Putin’s Middle Eastern agenda

Russia does not have friends or enemies – only pragmatic interests.

By ROMAN BRONFMAN
Russian President Putin attends ceremony 521 (photo credit: POOL New / Reuters)
Russian President Putin attends ceremony 521
(photo credit: POOL New / Reuters)
On the face of it, the aim of Vladimir Putin’s late June visit to the Middle East was to promote Russian cultural and historical interests.
In Israel, the Russian president inaugurated a monument commemorating the Red Army’s role in the victory over Nazi Germany; in the Palestinian Authority, he opened a Russian cultural center; and in Jordan he dedicated the Russian Pilgrims’ House near the supposed site of Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan River.
But under the cultural veneer, there was a weighty political agenda, especially in Israel. At its heart was the Iranian issue, following Russia’s adamant refusal to go along with the West in intensifying economic pressure on Tehran.
The Russians, who recently hosted a summit between Iran and the major powers in Moscow, are desperately trying not to rock the boat. Iran, the Muslim neighbor to the south, has always worried them, as far back as the grand imperial days. In the Iranian context, Russian diplomats speak about Russia’s “soft underbelly” – not because of any border issues or energy reserves, but rather in reference to Iran’s potentially subversive influence on the Russian Federation’s large Muslim minority, especially in the Caucasus and autonomous Muslim republics like Tatarstan.
Therefore, in the unwritten agreement between Moscow and Tehran, Russia provides nuclear technology and a diplomatic umbrella in return for non-intervention in Russia’s large Muslim population centers.
On the Syrian issue, Russia is also out of step with the West for domestic reasons, in this case economic. Syria is one of the few countries that continue to purchase Russian arms in significant quantities – more than $700 million a year – thereby helping to recapitalize Russia’s deficit-ridden military-industrial complex.
Ever since the discovery of huge off-shore Israeli gas and oil reserves, Russia also has clear economic interests in Israel.
For some time, the Russian oil giant Gazprom has been eying a lucrative contract for developing these fields and Putin’s visit was meant to lay the foundations for this.
As opposed to other Middle Eastern countries, Putin’s visit to Israel had another important aspect. The Russian leader likes to talk about “the human bridge” that connects Israel and Russia – the more than one million Russian speakers who live in Israel and share a similar cultural and political mindset.
The mass arrival in Israel of Russian-speaking immigrants in the 1990s created one of the biggest post-Soviet expatriate communities in the world. That they quickly became a major political force was not lost on Putin, who has made a point of maintaining wide-ranging ties with several of its leaders.
One of the Russian leadership’s more intriguing relationships is with Israel’s Russian-speaking Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Indeed, according to Wikileaks, a couple of years ago a senior Kremlin official went so far as to describe Lieberman as “one of us.” Last autumn, Lieberman gave his stamp of approval to dubious Russian parliamentary elections, when virtually everyone else outside Russia cried fraud. Then, on the eve of Putin’s visit, the Russian daily Kommersant quoted him as someone who “sees eye to eye” with the Russian leadership on Syria.
One might have expected that given the common language and culture, the post-Soviet community in Israel might have helped persuade Russia to curb its backing for Iran and Syria. But that has not been the case. Russia does not have friends or enemies – only pragmatic interests, which it maintains and develops with unwavering resolve.