Since when does the IMF and World Bank not ass rape their clients? Russia knew full well what it was getting into though I admit Yeltsin may have signed on the dotted line while he was a bit tipsy. As it is now, Russia has no debt, much to the dismay of the IMF/World Bank bankers. Putin has paid back all of Russia's debts and made the ruble the hardest currency there is surpassing the Swiss Franc. He's not a dope and will not play by the west's rules.
We are morons. We learn nothing from history. Russia is Russia is Russia and I mean that in the truest sense of Alice B. Toklas's sentiment (Stein stole it from her). Any designs the west, either economically or politically, has on Russia will fail unless they happen to be of Russia's will. Russia cannot be controlled, cannot be conquered, cannot be manipulated. She may be weak (for now) but she's very fat and very wise in the ways of the world. All those twentysomething MBAs in the employ of NGOs have no clue. Putin is canny, brilliant, and well-schooled in Russian history. He knows precisely what it takes to run Russia and has positioned the country to boom. Watch the next 20 years; you'll see Russia prosper in ways we can't imagine if Russia does what's right for Russia. She doesn't always. The only westerner to truly understand Russia is Armand Hammer and he's dead.
If the people of Russia are pissed at the US it's because we treat them like a charity case. They see us as supremely naive and nothing is more galling than being patronized by parvenus with too much money. Even Birnbuam's travel guide got it right when the state department didn't. He said the biggest sin in Russia was pride. Russians are (rightfully) prideful people and nothing insults them more than the how they were treated by the west after the fall of the Communists. They chewed us up and spit us out. They will do it again. They have the brain power, the natural resources, and a supreme pragmatism that the US so obviously lacks.
No, of course I can't discount the prophesies of Ezekiel any more than I can the prophesies of Nostradamus or the fortune teller down the street.
Iran is Russia's client state-- useful for creating a bee in the bonnet of the west and, by happy circumstance, a close neighbor on the border where Russia is experiencing what we so neatly call, insurgency problems. Gaining Iran's assistance in controlling their end of the border or, at least, not directly helping the radical Muslim elements in the southern Caucasus, is useful to Russia. Otherwise Russia certainly does not want the US invading and occupying Iran. Russia doesn't need another American client state on her border and absolutely not one on that border. Every sub-republic on that border has major Islamic independence movements (remember Chechnya, that IS where Chechnya is). We, the US, may say that we don't like Islamic independence movements but if we move into Iran I can bet you dollars to donuts that we start supporting the Islamic independence movements in the southern Caucasus just to keep Russia annoyed. Putin knows this and is playing Iran against the US to keep the US out of the region to the extent possible and to bribe Iran to keep her from supporting the Islamist movements in the area.
Iran is being used and while Ahmadinejad may not know that, the mullahs surely do and will get Russia to give them what (because of US sanctions) the westernized nations will not. Russia is overseeing the nuclear reactors. Russia is supplying refinery equipment, Russia is even, ironies of ironies, supplying Iran with gasoline! The US is perfectly happy to have Russia manage Iran's nuclear program because, despite everything, Russia has proven it knows how to build and maintain nuclear facilities (Chernobyl was, sadly, preventable and caused by human-error). Better to have Russia manage nuclear facilities than towelheads, is the thinking in the west.
The southern Caucasus also happens to be a major petroleum producing area for Russia. Ahem.