Iran has sought Russian assistance partly because of the limited alternatives and not necessarily because ofstrategic or ideological affinity between the twocountries. Iran's relationship with Russia is tempered by a lingering fear of Russian power and intentions. In 1907, Russia concluded a treaty with Britain dividing Iran into spheres of control. Russian troops occupied northern Iran during World War I. Soviettroops invaded again in 1941, in concert with Britain, when Iran appeared to become sympathetic to Nazi Germany. After World War II, the Soviet Unionrefused to withdraw completely from Iran and it set up two autonomous zones in northern Iran, which lasted until1946, when U.S. pressure forced theSoviets to withdraw completely. Iran's Islamic revolution, which triumphed in February 1979, considered anathemaSoviet ideology and its suppression ofIslam and other religious expression. The December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan revived Iranian fears thatMoscow might have territorial designson Iran. The Soviet Union also backed Iraq with arms sales, financial credits, diplomatic support, and militaryadvice, throughout the Iran-Iraq war(1980-1988). The Iran-Iraq war, which ended in August 1988, left Iran's conventional arsenal devastated, and the need for rearmament provided Iran and the SovietUnion an opportunity to pursue mutual interests. A U.S. military buildup in the Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war -designed to protect the free flow of oil in theGulf - had created concern in Moscow that the United States was attempting to establish hegemony in that strategicbody. Iran, partly because of U.S.efforts during the Iran-Iraq war to shut off worldwide arms sales to Iran, lacked a wide choice of willing suppliers,and the Soviet Union saw arms sales toIran as one way to broaden its influence in the Gulf. A February 1989 visit to Tehran by then Soviet ForeignMinister Edouard Shevardnadze, and hismeeting with the ailing Ayatollah Khomeini, signaled the beginning of a thaw in Iran's relations with the SovietUnion. Iran established an arms and technology relationship with the Soviet Union during a visit to Moscow by then parliament speaker Ali AkbarHashemi-Rafsanjani in June 1989, two weeks after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini. A joint communique at theconclusion of the visit said that the twocountries would collaborate in the "peaceful use of nuclear energy," and that the Soviet Union "agreed to bolsterthe military capacity of the IslamicRepublic." (3) The subsequent breakup of the Soviet Union in late 1991 raised Iran's importance in the strategic calculations of Russia, the successor to the Soviet Union ininternational affairs. Russia perceived an arms and technology relationship with Iran as a key part of an effort tomoderate Iranian behavior on Russia'ssouthern flank. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia and the former Communist leaders leftin charge in the six Muslim states of theformer Soviet Union (Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan) wereconcerned that Iran might try to spreadrevolutionary Islam into these new states. According to observers, Russia tacitly linked arms and technology salesto Iran's refraining from politicalmeddling in these states. An additional factor in Russian planning was the aftereffects of the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf crisis, which left the United States pre-eminent in the Gulf anddemonstrated the effectiveness of U.S. military technology. The war cemented the U.S. position as the primary armssupplier to the Persian Gulf monarchystates. U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq after its August 1990 invasion of Kuwait included a worldwide armsembargo, removing one of the key Soviet armsclients from the international market. Russian officials viewed Iran as a key source of needed new sales tocompensate for the closure of these and otherarms markets. Attempting to curb Russia's arms and technology relationships with Iran, U.S. officials have consistently impressed upon their Russian counterparts thepossibility that Iran's historic resentment of past Russian actions in Iran might some day make Russia itself a targetof Iranian WMD. Iran and Russia arealso wary of each others' ambitions and claims on Caspian Sea energy resources, even though their positions on thedivision of resources in the sea havediffered little to date. (The two countries, along with Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan, border the sea.) These arguments have not dissuadedRussia from selling arms and technology to Iran, and the Clinton Administration and Congress tried to use the threatof sanctions in efforts to achievenonproliferation goals. In a few cases, the Clinton Administration took the step of imposing sanctions on Russian entities dealing with Iran, although it was reluctant to sanction theRussian