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22 Jun, 2010 21:44

US official blamed for calling Russian policy on Iran “schizophrenic”

A remark by the US Defense Secretary Robert Gates that Russia's policy on Iran is “schizophrenic” has been called rude and offensive by a Russian government official in Moscow.

That's according to Russia's RIA-Novosti news agency, which describes the unnamed source as “high-ranking.”

Speaking at the Senate Armed Services Committee on Monday, Gates said Moscow had acknowledged Iran's nuclear arms would pose a major threat, but it nevertheless still pursues commercial ties with Tehran.

The Russian official said that Gates’ views on Iran's nuclear crisis are outdated.

The government source is reported as concluding that Gates' analysis was made not as part of Barack Obama's team, but more as a member of the Bush administration.

An assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, Paul Craig Roberts, said the remark is just an attempt to discredit Russian opposition over Iran.

“The neo-conservatives who have an agenda of United States world hegemony control the Obama administration just as they controlled the Bush administration and the Clinton administration,” Craig told RT. “And therefore to say that the Russians are schizophrenic is just a way of discrediting the Russian opposition to America’s wars of aggression which have now focused on Iran.”

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