Israel sidelined by Kremlin's Syrian gambit

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) speaks with Russian President Vladimir Putin during their meeting at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow, Russia, September 21, 2015. Photo by Ivan Sekretarev / Reuters, Pool

Israel is the biggest loser in Russia’s Syria build-up

John Reed in Jerusalem, Financial Times
September 23, 2015

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, the pre-eminent military power in the Levant, 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 flagging regime of Bashar al-Assad, whose main allies in the four-year-old war are Israel’s leading regional enemies: Iran and the militant group Hizbollah.

Israeli planes and artillery have struck inside Syria several times since 2013 to prevent the transfer of weapons to the militant group, and Israel accuses the Assad government of working with Iran to open a front against it in the Syrian Golan. Now it must co-ordinate any potential strikes with Moscow.

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 with details about how the proposed co-ordination mechanism will work.

Syria crisis

An increasingly complicated armed conflict is pitting rebel groups not only against the regime and its allies, but also against each other

The Russian mobilisation 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.

More recently, Israel in January struck in the Golan and killed six Hizbollah members and an Iranian general. Another air strike in the Golan last month, in retaliation for four rocket strikes that Mr Netanyahu accused Iran of orchestrating, killed at least four people.

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.

Russia has moved fighter jets, tanks and troops into a base in Syria, meanwhile Vladimir Putin, Russian president, is gearing up to make a major speech at the United Nations. What are the Russians up to?

That the Moscow talks took place at all suggests that Russia and Israel see a common interest in co-ordinating. “This demonstrated that both countries 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.”

Israel, Russia to coordinate military action on Syria: Netanyahu

By Maria Tsvetkova, Dan Williams, Reuters
September 21, 2015

Israel and Russia agreed on Monday to coordinate military actions over Syria in order to avoid accidentally trading fire, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a visit to Moscow.

Recent Russian reinforcements for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which regional sources say include warplanes and anti-aircraft systems, worry Israel, whose jets have on occasion bombed the neighbouring Arab country to foil suspected handovers of advanced arms to Assad’s Lebanese guerrilla ally Hezbollah.

Briefing Israeli reporters after he met Russian President Vladimir Putin, Netanyahu said he had come with the goal of “prevent(ing) misunderstandings between IDF (Israel Defence Force) units and Russian forces” in Syria, where Assad is fighting Islamist-dominated insurgents in a civil war.

Netanyahu added that he and Putin “agreed on a mechanism to prevent such misunderstandings”. He did not elaborate. There was no immediate comment from the Kremlin.

In earlier remarks as he welcomed Netanyahu to the presidential residence of Novo-Ogaryovo, outside Moscow, Putin said Russian actions in the Middle East would always be “responsible”.

Underlining the importance of Netanyahu’s one-day visit to Moscow, Israel’s premier took along the chief of its armed forces and the general in charge of Israeli military intelligence.

Putin, who shares Western concern about the spread of Islamic State influence, has pledged to continue military support for Assad, assistance that Russia says is in line with international law. Russia has been focusing forces on Syria’s coast, where Moscow keeps a big Mediterranean naval base.

The United States, which along with its allies has been flying missions against Islamic State insurgents in Syria, has also been holding so-called “deconfliction” talks with Russia.

KEEPING U.S. INFORMED

Netanyahu told Israeli reporters that he had informed the Americans “on each and every detail” of his Moscow visit, adding: “Everyone has an interest in avoiding an unnecessary clash” over Syria.

A U.S. official told Reuters that U.S.-Israeli coordination allowed the allies to share classified technologies for identifying Russian aircraft over Syria: “We know how to spot them clearly and quickly,” the official said.

Separately, U.S. officials said Russia had started flying surveillance missions with drone aircraft in Syria in what appeared to be Moscow’s first air operations there since beginning its build-up. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, could not say how many aircraft were involved.

A former Netanyahu adviser said Israel was concerned that Russia’s help for Assad in battling an insurgency now in its fifth year could create a de facto axis between Moscow, Iran and Hezbollah.

Iran, Israel’s arch-foe, is Assad’s other foreign backer and patron of Hezbollah, which fought Israel to a standstill in the 2006 Lebanon war. Israel worries that top-of-the-line Russian military hardware being deployed in Syria could end up in Hezbollah’s arsenal.

“Our policy is to do everything to stop weapons from being sent to Hezbollah,” Netanyahu told Putin at their photo-op. He also set out Israel’s policy of striking at guerrillas suspected of preparing to attack it from the Syrian Golan, on the northern frontier – an apparent signal to Russia to steer clear there.

The former Netanyahu adviser, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the issue, said any understandings reached with Putin “could come down to Israel and Russia agreeing to limit themselves to defined areas of operation in Syria, or even that they fly at daytime and we fly at night”.

Additional reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin