Russia Dismisses Calls for New U.N. Sanctions on Iran

MOSCOW — Russia on Wednesday sharply dismissed calls for further sanctions against Iran in the aftermath of a new United Nations report on suspect Iranian nuclear activities, signaling the Kremlin’s departure from the cooperation on Iran that was a hallmark of the “reset” in relations with the United States.
“The world community will see all additional sanctions against Iran as an instrument of regime change in Tehran,” Gennadi M. Gatilov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, said in comments to the Interfax news agency. “This approach is unacceptable to us, and the Russian side does not intend to consider such a proposal.”

A Foreign Ministry statement released later on Wednesday further illustrated Russia’s negative reaction to the report, distributed a day earlier by the International Atomic Energy Agency and characterized by the United States and its European allies as a significant new critique of Iran’s nuclear program.

The Russian statement, by contrast, called the report “a compilation of well-known facts that have intentionally been given a politicized intonation.”

The statement said the authors “resort to assumptions and suspicions, and juggle information with the purpose of creating the impression that the Iranian nuclear program has a military component.”

Russia has taken a position far more adamant than that of China, which like Russia is an important trading partner with Iran and holds a veto-wielding seat on the United Nations Security Council. China said on Wednesday that it is still studying the report, and limited its commentary to an appeal to all sides to “facilitate dialogue and cooperation.”

Russia’s dismissal of the report was “stronger than I would have expected,” said Cliff Kupchan, a senior analyst at the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm.

“Russia has sought to stay in reasonable step with the U.S., and its reaction today sharply rebuts U.S. policy,” he said.

“The Russian view is that this report revealed details, did not draw conclusions, alienated the sides from diplomacy and is not constructive.”

The Russian position may partly reflect lingering resentment over the Security Council resolution on Libya in the early weeks of the uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Russia abstained from voting on that resolution in March, agreeing not to block it with a veto.

But Russian leaders excoriated the NATO bombing campaign that followed, which has been widely credited with helping the Libyan rebels topple Colonel Qaddafi. In the Russian view, the campaign extended far beyond the mandate granted by the resolution and reinforced Kremlin suspicions that the Western powers were really seeking to impose a change in government.

Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin has been particularly critical, saying footage of Colonel Qaddafi, who was brutalized and killed by the rebels on Oct. 20, was “impossible to watch without disgust.”

Russia has long resisted using sanctions against Syria, where an uprising is also threatening the government, as well as against Iran.

Though the Kremlin has expressed distrust of Iran’s nuclear motivations and agreed to four rounds of United Nations sanctions in 2010, it did so reluctantly, and only after Western allies agreed to concessions aimed at limiting their scope.

To gain Russia’s support, the Obama administration lifted American sanctions on several Russian arms exporters and agreed not to ban the sale of a sophisticated Russian antiaircraft system to Iran.

Those moves came amid a pronounced warming in relations between Moscow and Washington, which now seems to be ebbing amid political shifts in both countries.

Russia released its first formal criticism of the United Nations nuclear report on Tuesday, before the text had been released. A statement from the Foreign Ministry voiced suspicion that the report was “nothing but an intentional — and counterproductive — whipping up of emotions.”

On Wednesday, the foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov and his deputy held meetings in Moscow with Ali Bagheri, deputy secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. A statement posted on the Foreign Ministry’s Web site said the officials discussed Iran’s nuclear program, but did not provide details.

Several comments raised the concern that the report’s release could set the stage for an attack on Iran. A lawmaker with United Russia, the ruling party, on Wednesday compared the United Nations report to the flawed intelligence reports promulgated by the Bush administration in the prelude to the 2003 Iraq invasion, which asserted that the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, had been developing illicit weapons.

This “in many ways reminds me of what happened several years ago in Iraq,” said the lawmaker, Igor Barinov, who sits on the defense committee of the lower house of Parliament, in comments posted on the party’s Web site. “Under the circumstances, we should, in a joint effort with the Chinese, try to prevent the development of events according to the Afghan-Iraq scenario.”

Andrew C. Kuchins, director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Russia’s leadership may be returning to the tougher foreign policy language that was standard before 2008, when President Dmitri A. Medvedev took office.

“The tone with Medvedev at the helm was very different, and this really harkens back to classic Putin,” Mr. Kuchins said.

“That the Russians are out there in front, vocally, while to the Chinese, who disagree as much if not more, are not — this harkens back to the paradigm of a few years ago.”

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