ABSTRACT
Iran and Iraq—two Persian Gulf states seeking weapons of mass destruction—posed similar problems for Russian-American relations in the 1990s, but Washington's strategy for dealing with Russia on Iran was completely different from its strategy on Iraq, and left a deeper imprint on Russian-American relations. The President Putin would also distance Russia from Iraq was made possible by a second change—his complete authority over Russian foreign policy, based on his extraordinary personal popularity and reputation for a bristly attentiveness to Russian national interests. Senior American officials assumed that the two countries had key parallel interests, and that with a bit more time their new ally would do the right thing on Iran. Given Russia's circumstances, fatalism has something to be said for it, and absolutism may seem like overreaching. Since the Persian Gulf War, Russia and the United States have played out their disagreements over Iraq largely within the UN Security Council.
