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If the Kremlin stays true to its word, Russia on Saturday will begin loading nuclear fuel into Iran's Bushehr reactor. Once it does, it will usher in a new stage in the deepening crisis over Iran's nuclear program.

The 1,000-megawatt plutonium reactor, located near the southern Iranian port city of the same name, has been the public face of the Iranian regime's nuclear program since Tehran and Moscow concluded the agreement to build it, despite American objections, in early 1995. Construction was completed in 2004, but Bushehr has laid dormant for years, ostensibly because of disputes over financing between Russia and Iran, but really because of Moscow's recognition of Washington's worries about Iran's nuclear program.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the U.S.-India partnership is losing momentum under President Barack Obama’s stewardship. Fortifying the alliance was bound to be a secondary priority for any administration faced with a recession, a flagging war effort in Afghanistan, political stalemate in Iraq, stalled Middle East peace efforts, defiant pariah regimes in Iran and North Korea, and strategic tensions with China. Still, allowing the partnership to falter appears to have come easier to a president who never quite displayed George W. Bush’s zeal for the Indian-American relationship. To be sure, problems also exist on the Indian side. New Delhi has itself fallen into a form of post-honeymoon malaise, as the phase of grand political gestures gives way to tough technical negotiations. However, rather than mitigate the downside of this difficult period, the Obama administration is pursuing an agenda that further complicates it and, in doing so, risks some of the tremendous gains made in U.S.-India relations over the past decade.