Israel biggest loser in Russia’s Syria build-up

FT wrote:

By deploying troops, aircraft and weapons to Syria, Russia has over the past fortnight surprised the US, outmanoeuvred regional players such as Turkey, and positioned itself as a decisive player in any postwar regional order.

However, Israel has arguably emerged as the biggest loser from the Kremlin’s Syrian gambit.

By stationing about 2,000 troops and setting up what analysts say could become three bases around Latakia, Moscow has bolstered the regime of Bashar al-Assad, whose main allies in the four-year-old war are Israel’s leading regional enemies: Iran and Hezbollah.

Russia’s move also comes amid Israeli government unease over a US-led nuclear agreement with Iran, which Israel contends is open to violation and will enhance Tehran’s ability to finance future regional military adventures.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, has put the best possible face on what some analysts are calling the “game-changing” move by Russia. Emerging from hastily arranged talks with Russia’s president Vladimir Putin on Monday, Mr Netanyahu said that Israel and Russia had agreed a joint co-ordination mechanism to “prevent misunderstandings” — code for clashes or dogfights over Syria.

The Israeli leader was perhaps lucky that his lightning Moscow visit and fragmentary news of the understanding fell just before Yom Kippur, when Israelis were turning off their phones, and media fell silent.

With the holiday now ending, the questions are resurfacing. Exactly how will Israel co-ordinate its military strikes with the Kremlin? Will there be a cyber-age equivalent of the cold war-era “red telephone” Israeli and Russian military planners can pick up? Does Russia, a big producer of the type of weapons Israel fears, agree with Israel’s “red lines” on which of them may or may not be used by Hizbollah?

Israeli officials have told journalists that the new mechanism will involve exchanging intelligence and co-ordinating any possible action in the border region. Meanwhile, Mr Putin assured Mr Netanyahu that “all of Russia’s actions in the region will always be responsible”.

However, Russian officials have been sparing details about how the proposed co-ordination mechanism will work.

The Russian mobilization in Syria also puts Israel in the awkward position of having to acknowledge publicly, if obliquely, that its aircraft have been operating over southern Syria for years. The government has maintained a policy of silence on most of its strikes to avoid provoking the weak Assad government to mount a military response.

The policy stretches back more than a decade, and reached an apex of sorts in 2007, when Israel carried out an unacknowledged air strike on a nuclear reactor in Syria.

It is not certain that the military interests of Israel and Russia will inevitably clash.

Mr Putin said on Monday that his main goal was to “defend the Syrian state”. He condemned the “shelling” Israel had withstood in recent regional wars — and that Mr Netanyahu invoked at the meeting — although he did not mention Hizbollah by name.

That the Moscow talks took place at all suggests that Russia and Israel see a common interest in co-ordinating. “This demonstrated that both are interested in continued dialogue and in exchanging information on their efforts in the region,” says Nikolay Kozhanov, a visiting fellow at Chatham House in London and a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

Moreover, most of Israel’s unacknowledged military strikes have been along the Lebanese border or in the Golan, well away from Russia’s area of deployment around the Assad stronghold of Latakia.

“There has been a broad message that Israel will be able to strike in certain areas with a relatively free hand,” said Shashank Joshi, a senior fellow at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute. However, he added: “Their freedom of movement has not gone up; the question is what they can get away with. It’s a net loss for Israel.”