USA: Russia Helped to Impose Hardest Sanctions on Iran

02.05.2012 The hardest and most effective sanctions were imposed on Iran thanks to dialog with Russia, said Robert Gibbs, senior advisor in Obama's presidential campaign.

He pointed out that dialog with Russia had helped the US to stand up to Iran's nuclear threat more effectively. Gibbs said it commenting criticism against Moscow voiced by ex-Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney, Obama's potential competitor in presidential race coming in November.

Some time ago Romney described Russia as "number one geopolitical foe". That gave his opponents a trump saying he was thinking the cold war standards by calling to toughen relations with the Kremlin. Criticism against Romney especially rose when one of his advisors – former US Navy Secretary John Lehman - got mixed over Russia and the USSR.

"We're seeing the Soviets pushing into Arctic with no response from us", he said.

Another influential politician in Romney's campaign headquarters, former Counselor to the President in the George W. Bush White House Ed Gillespie also expressed concern over Moscow.

"We need to understand that Russia is not helping relative to containing Iran. And that's probably one of the most important priorities we have as a nation right now", he said. Gillespie pointed out that Moscow's response to "reset button" was "undermining UN Security Council efforts" to neutralize Iranian nuclear threat.

Gillespie's position shocked Gibbs who had been holding the post of White House Press Secretary up to the last year.

"Ed knows this because Ed was in the White House when they couldn't get Russia to go along with crippling sanctions as it dealt with Iran", he said.

"This president came in, changed that. And now we have the most severe, most crippling sanctions on the regime in Iran that we've ever had", stressed Gibbs.

According to him, that became possible only because Obama "is exercising a strong foreign policy". Gibbs reminded that Romney had offered to shirk off all diplomatic functions upon State Department which was absolutely inadmissible, reports ITAR-TASS.