A perfect couple

Rico says he's not sure for what (though an Ultimate Fighting Championship bout comes to mind), but they're a pair, that's for sure. Mark Landler and Alan Cowell have an article in The New York Times on the latest between these two:

The confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program appeared to deepen Tuesday, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton escalated her verbal assault during a Persian Gulf visit, and Russia joined the United States and France in bluntly questioning Iran’s ultimate intentions in enriching uranium. Speaking in Jidda as she prepared to end a three-day regional visit, Mrs. Clinton said that it would create “quite dangerous” problems if Iran acquired a nuclear weapon, potentially setting off a nuclear arms race. Mrs. Clinton offered a list of Iranian actions that, she said, contradicted its protestations of peaceful intent, including the disclosure last year of a hitherto secret nuclear facility near Qum. “You have to ask yourself: why are they doing this?” Mrs. Clinton said. Referring to Iran’s insistence that it is not seeking nuclear weapons, she said, “The evidence doesn’t support that.”
Only last week, Iran said it had begun enriching uranium to a higher level, ostensibly to feed a medical reactor in Tehran. At a news conference in Tehran on Tuesday, reports said, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterated that Iran was ready to suspend enrichment if it could exchange its low-enriched uranium stockpile for processed fuel rods from abroad. But he said the swap should be “simultaneous”, a demand already dismissed by the United States and its allies. “We are still ready for an exchange, even with America,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said, according to Reuters.
Mrs. Clinton’s comments seemed to amplify the verbal sparring that began Monday when she said Iran was drifting toward a military dictatorship, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps gathering ever greater political, military, and economic power. By way of a response, the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, said Tuesday that America itself answered to the description of a military dictatorship.
And, as the exchanges intensified on Tuesday, Russia also entered the debate about Washington’s campaign to secure stricter sanction against Iran, saying penalties could not be ruled out if Iran did not persuade world powers that its intentions were peaceful.
Russia also joined the United States and France in signing a letter to the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, asserting that Iran’s uranium enrichment and its failure to notify the I.A.E.A. beforehand were “wholly unjustified, contrary to U.N. Security Council resolutions, and represent a further step toward a capability to produce highly enriched uranium.” The letter, dated 12 February and obtained from diplomatic sources in Washington, said that if “Iran goes forward with this escalation, it would raise new concerns about Iran’s nuclear intentions.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, visiting Moscow, on Monday urged Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, to support stiffer sanctions against Iran, but Mr. Medvedev withheld public support. On Tuesday, Natalya Timakova, Mr. Medvedev’s spokeswoman, said Russia’s position had not changed and the Kremlin believed Iran should have “broader and more active cooperation” with world powers on its nuclear program. “The international community needs to be certain that Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful,” she said, “but no one can rule out the use of sanctions if these obligations are not fulfilled.”
Iran has reacted sharply to the latest American criticism. Mr. Mottaki “raised questions about the United States military dictatorship in the region,” the English-language broadcaster Press TV said on Tuesday, and accused Washington of practicing “modern deceit,” using “fake words” to disguise its intentions in the Persian Gulf area.
“We are regretful that the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tries to conceal facts about the stance of the U.S. administration through fake words,” Press TV quoted him as saying. Mr. Mottaki was speaking at a news conference alongside his visiting Turkish counterpart, Ahmet Davutoglu. He also accused Washington of interfering in the internal affairs of other states by undermining their “scientific and technological achievements,” an apparent reference to Iran’s nuclear program which Iran says is for peaceful purposes permitted under international law.
“Those who have been the very symbol of military dictatorships over the past decades, since the Vietnam war until now, see everyone else in the same way,” The Associated Press quoted Mr. Mottaki as saying. Mrs. Clinton’s current visit to the region, he said, was “overflowing with contradictions and incorrect actions.”
On Monday, Mrs. Clinton encouraged Iran’s religious and political leaders to rise up against the Revolutionary Guards, coming as close as any senior administration official has to inviting political upheaval in the country. She chose to issue the call in Doha, Qatar, just across the waters of the Persian Gulf from Iran itself. “We see that the government of Iran, the supreme leader, the president, the Parliament is being supplanted and that Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship,” Mrs. Clinton said.
Her visit was seen as part of the Obama administration’s attempt to shore up support for more stringent sanctions directed at the Revolutionary Guard Corps. But Mr. Mottaki urged Russia and China not to follow Washington’s lead, The A.P. said.
While China has offered steady resistance to the idea of stricter sanctions against Iran, which supplies oil to Beijing, Russia’s stance has seemed slightly more ambivalent. Russia has appeared in recent weeks to be edging closer to supporting stricter sanctions, but still seems to have reservations. Unlike other permanent members of the Security Council, Russia has a regional relationship with Iran that it does not want to inflame.