More Prophetic Stage-Setting With Russia's Growing Control Over Middle East

As US withdraws, Jerusalem spooked by Moscow's growing control over Middle East

US President Donald Trump’s newly announced withdrawal of nearly all US troops from northern Syria has cemented Russia’s status as the predominant global military power actively engaged in the Middle East.

This week, Russian troops arrived at military bases in northern Syria that the American army had hastily left just days earlier, in what can be regarded as both a literal and figurative handover of regional hegemony.

Many officials in Jerusalem are deeply worried about being abandoned by their superpower ally, as the American decision to gradually disengage from this part of the world — which started under former US president Barack Obama — threatens to embolden Israel’s enemies: Iran and its allies and proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and elsewhere.

What does Russia’s takeover really mean for Israel? Some analysts are deeply concerned, fretting about the possibility that Moscow could use surface-to-air missiles against Israeli jets attacking Iranian targets in Syria, which would effectively end Jerusalem’s campaign against Tehran’s establishment of a military foothold near Israel’s border.

Amos Yadlin, the head of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, told The Times of Israel he counts eight main reasons that “motivated Russian President Vladimir Putin to get involved in the Middle East:

1. To Make Russia Great Again;
   2. To again become an influential power, after the US kept it out of Egypt (1973), Iraq (2003), Libya (2011) and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process;
   3. To reduce the influence of the United States;
   4. To play Middle Eastern cards in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine;
   5. To control ports and air bases, something the tsar dreamed of;
   6. To try out weapons developed by Russia in the past decade;
   7. To save Syria’s Bashar Assad — and show the world that Russians don’t throw their allies under the bus.
   8. To fight jihadists — in Syria and not in the Caucasus.

While Russia does not necessarily want to act as an “honest broker” between warring parties in the Middle East, it does seek to have good relations with everyone, Yadlin told The Times of Israel.

“All pairs of enemies in the Middle East enjoy reasonably good ties with Russia: Saudi Arabia and Iran, Israel and the Palestinians, the Kurds and the Turks, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Turkey, and so on.”

Russia should not be seen as a regional hegemon, Yadlin stressed. Rather, that title should be shared by Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. And even the Americans still have more forces in the Middle East than the Russians, said Yadlin, a former head of Israel’s military intelligence.


Israel must come to terms with the fact that the balance of power in the Middle East has fundamentally changed, and it no longer has an ally with boots on the ground in the vicinity, warned Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the US.

“I’m concerned. We have relied for the last 45 years on a Pax Americana that no longer exists. I am not saying that the US won’t come to our assistance [in case of war] but we can’t be certain of it anymore,” he told The Times of Israel. “We have to internalize that that’s the situation.”

The United States is an ally; Russia is not, Oren stressed. “It’s useless for us to pretend that Russia is going to be an ally, but we don’t have to make them enemies either. We can reach a modus vivendi with them.”

Ksenia Svetlova, a Moscow-born senior fellow at IPS Institute and  at Mitvim, The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies, said Russia’s new lead position in the region could have “very grave” repercussions for Israel.


“We already have Russian air defense systems, the S-300, that cover the Syrian and Lebanese shores. As soon as the Russians think that it’s smart for them to operate these systems and to halt the Israeli attacks, Israel would no longer be able to deal with the extension of Iranian power in these countries,” she predicted.


The Israeli air force would likewise be prevented from attacking missile factories or weapon shipments in Syria or elsewhere, Svetlova, a former MK for the Zionist Union, said.

“The Russians are definitely interested in restructuring and rebuilding the Syrian army, which means that the various armed groups there will be gathered under the wing of the Syrian army. And every kind of attack [on Iranian targets in Syria] will be considered an attack against Bashar Assad, and that is something the Russians will not accept.”

And it’s not only Syria. Iran, too, is a strategic ally of Russia, Svetlova noted. “And it’s not likely that Moscow will do anything to curb the Iranian influence in Syria and Lebanon.”

Trump’s declaration that the US should never have gotten involved in the Middle East thus “poses a great danger for Israel, potentially, and changes the world order, which was American based, here in the Middle East, into something that is not entirely clear how it will develop.”


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