Excellent analysis on the complex dynamics at play in the Middle East. This period in world history is certainly not for the faint of heart. Looks like we're in for some fireworks. -R.O.
The conflict of interests between the U.S. and Russia over Syria is closely linked to an issue that has recently slipped down the priority ranks but is expected to take center stage again soon – the Iranian nuclear program.
By Amos Harel | May.18, 2013 | 10:55 PM
The recent developments in Syria have been overshadowed by the direct clash of interests between the United States and Russia, in which Israel plays a minor, if inadvertent, role.
While Washington continues to hesitate over the degree of force needed to affect regime change in Damascus, Moscow, which does not believe that toppling Syrian President Bashar Assad will necessarily benefit the Syrian people, continues to warn against its possible replacement by a Sunni extremist government.
On the strategic level, even after the publication of images of the latest atrocities in Syria and the new accusations of use of chemical weapons, Russia has two goals: To keep the regime in place for as long as possible, since it maintains its hold on Tartus as Moscow’s private port in the Mediterranean Sea, and to subvert U.S. influence in the region.
At the same time that it prepares to host an international conference on Syria in June, Russia finds it comfortable to also flex its muscles over the three aerial strikes in Syrian territory that have been attributed in the foreign media to Israel. That is the reason for the current talk of deliveries, not yet completed as far as is known, of Russian S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Syria. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s failure to persuade the Russians to halt the deal signaled the start of a new war of leaks between Washington and Moscow. Every day a different U.S. news outlet receives information about the worrying scope of Russian assistance to Assad’s regime. Of particular concern to Israel, in addition to the S-300 surface-to-air missiles, are an advanced version of the high-precision Yakhont shore-to-ship missiles and the punched-up presence of Russian warships in the waters surrounding Tartus.
There is probably little Israel can do to scotch the Russian-Syrian arms deal. Even assuming that Iran will keep prodding Assad to help it in getting armaments to Hezbollah, Israel may have already used up most of its ammunition. The temptation to intervene militarily to halt munitions smuggling is always great: Intelligence officials will say they have precise information and cannot promise the same quality of intelligence after the advanced weapons systems have crossed the border into Lebanon. The pressure on the leadership to approve additional operations targeting arms shipments will be significant.
On the other hand, there’s no guarantee that the paralysis that gripped Assad after the previous strikes will continue forever. A senior Israeli official responded in The New York Times on Wednesday to Syrian and Hezbollah threats to take action against Israel after the third strike, in late April, with a direct threat to take down the Assad regime. But that is not what Israel wants. Among the myriad dispiriting options in Syria it is the current situation, however unappealing, that is presumably the least terrible.
On Saturday, The Times of London reported a senior Israeli intelligence official as saying that Assad was preferable to the rebels. Former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy, writing in Foreign Affairs earlier this month, even went so far as to call Assad “Israel’s man in Damascus.”
Iran: The next chapter
The complex political battle surrounding Syria is closely linked to another issue, one that seems to have slipped down the priority ranks slightly in the past few months, namely Iran’s nuclear program. It’s been some months since Israel has explicitly threatened to attack Iran. The lull is partly due to the wintry weather, thought to further complicate aerial strikes on that country. It might also be linked to understandings reached between Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama during the latter’s March visit to Israel.
But that doesn’t mean the Iran chapter is behind us. It’s only a delay, until next month’s presidential election in Iran. America told Israel: Let’s wait for the election. If the ayatollahs’ regime tries to skew the results, as in 2009, perhaps another “green revolution” will break out in Iran, and perhaps this time it will, with inspiration from the Arab Spring, be more effective.
And even if the Iranian regime does survive, as is likely, the political and economic pressure on the country might finally convince the country’s supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to at least consider temporarily suspending the nuclear program in exchange for an easing of the international sanctions. If nothing happens, Washington has hinted, perhaps we will need to take direct action against Iran on our own.
Israel does not entirely trust this veiled promise from the United States, mainly in light of the White House’s embarrassing hesitancy over Syria and limp response to North Korea’s nuclear muscle-flexing. The Obama administration has been caught up in a series of public-relation disasters since the start of the president’s second term. All of this must suggest to Netanyahu that once again he has been left to fix the Iranian nuclear problem alone.
The prime minister will certainly not take comfort in a new report released on Friday by the Rand Corporation, that dares to ask the question that must not be raised in polite society: What will the region look like after Iran achieves nuclear capabilities? The veteran U.S. think tank, which often works for the government, says that obtaining nuclear weapons will further Iran’s national security goals, deter Israel and the United States from an attack in Iran, lead to greater instability in the region and increase the likelihood of war, whether by accident or as the result of a series of misunderstandings between Tehran and Jerusalem.
All of the obstacles that stood in the way of an Israeli attack on Iran last year will be relevant this year as well: The Obama administration is opposed to unilateral action from Israel, technocrats in Israel are against it, and there is a new, political obstacle in the form of Netanyahu’s main coalition partner in the new government, Finance Minister Yair Lapid. Lapid’s civil and economic agenda has no room for war with Iran. Nevertheless, it’s a safe bet that within a month, after the dust of the Iranian election settles, the issue of the ayatollahs’ nukes will once again claim center stage.
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