US and Israel seek ‘deconflict mechanisms’ with Russia, accepting its new Syria role
MICHAEL WILNER/J.Post/09/29/2015
NEW YORK — In a blistering speech on Monday at the United Nations— his first in a decade— Russian President Vladimir Putin spent nearly twenty minutes attacking the United States for its efforts to export a governing model that, according to Moscow, does not fit the Middle East: Inclusive, authentic democracy, in which the legitimacy of government is derived from the consent of the governed. Striking a similar tone as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who in his speech also blamed the spread of terrorism worldwide on the US and its support for Israel, Putin said Washington had failed to learn the lessons of the late 20th Century, when both the US and the USSR tried to export rival ideologies to disastrous consequences.
“Do you realize what you have done?,” Putin charged in the address, shortly before meeting with US President Barack Obama for the first time in two years. Their meeting, which lasted nearly two hours, proceeded an uncomfortable photo opportunity for press and an unfriendly toast over a lunch with world leaders. In his own speech, Obama repeated a consistent line from American presidents: That democracy makes for stronger nations, that its spread has brought security and wealth to all within its reach. And yet he also said that realism dictated compromise with authoritarian regimes uninterested in the freedom of peoples: Russia, Iran, and perhaps even one day the government in Syria he has long called illegitimate.
Syria’s nominal president, Bashar Assad, is the greatest impediment to peace in Syria, according to the United States. It is he who authorized the murder of innocent protesters, sparking an uprising that remained largely peaceful for a year before turning catastrophic. Yet, Assad has maintained that these protesters were always terrorists agitating for instability in Syria, and Putin has supported this rationale since the very outbreak of the crisis. Putin’s foreign policy is one of obstructionism: He is against a unipolar world, where one power forges the path of all nations. And yet what he stands for— as opposed what he stands against— is a more challenging policy to articulate. Moscow says it is interested in fighting terrorism worldwide, from the Northern Caucasus to eastern Syria, where Islamic State (ISIL) has concentrated its power. For that reason, he will continue to support Assad, the only figure he says is “truly fighting” the group.
And yet Assad has, for the past two years, declined to target ISIL and has in fact largely avoided the fight. Military experts believe his strategy has been to allow the terrorist organization, based in Raqqa, to lead the battle against moderate rebel militias under assault from all sides. ISIL’s success against groups supported by the West would then provide Assad with justification for a simpler, binary war against the internationally-reviled group. Moscow began supporting Assad long before ISIL took root with a name, a banner and a capital, and began blocking United Nations Security Council resolutions condemning Assad at the very beginning of the conflict in 2011. At that time, rebel groups were only first beginning to splinter, and the majority were considered by Western intelligence agencies to be comprised of moderate forces.
That picture has changed, and now largely fits Moscow’s cast of the conflict as one between a leader and a formidable terrorist organization. Putin’s formal entry into Syria— with the construction of new military bases stocked with heavy weaponry and aircraft— has forced the US and neighboring Israel to readjust. Government officials in Washington and Jerusalem now acknowledge that Russia’s role in the Syrian conflict is unavoidable and must be accommodated.
Israeli and American officials say they seek to avoid direct conflict with Russian forces, which are now operating on behalf of the Assad government. US forces continue to operate against ISIL targets in Syria and have refused to strike Assad’s military assets. But parallel operations between US and Russian forces, both against ISIL, now must work to deconflict with one another. That is the current focus of discussion: Fashioning deconflict mechanisms that ensure Russian military units do not come into conflict with US-led coalition units fighting ISIL.
Similar deconflict mechanisms are a priority of the Israeli government, and were the primary point of conversation in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Moscow this month. He and Putin agreed on a deconflict communications channel, according to Israeli officials. Israel has struck targets within Syria several times over the past year, destroying arms transfers facilitated by Iran and destined for Lebanese Hezbollah. While the strikes will continue on a case-by-case basis, Moscow’s sudden presence on the ground— in alliance with Assad and Iran— heightens the risk of unintended conflict between Israeli and Russian forces.