government, maintaining that the United States has broad objectives in Russia. Those objectives includedpromoting economic and political reform,mutual arms control and reduction, safeguarding nuclear material, and limiting the effects of the war in Chechnya. During 1999 and 2000, the ClintonAdministration worked constructively with Russia to try to contain the Islamist threat posed by the Taliban regimeof Afghanistan and its protected "guest,"Saudi-born terrorist financier Osama bin Laden. These objectives, according to some observers, sometimesoverrode calls within and outside theAdministration to closely link U.S. relations with Russia to the abandonment of its arms and technology relationshipwith Iran. Like its predecessor, the Bush Administration has been reluctant to risk broader relations with Russia over the Iran issue and has been reluctant to sanctionthe Russian government. Some Russian entities have been sanctioned for sales of weapons related technology toother state sponsors of terrorism: Libya,Sudan, and Syria. The Bush Administration's reluctance to strongly criticize Russia on proliferation issues has beenparticularly evident since the September11, 2001 attacks. Russia has been helpful to the United States in the response to the attacks, especially itsacquiescence to the U.S. use of bases in CentralAsia for the war effort in Afghanistan. In 1991, Soviet arms ordered by Iran in 1989 began flowing to the Islamic Republic. Possibly because of fluctuations in Iranian oil revenues and its largedebt burden, it appears that Russia delivered fewer arms than Iran had originally ordered, and deliveries tapered offby the mid 1990s. Total deliveries toIran by Russia include about 30 MiG-29 and 30 Su-24 combat aircraft, (4) about300 T-72 tanks, (5) SA-5 and SA-7 surface-to-air missile systems, and threeKilo-class diesel submarines, the last of which arrived in January 1997. The submarine purchases represented thefirst deployment of the vessels by acountry in the Gulf and raised concerns among U.S. naval officials of a heightened threat to U.S. naval andinternational commercial shipping in the strategicwaterway. The purchases and their strategic implications drew considerable attention in early 1992, when then CIA Director Robert Gates testified before the HouseArmed Services Committee that Iran was planning to spend $2 billion per year to rebuild its conventional arsenaland try to become the pre-eminent PersianGulf power. (6) In response to these assessments and to reports of Iran'sattempts to acquire WMD and delivery means, Congress passed the Iran-Iraq ArmsNonproliferation Act of 1992 (Title XVI of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY1993, P.L. 102-484 ). That law requires sanctions against foreignfirms (a ban on U.S. government procurement from and technology export licenses to the entity) and foreigncountries (a suspension of U.S. economicassistance, and of U.S. technical exchanges and assistance) that "contribute knowingly and materially to the effortsby Iran or Iraq ... to acquire chemical,biological, and nuclear weapons (7) or to acquire destabilizing numbersand types of advanced conventional weapons." As discussed below (see section onChina), the law did not precisely define "destabilizing numbers and types" of advanced conventional weapons,thereby giving the President discretion tointerpret the Act's requirements and to decide whether or not to impose sanctions under the Act. Russian Pledge to the United States. Clinton Administration officials argued that the threat of imposingsanctions under the Act helped the United States extract a formal pledge from Russia in June 1995 not to enter any new arms contracts with Iran. Thatpledge was required for the United States to accede to Russia's membership in a multilateral export control regimeknown as the Waasenaar Arrangement, asuccessor to the Cold War era Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (COCOM). The pledgewas obtained after numerous U.S.-Russiandiscussions on the issue, including at the Clinton-Yeltsin summits in Vancouver, Canada (April 1993), Washington(September 1994), and Moscow (May1995). Delivering a summary of the achievements of the 1995 Moscow summit, an Administration briefer statedthat "The two Presidents have resolvedsome outstanding issues associated with arms sales to Iran, and as soon as those are recorded and in agreement, it'llbe possible to welcome Russia'sparticipation as a founding member of the new post-COCOM regime." (8) Remaining issues were resolved to the Administration's satisfaction in June 1995,and Russia subsequently provided the Administration with a list of military items delivered, or yet to be delivered,under existing contracts with Iran. (9) The New York Times reported on October 13, 2000 that, under the understanding reached with Russia, all deliveries to Iran were to end by December 31,1999, and that Russia did not honor that element of the arrangement.