With this year's APEC meeting in China having just barely concluded, where the biggest news was not the inability of the US to make any material headway in trans-Pacific trade (who needs trade when you have a printer?) or that China is "willing" to import even more NSA bugs courtesy of Cisco and Qualcomm, but Russia's second "western" mega gas deal with China, as well as the following photo-op of course...

... and with the WSJ reporting that in the now year-old "nuclear"negotiations between the west and Iran, there has been no progress, it was once again Putin's turn to turn the screws on the lame duck president following a report moments ago that Russia inked a deal to build eight nuclear power units in Iran, as a new partnership agreement, guaranteed by the IAEA.

First, this how the success of US defines "success" in its ongoing negotiations to curb Iran's nuclear program:

Two days of exhaustive negotiations between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart, Javad Zarif, in the Persian Gulf nation of Oman resulted in no significant breakthrough in forging a comprehensive agreement to curb Tehran’s nuclear program by a Nov. 24 diplomatic deadline, said senior U.S. and Iranian officials. “Real gaps” remain between Washington and Tehran, said an American diplomat, in describing talks that seek to end a decade-long standoff over the future of Iran’s nuclear program. Lower-level diplomacy between the U.S., Iran and other world powers continued on Tuesday in Muscat, as Mr. Kerry arrived in China to brief President Barack Obama on the status of the nuclear diplomacy. “What we’ve said about this is that we may get there and we may not,” said a senior U.S. official who traveled with Mr. Kerry, referring to he prospects for a deal by late November. “I don’t think that anybody has said at any point recently that we are, quote-unquote ’on track’ to reach an agreement by the 24th.” Iran’s second-highest official attending the Oman talks, Abbas Araghchi, described the talks as “tense” and said his negotiating team was committed to engaging in virtually round-the-clock talks to try and reach the deadline.

This was of course expected since nobody embodies US "success" better in recent years than Obama with perhaps the exception of John Kerry.

So as the US stumbles from one foreign policy debacle to another, this is what the Kremlin is doing. From RT:

Russia is to build eight nuclear power units in Iran, as a new partnership agreement, guaranteed by the IAEA, was signed in Moscow on Tuesday. The head of the Rosatom, Sergey Kirienko, and the chief of the Atomic Energy Agency of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi, signed a series of documents, promoting the links in the field of peaceful application of atomic energy between the countries, RIA Novosti reports. According to the agreement, Russia is to construct eight pressurized water reactors “turn-key ready” in Iran. Four of them will be built at the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, also completed by Russia a year ago. Besides, nuclear fuel for the future reactors will be provided by Russia during the whole life cycle of the new reactors. Spent fuel will be returned for processing and storage.

In other words, as the US does everything in its power to halt the spread of nuclear power in Iran (for peaceful purposes or otherwise) Tehran, in clear defiance of the US, just agreed with Russia to develop not one but 8 new nuclear reactors.

Confused: please refer to the picture at the top of this article for the clearest explanation possible.