“We respect Israel’s interests related to the Syrian civil war,” Putin told journalists at the UN on Monday, “but we are concerned about its attacks on Syria.”Russia now hopes to form an anti-ISIL coalition, separate and apart from the coalition formed by the United States, which centers on the legitimacy of Assad and his government. To that end, an information-sharing center has been set up in Baghdad for Iran, Iraq, Russia and Syria to share intelligence, a Russian official said on Tuesday. One senior American official downplayed the news, noting that Russia had been sharing intelligence with Iran and Syria for years. “It is no secret that American specialists and American military have been invited to work in the Baghdad center,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Tuesday. “Unfortunately, they have not participated in the first meetings and discussions.”
Putin warns Israel off targeting Iranian targets in Syria
DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis/September 29, 2015
Russian President Vladimir Putin is concerned about Israel’s repeated attacks in Syria, he said, after talking for an hour and-a-half with President Barack Obama early Tuesday, Sept. 29, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. Putin agreed that Israel’s security concerns must be taken into account in Syria, but he was worried by the IDF’s periodic strikes on positions in the embattled territory.
Sunday night, the IDF hit Syrian military targets with powerful Tamuz artillery rockets after two errant Syrian rockets landed on the Golan. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that they hit the artillery command post of the Syrian army’s 90th Brigade, which is stationed outside Quneitra. Syrian and Lebanese sources say the Syrian deputy commander was injured.
The message the Russian president issued, straight after his meeting with Obama, was that Moscow would not put up with Israeli strikes in Syria, even in response to an attack.
This comment and the events leading up to it raise four questions:
1. Why did Putin take the trouble to respond in person to a trivial incident like a cross-border exchange of fire on the Golan directly after his highly-important talks with Obama?
2. Why was he so concerned by this incident? It occurred just a week after the Russian president and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had agreed in Moscow to set up a coordination mechanism to prevent clashes between IDF and Russian forces. And in any case Russian forces were not involved.
3. What was behind statement issued by Israel’s Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon after the incident, in which he stressed with unusual emphasis Israel’s zero tolerance of Syrian rocket infractions of its sovereignty?
4. The two highly-charged statements were obviously occasioned by much more than errant cross-border fire from the Syrian side of the Golan.
DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report that the answers to these conundrums are embodied in one individual, Brig. Gen. Saeed Azadi, of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, whose presence and operations in Syria are a closely guarded secret.
Or at least they were until Netanyahu let the cat out of the bag at his meeting with Putin last week at the Russian presidential residence outside Moscow. The prime minister disclosed his knowledge that Gen. Azadi had come to replace Gen. Ali Allah Dadi, who died on Jan 18 in an Israeli air strike against a convoy carrying Iranian Guards and Hizballah commanders traveling near Quneitra. They were there to survey a site for mounting a terrorist campaign inside Israel.
The Israeli air strike nipped this plan in the bud. But Iran and Hizballah never gave up, and Gen. Azadi was assigned to finish setting up the terror machine and getting it up and running. A week ago, Netanyahu gave Putin notice that Israel would not let this happen – even if this meant disposing of another Iranian general. The Russian leader explained that Israel’s attacks on Iranian military targets presented a problem because they weakened Bashar Assad.
As matter stand therefore, Russia and Israel are on a collision course: While Israel views Gen. Azadi as a menacing adversary, Putin regards him as part of the Russian-Iranian axis in Syria and wants Israel to keep its hands off him. This point is of such paramount importance to the Russian leader’s plans for Syria that he made a big deal of it at the highest international forum – almost as a sequel to his first meeting with President Obama in more than a year.
He was signaling strongly that the arrangement for the Russian and Israeli armies to coordinate their operations in Syria is unworkable and he was losing patience with Israel’s “security concerns” in so far as they impeded his plans with Iran for Syria.
DEBKAfile’s military sources add: The Syrian rocket fire Friday and Saturday was not in fact “errant” as the IDF spokesman maintained. The rockets were fired on the orders of Iranian Brig. Azadi as a demonstration that Israel’s warning to Putin was a waste of time and he meant to go forward with his operation regardless. Netanyahu and Ya’alon conveyed their message of resistance to this operation by instructing the IDF to hit back with the Tamuz rocket, a system powerful enough to give the other side pause and present Putin with an unforeseen complication in his Syrian venture.
