Tensions between the U.S. and Iran date back to Mr. Trump’s decision last year to pull the U.S. out of a multinational deal that was supposed to see Iran give up its nuclear ambitions in exchange for a lifting of economic sanctions. The Trump administration has reinstated penalties for any economic dealings with Iran, escalating the pressure on the country’s theocratic regime.
In televised remarks last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that a war between the U.S. and Iran would be a “catastrophe” that could spark a fresh refugee crisis.
But the formidable air defence systems that Russia has deployed in Syria have stayed quiet as Israeli warplanes have repeatedly struck at Iran-linked targets inside Syria over the past 3˝ years.
The question is what Mr. Putin would ask for in exchange for pushing Iran, one way or another, out of Syria –
and how reliable any Kremlin promise would be.
Russia’s core interests in Syria are the stability of Mr. al-Assad’s regime and the preservation of its base in Tartus. Its alliance with Iran, meanwhile, is seen as less important than its need to escape the Western-led sanctions that were imposed in 2014 after Russia seized and annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.
Moscow would like to see the whole of Ukraine returned to what the Kremlin calls its “sphere of influence.”
Dan Shapiro, who served as U.S. ambassador to Israel under Barack Obama, called the Jerusalem meeting “a real opportunity to enlist the Russians in a more serious way” in the effort to curb Iran’s increasing influence in the region. Mr. Shapiro, however, worried that the Kremlin’s price tag would be something the U.S. shouldn’t be willing to pay.
The Jerusalem summit will likely also provide the U.S. with an opportunity to brief Mr. Patrushev on Mr. Trump’s stumbling plan to forge a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, who have lived under Israeli military occupation since 1967. The Jerusalem meeting opens one day before Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, presides over a gathering of Arab business leaders in the Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, where Mr. Kushner is expected to try and drum up support, and economic commitments, for the White House plan.“What worries me most is that the Russians will try to extract a Syria-for-Ukraine deal, with regards to increased Russian constraints on Iran in Syria in exchange for relief from Ukraine sanctions,” Mr. Shapiro said. “That’s a bad deal for U.S. interests, to call into question core European security needs in exchange for very questionable promises regarding [Russian] behaviour in the Middle East.”
Iran, so far, has responded to the Jerusalem summit largely by ignoring it, giving it almost no attention in state media. Ali Asghar Khaji, an official in Iran’s Foreign Ministry, told Russia’s Sputnik news service that Iran was “confident that the Russian government will take a principled position, will not succumb to the excessive desires of the United States and Israel, and will not follow them.”
In his televised remarks, Mr. Putin suggested he had no plans to turn against Iran in exchange for concessions elsewhere. “Dore Gold, a retired diplomat who served as foreign affairs adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and later as head of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, said Russia’s presence at the Jerusalem summit was testament to the clout Moscow had gained in the region in the four years since Mr. Putin sent troops and warplanes to saveWhat do you mean ‘a grand deal'?" he said in reply to a question from a journalist. "Sounds like some commercial act. No. We don’t sell out our allies, our interests or our principles.” Mr. Putin added, however, that he hoped there was sufficient “goodwill” to reach an understanding on Syria’s future.
Mr. al-Assad’s collapsing regime.
“President Putin has succeeded in restoring much of the stature of the Soviet Union here in the Middle East …
he’s got the power in his hands.” The question now, Mr. Gold said, was what Mr. Putin intended to do with that power.
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