What side will Moscow take in Israel-Iran war?
For the first time in more than 35 years an Israeli fighter jet was shot down, not far from this northern Israeli city. In 1982 it happened during the first Lebanon war. Ten days ago it happened during, well, what exactly? The Syrian civil war? The Israeli-Iranian war, which is not a war, at least a declared one? The Israeli war with the allies of Russia?
Such is the complexity of Israel’s northern border, where the Syrian regime of Bashar Al- Assad, the Iranians and the Russians are all active.
On Feb. 9 an Iranian drone entered Israeli airspace via Jordan, launched from a Syrian airbase. The Israelis shot it down; at the Munich security conference on Sunday Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, dramatically held up part of the drone during his speech, mocking the Iranian foreign minister: “Do you recognize this? You should, it’s yours!”
Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, dismissed Netanyahu’s speech as a “cartoonish circus, which does not even deserve a response.” Syria is in reality a kind of deadly circus. And Zarif could well afford to be dismissive. Iran lost a drone, but made the point that its presence at Syrian airbases is secure enough now that it can launch att acks f rom t hem. Iran’s proxies have been active in Lebanon and Syria for a long time, but now it has acted on its own.
Afters shooting down the drone, the Israeli air force immediately sent fighter jets into Syria to pound Iranian targets, something it has done often. This time though, Syria returned a fearsome barrage of anti-aircraft fire, shooting down one jet as it was heading back to Israel. It crashed in northern Israel, the pilots having survived after ejecting.
While the loss of one fighter is not militarily significant, the lost aura of invincible air power is. How did Syria manage to shoot down an Israeli jet? It hasn’t happened recently, but not for lack of trying. Could it be that the presence of Russian forces in the country, which have won the Syrian civil war for Assad, provided the enhanced antiaircraft capacity that enabled Syria to shoot down the jet?
It’s possible, even likely. What is beyond doubt is that Russia is now the governing military power in Syria. In 2013, when U. S. president Barack Obama and the rest of the West refused to enforce its “red lines” against Assad for using chemical weapons, it was Vladimir Putin who brilliantly exploited the situation to return Russia to the Middle East for the first time in decades. He brokered a “compromise” in which Russia would be the monitor of Assad’s chemical weapons. He was now the internationally sanctioned monitor of his staunch ally in the region, and he used Russia’s position to secure Assad’s position. Not surprisingly, Assad was found by Amnesty International to have used chemical weapons again last month.
Two years l ater, when Assad’s regime was weakened, not least by incursions from ISIL in eastern Syria, Putin sent Russian forces into the theatre. Russian troops and firepower in 2015 shifted the course of the civil war decisively toward Assad. Having won the war for his ally, Putin himself showed up in Syria in December 2017 to claim victory, and to announce the enhanced presence of Russian air and naval bases in Syria would now be permanent.
Looking northward, Israel now sees the most active world power in the region allied with its enemy, Syria. The United States effectively withdrew under Obama and, despite a major shift in rhetoric and gestures under President Donald Trump, the Americans have still not regained any of the ground lost to Putin on Obama’s watch.
Simultaneously, Iran has emboldened its presence in Syria to the point where it no longer has to act through its proxies but can act directly. Presumably the purpose of sending the drone into Israel was to make that point.
And perhaps to pressure Putin to make a choice which to date he has refused to make, and has not had to make. He has tolerated Iranian activity in Syria, even against Israel, and not objected when Israel has responded with strikes on Iranian assets. In effect, Israel and Iran were fighting a low intensity war in Syria with the major power present, Russia, staying out of it.
Can Putin stay aloof as the war heats up? As the winner of Syria’s civil war, Putin is now the one calling the shots in Syria. Israeli reports claim that the Israel Defense Forces was planning further attacks in Syria, but a phone call from Putin to Netanyahu forced the Israeli prime minister to stand down.
Putin and Assad depended on Iranian- backed militias and mercenaries to put down the Syrian rebellion and drive out the ISIL forces. With those battles won, it would be possible for Putin to distance himself from Iran, even to curtail its activity in Syria. Israel hopes that he will, but he might choose otherwise.
Israel faces a more aggressive Iran a short distance from here, and it is Moscow, not Washington, to whom it must look for help.