the years which illustrate how often they have been willing to assume a certain level of rational thinking going on inside the Kremlin with regard to Iran.  Just because it is technically in Russia’s interests to not have Iran possessing nuclear weapons, doesn’t mean that they will act on those interests.

It might be, for example, that Russia understands the value of keeping Iran nuclear-free, but values even more the fruits of its commercial and military trade with Iran.

It might be that Russia believes that the stalemate status quo is pretty close to ideal. Iran can be delayed in its progress toward nuclear status but also prevented from normalizing relations with the United States and the West. And as long as those relations are sour — and the West won’t buy Iran’s natural gas — Russia’s leverage over Europe, as Europe’s main gas supplier, is enhanced.