AmSpec Blog: War Warning Part 5, United Nations Security Council Plan

...The Russian position is sophisticated. No one on the UNSC has better intelligence sources inside Iran, inside the Tehran regime, inside the IRGC and Council of Elders, than the Russian military... Russia needs Iran as a wedge between the Wahhabists in the Ummah and the oil-soaked Central Asian client states; also Russia knows that only Iran is capable of matching the connections the Wahhabists have with the Chechen martyrs...

Hm. There are clear parallels with the logic, circa 1991, that helped convince President George H.W. Bush to leave Saddam in place (as a counterweight, ironically, to Iran).

That didn't work out so well.

I'd advise the Russians to study not only recent history but the physical principle of unstable equilibrium. What it would tell you is that such a balancing act is deucedly difficult even when you're dealing with rational people motivated by rational philosophies, and that the slightest perturbation will send the whole mess toppling. Attempting to balance raving nutjobs like the Wahhabists vs. the crafty, hallucinatory Iranian Mahdists is like trying to build a house of cards, in a wind tunnel, during an earthquake, with... well, one card.