Trump aide: Putin backs Iran exit from Syria

JERUSALEM — Russian President Vladimir Putin told the United States that an Iranian presence in Syria does not coincide with Russian interests, and he would be content to see all Iranlinked forces go home, national security adviser John Bolton said Wednesday.

Bolton made the comments at the end of a threeday visit to Israel, where he has been speaking with officials ahead of a meeting with his Russian counterpart in Geneva. His claims clashed with recent statements by Russian officials, who have said that Iran was playing a constructive role in Syria.

Israel has been lobbying the United States to do more about Iranian entrenchment across its northern border in Syria as the civil war winds down, demanding that all forces linked to its arch foe leave.

Persuading Russia, which alongside Iran has provided Syria with the military assistance that helped tip the civil war in President Bashar Assad’s favor, to assert its influence in containing Iran could be one of Israel’s best hopes to achieve this.

The issue was raised in discussions between Putin and President Donald Trump in Helsinki last month, while the Russian president also spoke with Bolton on the subject three weeks earlier, the U.S. national security adviser said.

Putin said that “Iranian interests in Syria were not conterminous with Russian interests in Syria and that he would be content to see the Iranian forces all sent back to Iran,” Bolton said. “It was not a question of where they might be inside Syria. We were talking about a complete return of both the regular and irregular Iranian forces.”

However, Putin said “I can’t do it myself,” and a “joint U.S.-Russia effort” may be needed, Bolton said. He was responding to a question on a Reuters report which quoted Bolton as saying that Putin had told Trump he couldn’t eject Iranian forces from Syria.

Other Russian officials have struck a different tone in public, however, casting Iran as a constructive partner for Russia in ridding Syria of extremist militants.

“In contrast to the United States and its coalition, we and the other guarantor countries, Turkey and Iran, are promoting stabilization and normalization in that country with deeds, rather than words,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said according to the Interfax news agency Wednesday.

Russia’s ambassador to Israel, Anatoly Viktorov, said in July that Russia couldn’t ask Iran to leave Syria. He said Iran’s withdrawal from Syria would be “unrealistic” because Tehran is “playing an important role in our common efforts toward extermination of terrorists in Syria,” he said, according to Russia’s Tass state news agency.

For his part, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Bolton’s upcoming meeting with Russia’s powerful Security Council head, Nikolai Patrushev, would deal with many “complicated” issues.

“Bilateral relations continue to deteriorate,” Peskov told reporters Wednesday. “We need to find points of interaction and to understand whether such points exist and whether our counterparts want that.”

Earlier comments by Bolton from Israel had not been received well by the Kremlin. Peskov also said Wednesday that his comments that Russia was “stuck” in Syria and looking for others to fund postwar construction, made in an interview with Reuters, were incorrect.

“It is not correct for anyone, let alone our counterparts in Washington, to claim that Russia has stuck someplace,” he said. “Let us not forget that U.S. military personnel is present on Syrian soil too.”

Bolton said the United States remains determined to finish the job of eliminating Islamic State forces in the country, but also to “deal with the presence of the Iranians.” He also cautioned Syria against using chemical weapons as the government gears up for an offensive in Idlib province. “If the Syrian regime uses chemical weapons we will respond very strongly,” he said.

Previously a vocal advocate of regime change in Iran, since taking up his position in the Trump administration last year Bolton has stressed that ousting the Iranian government is not U.S. policy. However, the United States wants to see a “massive change” in Iranian “belligerence” in the region, he said.

By reimposing sanctions after pulling out of the Iran deal the United States has brought “the hammer down again,” which has caused a “profound” impact, he said: “I think more serious than we would have predicted.”

European nations have been attempting to save the deal, though the threat of U.S. sanctions has caused private sector companies to flee the Iranian market.

Bolton said he had briefed Israel’s prime minister and other officials on diplomatic discussions U.S. officials have had with the Europeans and the American determination to drive Iranian oil exports “down to zero,” he said.

“We’ve talked about the president’s determination in reimposing the sanctions, that we are not just going to stop at where the sanctions were in 2015,” he said.

Bolton