that's why the coverage of this is so awful. for years, it's been viewed as the hegemonic americans enforcing their will on the insolent iranians. in fact, for at least five years now, it's been a struggle between russia and america for influence over iran. nobody realizes this.
when the americans push down these brutal sanctions, what it does is create incentives to integrate further with the russians. what it's done is put the americans in a position where they've had to play catch up.
it's true that the negotiating approach was terrible and backfired badly. but, it's because it was tyrannical and oppressive, not because it was too lax.
the russians have walked out of this with all the actual control in terms of the actual material. iran is leaning towards integration into the shanghai co-operation organization, which is functionally a russian-chinese defense pact against american aggression in asia. an alliance like that takes them out of the list of countries that the americans can bomb without consequence. and, that is why the americans are pulling back - iran has squirmed out of this, with russian help.
russian help that is a direct consequence of american sanctions over ukraine.
by Guy Taylor - The Washington Times - Monday, April 13, 2015
Russia on Monday gave the green light to a long-stalled $800 million deal to deliver an advanced anti-missile rocket system to Iran, bringing sharp criticism from the White House and Israel and new political peril for President Obama’s prospective nuclear deal with Tehran.
Iran has pushed since 2007 to purchase the S-300 system from Russia — hardware that analysts say will dramatically increase Iran’s ability to defend itself from airstrikes, including a strike on its nuclear facilities from either the U.S. or Israel should international negotiations break down.