Maj. Gen. (ret.) Amos Yadlin served as chief of Israeli military intelligence from 2006-2010. He is now director of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). Ari Heistein is special assistant to the Director.
OPINION — That Iran seeks to diffuse advanced weaponry to its proxies in Syria and Lebanon is no surprise, though recent Israeli efforts to stanch the flow of precise weaponry to its neighbors have had unexpected consequences. An Israeli strike on a site connected to the Iranian weapons program in Syria led Assad’s trigger happy air defense to fire indiscriminately and accidentally down a plane belonging to its partners from the Russian military along with 15 military personnel in a friendly fire incident.
The Russian Ministry of Defense rushed to blame Israel for not accommodating deconfliction efforts and even went so far as to reserve the right to respond, so the Israeli Air Force (IAF) brought unequivocal proof that its planes were no longer in Syrian airspace and were certainly not “hiding” behind Russian planes when the Syrians shot down the Ilyushin Il-20 reconnaissance plane. President Putin then walked back his defense official’s statements and chalked the deaths up to a tragic accident.
Moscow may not have had a great deal of respect for the Syrian Arab Army’s capabilities before the recent clashes – but to use a Russian-built missile to down a friendly Russian plane while failing to hit enemy jets? Likely both frustrating and infuriating.
Nevertheless, the Kremlin could have opted to keep the focus on Israel. Russia was never thrilled by Israeli involvement in Syria, which it saw as undermining the stabilization of Syria and potentially leading to a Syrian-Israeli conflict that could result in the demise of Moscow’s primary client, Bashar al-Assad. Therefore, Russia might have used this incident, and Israel’s role in drawing anti-aircraft fire, as a pretext to impose a new and more restrictive understandings on the IAF to limit its freedom of action in Syria.
However, the deconfliction mechanism that allowed Israel to act as necessary and avoid hitting Russian troops was not a product of Moscow’s generosity. Instead it was the result of a mutual understanding that neither Israel, a regional power with a vital interest in preventing Iranian military buildup to its north, nor Russia, a global power interested in preserving the Assad regime, wants to clash in Syria, especially as their interests do not necessarily conflict. And when considering Russia’s tendency to act as a pragmatic interest broker that aims to exploit situations for its benefit, that it would now choose to directly confront Israel in order to protect Iranian assets in Syria from airstrikes appears very unlikely.
It is true that Iran’s buildup of advanced weaponry in Syria creates friction between Israel’s efforts to prevent the emergence of a strategic threat and Russia’s campaign to save Assad. But is also true that because of the escalation caused by menacing Iranian activity, Israeli and Russian interests converge on limiting such behavior.
Israel, for its part, has little interest in getting drawn into the civil war and insists that it will not interfere in its neighbor’s affairs if the Iran-led axis ceases its efforts to build up forces to attack from Syria. Meanwhile, Russia sees no benefits from Iranian designs to threaten Israel, as its primary byproduct from Moscow’s perspective is Israeli airstrikes against pro-regime forces, endangering a project in which Russia has invested a great deal of blood, treasure, and its international prestige. Therefore, preventing Iran from turning Syria into a forward operating base against Israel would serve both countries’ interests.
Now that the moment of Iran’s victories in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon have passed, Teheran must now cope with the fact that it has overextended its limited resources. It is facing a number of domestic and international crises simultaneously, any one of which would be considered challenging for a normal government. Therefore, it is an opportune moment to pressure Teheran to cease its destabilizing buildup in Syria – through diplomatic or military means.
Putin will likely try to implement the lessons learned from this week’s incident. One will certainly be the need to improve the deconfliction mechanism between Russian and Israeli forces. Another will likely consist of ordering greater restraint among trigger happy Syrian air defense forces as well as promoting greater coordination between the Russian and Syrian militaries. A third ought to include taking more severe measures to prevent Iran from building advanced military capabilities in Syria and provoking Israeli strikes; Moscow will need to take significant steps in order to clarify to the Iranians that it is no longer willing to foot the bill when the Ayatollah gambles.
