Putin Assassination Plot Feared in Tehran
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A summit opening tomorrow between presidents Putin and Ahmadinejad in Tehran that could decide the fate of stronger, American-backed sanctions against Iran was thrown into jeopardy last night with reports of an assassination plot against the Russian leader.
The Russian secret service said it intercepted details of a plot by Iranians to kidnap or kill the Russian president by suicide bomb while he is in Tehran to debate the division of spoils of the underwater oil and natural gas wealth of the Caspian Sea. The Iranians dismissed the reports as unfounded.
Mr. Putin is traveling to Tehran to attend a summit of states bordering the Caspian to settle a long-standing dispute over how much of the riches of the inland sea each nation is entitled to.
Russia and two other Caspian nations, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, want the undersea resources, thought to contain vast reserves of oil and gas, divided according to how many miles of Caspian coast each nation has. Iran wants the resources divided equally among the five nations, which include Turkmenistan. The Russian plan would sharply reduce Iran’s share of the spoils to 13% from 20%.
Around the edges of the Caspian conference, Messrs. Putin and Ahmadinejad are expected to discuss ways to defuse the standoff between America and its Western allies and Iran over the enrichment of uranium and the Islamic nation’s nuclear ambitions.
Mr. Putin, in the first visit by a Russian leader to Iran since Josef Stalin met with President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill in Tehran in 1943, has cast himself as the go-between, siding with America until now in an effort to bring Iran into line with the demands of the U.N. Security Council.
In his final months as president, Mr. Putin is seeking to pull off a diplomatic coup in Tehran that would settle the Caspian dispute in Iran’s favor in exchange for Iran being more open to the world about its nuclear plants.
Mr. Putin appears to be hoping that a pacified Iran might allow NATO to postpone or even abandon its plan to site missile shield technology in European states bordering Russia, ostensibly to intercept an Iranian missile attack on Europe, an issue that has angered him.
Iran is relying on the Russian leader, in concert with the Chinese communist leadership, to prevent the adoption of sterner American proposals to isolate the country further in the Security Council. Mr. Putin, who has twice approved council measures against Iran, is in a strong position to pressure Iran’s mullah leaders into accepting a compromise.
He is holding up the completion of a $1 billion Russian-designed nuclear power plant in the Iranian Persian Gulf port of Bushehr because, he claims, Iran has not kept up with payments and the project is beset by technical problems. Iran counters that Mr. Putin is delaying work and has frozen supplies of nuclear material because of American pressure.
While meeting privately with Mr. Ahmadinejad in Tehran, Mr. Putin is expected to explore a compromise that would allow the building of the nuclear plant to proceed on the understanding that Iran cooperate fully with U.N. nuclear inspectors. Iran has already agreed to return spent nuclear fuel to Russia.
Although Mr. Putin has said repeatedly that he does not favor Iran developing nuclear weapons, he has voiced skepticism in public about America’s claim that the Iranian regime is determined to acquire them.
“We do not have proof indicating that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. We do not have such objective data. That is why we proceed from an assumption that Iran has no such plans. But we are sharing our partners’ concern about making all Iranian program absolutely transparent,” Mr. Putin said last week.
Secretary of State Rice and President Sarkozy of France, meeting with Mr. Putin independently in Moscow last week, insisted that Iran’s defiance of the international community is an attempt to disguise its true intentions. They also expressed displeasure at Russia’s continuing arms trade with Iran and Syria. While the meeting with American officials made little headway, Mr. Sarkozy said he was “very encouraged” that Mr. Putin appeared to be moving toward American and E.U. positions on Iran.
The conference on the future of the Caspian will provide Mr. Putin with added leverage in his discussions with Mr. Ahmadinejad. At stake is the future of 200 billion barrels of oil underneath the sea floor and the route of oil and gas pipelines used to deliver the energy to European customers. Russia is wary of Western attempts to break Russia’s pipeline monopoly, which it has used to intimidate former Soviet client states.
The importance of the Caspian summit in Tehran was stressed by the interpretation put on reports yesterday that Russian secret service personnel intercepted information that Mr. Putin would be assassinated there. According to the Russian Interfax news agency, Russian agents intercepted a plot to kidnap or kill Mr. Putin by suicide bomb while in Tehran.
The Iranian authorities have been quick to deny the threat to Mr. Putin, dismissing the notion as Western propaganda. “Reports published by some media are totally baseless and are in line with the psychological war launched by enemies who want to harm Iran and Russia’s relationship,” a spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, said in a statement yesterday.