The Russians have announced they're going to sell $700 million worth of surface-to-air missiles to Iran. The deal was signed last year, before most of the current nuclear brouhaha flared up.
I think there are two factors affecting the Russians' thinking:
1. The Russians can use the cash. They're generating dough from oil and gas, but they've got some big bills as well.
2. The Russians are trying to pacify the Muslim fundamentalists in their southern provinces and neighboring countries, as well as the hard-liners in Tehran.
The cash thing is just business and it's hard to fault the Russians for it. The US is selling better stuff to the countries we like, which means the remaining market is in countries we don't like. The Russians have a product to sell, and they're going where the market is. We may not like it, but that's the way it goes.
The attempt to buy off the Islamic contingent is, to me, a lot riskier. The French tried to buy off Muslim and Arab terrorists for most of the 1960s and 1970s. Now they have Muslim and Arab youths burning down their major metropolitan areas. The Brits tried to buy off the Nazis in the mid and late 1930s and we all remember how well that worked out.
At the end of the day (if anyone still says that), the Russians; and the Chinese, who are trying the same stunt; are no friends of Islam. Trying to pretend otherwise may work in the short term, but the long term is much more difficult to foretell.
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