Russia’s fast Mideast rise: What it means for Israel

Fresh off brokering a deal to place Syrian chemical weapons under international control, Russia has reasserted itself as a Middle East power player, hearkening back to the days of the Cold War. Israel, meanwhile, enjoys much stronger bilateral relations with Russia than it did during the Soviet era. But will Russia’s meteoric rise in the region change the nature of that relationship?

Observers point to Russia’s long-standing support for the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, close contact with Iran, and veto power on the U.N. Security Council as examples of its attempt to undermine U.S. supremacy in the Middle East for the sake of its own strategic goals. Russia often seems to say one thing and do another, critics say, that is also reflected in its surprisingly strong—though complex—relationship with Israel.

Russian President Vladimir Putin once warned Israel of an impending Syrian poison gas attack, and Israel was the first country he visited after he was first elected. At the time, Putin spoke of how pleased he was to visit a country where more than a million Russian-speakers reside. But when it came to the recent Syrian chemical weapons crisis, Israeli-Russian relations weren’t as cordial.

“We’ve asked the Russians to stop supplying certain kinds of weapons to the region. We didn’t always get the answer we wanted,” Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Danny Dannon told JNS.org.

In September, Russia capitalized on U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s comment that the confiscation of Syrian chemical weapons would prevent U.S. military action against the Assad regime, pitching a plan to place the chemical weapons under international control just as U.S. President Barack Obama was preparing to seek congressional approval for an attack on Syria.

Tatiana Karasova, head of the department of Israeli and Jewish Community Studies at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the Russian Federation, told JNS.org that a U.S. attack on Syria—which never materialized—would have been “a painful blow for Russia, as it would manifest as evidence of Russia’s weakness, its inability to save its strategic ally.” An attack “would have completely destroyed its authority in the Middle East and consequently its image of a global power,” she added.

“The idea of putting Syrian chemical weapons under international control gives a chance to prevent an American aerial attack on Syria, and would allow Russia and the U.S. to finally reach points of agreement,” Karasova wrote in an email interview that was translated from Russian.

Prior to its Syria initiative, Russia utilized its veto power on the U.N. Security Council to oppose efforts by Western powers to levy heavy sanctions on the Syrian regime.

Russia’s Mideast alliances have not prevented it from cooperating with Israel in the areas of the economy, diplomacy, armaments, science, culture, and education, among other fields—a marked change in policy regarding the Jewish state that began two decades ago.

After the 1967 Six-Day War, the Soviet Union cut off diplomatic relations with Israel. The relationship between Russia and Israel was marred by “a legacy of mutual misunderstanding, mutual demonizing representations and the absolute lack of objective information” in each nation about the other until the 1990s, Karasova said.

Russia’s intolerance of Israel also extended to Russia’s own Jewish community. Even toward the end of the Soviet regime, there was still “extraordinary hatred and anti-Semitism that pervaded every single aspect of the Soviet administration,” said Isi Leibler, an international Jewish leader who was deeply active in Russia at the time. Leibler was arrested and expelled from Russia in 1980 but was later invited back, launching the first Jewish cultural center in the Soviet Union.

According to Mark Levin, executive director of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry (NCSJ), Russian Jews are now “not dealing with state-sponsored anti-Semitism, which is a big shift.” The fact that a million Russian Jews immigrated to Israel in the 1990s and now reside in the Jewish state “had an impact not only internally, but on how Russians and the Russian government view Israel,” he said.

Leibler believes that the Russian chemical weapons plan “has in a sense created an environment throughout the world of a declining American power [and] has brought the Russians back in a much stronger way in the Middle East,” in part due to the lack of resolve of the Obama administration.

Russia can only strengthen its allegiance with Israel “by being on the same page on what Israel considers its most important issues,” according to NCSJ’s Levin. That is not the case right now, he said, as the Russians are motivated by their quest to seek an upper hand over America in the region.