Russia is unlikely to try to limit Israel’s military actions in Syria, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday after meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin, and one day after celebrating a personal victory with America’s departure from the Iran nuclear deal.
Since intervening in the Syrian civil war on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad in 2015, Russia has generally turned a blind eye to Israeli attacks on suspected arms transfers and deployments by Assad’s Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah allies.
But Moscow’s condemnation of an April 9 strike that killed seven Iranian personnel set off speculation in Israel that Russian patience might be wearing thin.
Netanyahu flew to Moscow on Wednesday to meet Putin, hours after US President Donald Trump quit the Iranian nuclear deal and after Syria accused Israel of carrying out a fresh missile strike on an army base near Damascus.
“Given what is happening in Syria at this very moment, there is a need to ensure the continuation of military coordination between the Russian military and the Israel Defence Forces,” Netanyahu told reporters before departing, referring to a hotline designed to prevent the countries clashing accidentally.
After the talks with Putin, Netanyahu sounded upbeat.
“In previous meetings, given statements that were putatively attributed to – or were made by – the Russian side, it was meant to have limited our freedom of action or harm other interests and that didn’t happen, and I have no basis to think that this time will be different,” he told reporters in a phone briefing.
There was no immediate comment from the Kremlin.
Beyond the nuclear deal, Israelis are deeply concerned over Iran’s presence in neighbouring Syria. Iran, like Russia, backs Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his country’s seven-year civil war.
Israel has pledged not to allow Iran to entrench itself militarily next door and has been accused of carrying out a series of air strikes there that have killed Iranians.
The latest came on Tuesday night, when a suspected Israeli strike hit an alleged Iranian weapons depot on the outskirts of Damascus. Eight Iranians were among those killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.
The strikes have raised fears in Israel of potential Iranian retaliation, and on Tuesday – just before Trump’s speech – Israel’s military asked authorities in the occupied Golan Heights to open and prepare missile shelters.
The notice was due to “irregular activity by Iranian forces” over the demarcation line in Syria, the military said.
Netanyahu and Putin have held a series of meetings and phone conversations in recent months, particularly related to Syria.
The two countries have established a hotline to avoid accidental clashes in the war-torn country.
Israel has not acknowledged the recent strikes that have killed Iranians, but it does admit to carrying out dozens of other raids in Syria to stop what it says are advanced arms deliveries to Iran-backed Hezbollah, another of its enemies. It hopes to maintain the ability to do so.
Netanyahu’s visit to Russia came one day after he gained a long-sought personal victory with US President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. However, the move could further ramp up tensions between his country and Tehran.
Netanyahu gave a televised address minutes after Trump’s announcement on Tuesday to express his strong backing for the “historic” decision, announced in a speech in Washington that reflected many of the Israeli premier’s positions.
The announcement came after Netanyahu’s elaborate unveiling of tens of thousands of intelligence documents on Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions last week, which Trump mentioned in his speech.
Supporters of the nuclear deal say there was little new information in the intelligence documents and that they in fact illustrated the importance of the accord – points that Netanyahu disputes.
Within Israel, Trump’s decision won enthusiastic support. Many Israelis are concerned over Iran and its threats against their country, frequently highlighted by Netanyahu.
“US President Donald Trump read out a synopsis of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech. Word for word, and with no mistakes,” Israeli analyst Ben Caspit wrote in Maariv newspaper.
“Every rational Israeli should today cheer Trump and admit honestly, with no relation to political affiliation, that this is also Benjamin Netanyahu’s resounding victory.”
Netanyahu has long made it his personal quest to change or cancel the nuclear deal, going as far as to defy then-president Barack Obama and address the US Congress in 2015 to lobby against the accord, which was still being negotiated.
Israel will now be closely watching Iran’s response to Trump’s decision, particularly over uranium enrichment, which was constrained under the deal.
“The policymakers in Jerusalem and in Washington must prepare and plan strategy for far more problematic Iranian responses,” Amos Yadlin, director of the Institute for National Security Studies, wrote in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.
“A likely Iranian response, even if not an immediate one, would be a return to the enrichment policy that was in place before 2013.”
All other parties to the agreement – Russia, France, Britain, Germany and China – still support it and say it is the best way to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
Trump and his allies in the Middle East, particularly Israel, argue the agreement was too weak and needs to be replaced with a more permanent arrangement supplemented by controls on Iran’s missile programme.
For Yaakov Nagel, Netanyahu’s former national security adviser, “no agreement is better than a bad agreement”. On a scale of one to 10, he told journalists, he rated Trump’s decision “a little bit more than 10”.
UPDATE 7:56 PM EDT (STAFF)
We just received detailed information from one of Mr. Turner’s former Intelligence Community colleagues and we’re not certain how much of this to report. (I’ve never gotten a call like this before.) According to this Intelligence Operative, the Israel Air Force is preparing a full air assault to attack and destroy all Air Defense systems inside the entire country of Syria within the next few hours. These attacks will also target Russian air defenses in and around the Russian navy base at Tartus and the Russian air base at Latakia. Israel wants Syria and Russia totally defenseless.
I do not know if this is true are not H D http://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/news/world-news/2503-bulletin-israeli-tanks-open-fire-on-syrian-arab-army-directly-see-bottom-updates
Russian contacts on both VK and Twitter claim that a dispatch of fighter jets left from Hmeymim Air Base a short while ago. The aircraft are reportedly heading south.
https://twitter.com/IntelCr… Halturner site