|
By
Tom Regan
In what some experts believe is an attempt to rebuild its influence in the Middle East, Russia is working with Syria and Iran on several important regional military and economic deals. But this new effort by Russia to become a more important player in the region has raised the suspicions of Israel about Russia's longterm goals.
Syria's President Bashar al-Assad is currently on a four-day trip to Moscow, where the Russian government agreed to
write off more than $9 billion worth of Syria's debt. The Russian newspaper
Izvestia had earlier reported that Syria had also planned to sign a deal to buy "sophisticated Russian missile systems" (ground-to-ground SS-26 Iskander-E and shoulder-fired SA-18 Igla missiles), a report denied by Assad.
The Washington Times reports that it was "pressure exerted by Israel and the US" that actually
delayed the transaction. But the Israeli officials, in particular, are worried the deal will go ahead "quietly" sometime in the coming months.
"The Russians and Syrians have not abandoned this potentially dangerous transaction," said Knesset Deputy Roman Bronfman of the opposition Shinui party, one of the most outspoken critics of the plan. "American and Israeli eyes will be watching and studying the situation as it develops from here on out."
India Daily writes, however, that Assad wants more than missiles – he is actually looking for a "
full-fledged security guarantee" that Russia will intervene against the US or the Israelis if they attack Syria.
No one knows what Russia will do. Russian President Putin even probably does not know what to do. Is it worth a military confrontation with America over Syria? Russians will be answering that question to themselves in the secrecy of Kremlin in the next few days.
Meanwhile, as Assad was in Moscow, the Russian news service
Itar-Tass reports that Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak was in Tehran for "
strategic stability consultations." On Tuesday Iranian news site
MehrNews.com reported Mr. Kislyak told reporters that these talks, particularly about
key nuclear issues, were "very useful."
Russia has been supportive of Britain's, Germany's and France's position on using diplomacy to solve the issue of Iran's nuclear program, a position at odds with its ally the US. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a comment on the situation last week that "settlement of the
Iran's nuclear problem should be accomplished with political and diplomatic methods."
On Tuesday, Russia's Ambassador to Iran, Alexander Maryasov, told Russian media that the reasons for the delays in putting Iran's Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant online are all "technical," and had
nothing to do with politics. Russia is helping Iran to build the Bushehr plant, a facility that is at the heart of the accusations by the US that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons.
"Firstly, the Iranian side initially expressed the desire to try and synchronize the project that had been prepared by German specialists with a project that we are implementing [said mr. Maryasov]. This work has proved to be very complex and taken much time. Even though it has been finally done, more efforts and time have been spent than if we had begun to build the nuclear power plant from the very outset according to our technical project. That is the main cause of the delay." Meanwhile, the
Debkafile, an Israeli website that regularly reports on military, political, and espionage events in the region, reported recently that in early January Russia completed installation of "
two advanced radar systems around the Bushehr nuclear plant."
Debkafile says this, by itself, would not have raised a great "hullaballo," but then "Russians were discovered to be building the same system at Iran's uranium enrichment plants for military purposes in Isfahan in central Iran."
It was taken to mean that Moscow has undertaken to secure all of Iran's nuclear industry from top to bottom – from the installation of sophisticated equipment to military planning and operational cooperation - against American or Israeli attack. Moscow has thus placed a serious impediment in the path of any American and Israel military action to curb Iran's nuclear armament. This Russian-Iranian cooperation looks like the harbinger of geo-strategic understandings in other places like Afghanistan, India, Iraq and the Persian Gulf. The Jewish news website,
JTA (which stands for Jewish Telegraphic Agency), reported Tuesday that the deals with Syria and Iran are the latest signs of "
a major shift in Russia's Middle East policy," one that has analysts in Israel worried.
Israeli leaders are concerned that a Russian axis including Syria, Turkey and Iran could make peacemaking with the Palestinians and regional accommodation more difficult. Moreover, they say, the supply of missiles to Syria and nuclear technology to Iran constitutes a direct military threat to Israel. Israeli officials were also outraged when a group of Russian members of parliament (almost all representing 'nationalist' parties or organizations),
called for a ban on all Jewish groups in Russia. Although the MPs later
retracted their demand, Israel's Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said his country would take diplomatic actions against the MPs. "We will not let any organization or country
live calmly with such facts," the minister said.
Finally, the
Daily Star of Lebanon argues that
the whole "bruhaha" about Russian moves in the Middle East are little more than a tempest in a teapot. "In reality," the paper writes, "Assad's call for greater Russian involvement in the Middle East peace process is the last thing Premier Putin wants to hear, and as such is likely to fall on deaf ears."
Also...
•
Abbas to visit Russia Sunday (
Times of India)
•
Brits not as eager on Iran (
CBS News)
•
China, Russia Reject US Bid to Impose UN Sanctions on Sudan (
Bloomberg)
• Feedback appreciated. E-mail
Tom Regan
.
|
RSS feed