Naftali Bennett’s Calculated Effort to Engage with Vladimir Putin on Ukraine—and Iran

Iranian Monitor · Mar 15, 2022

https://www.newyorker.com/news/dail...ngage-with-vladimir-putin-on-ukraine-and-iran

Naftali Bennett’s Calculated Effort to Engage with Vladimir Putin on Ukraine—and Iran
The Israeli Prime Minister’s government has a choice to make on two fronts—between American leadership and its own course.
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I think Israel's duplicitous moves and so-called neutral stance in practice regarding Ukraine is already well known. That the Russians would value this enough to jeopardize what actually would be their winning card in their confrontation is an altogether different issue that the Russians seem incapable of grasping. Ultimately, combined with their egregious tactical mistakes in the conduct of the war, the Dussians have simply so far dug himself in a hole which they foolishly imagine the likes of Israel, Saudi Arabia and UAE can help extricate them from. Even China wouldn't be able to, unless you first have true winning strategy (more on that later).

But on Iran, while the greatest area of Russian collaboration with the Israelis has been in Syria, there are also question what has led them to the posture they have taken on the JCPOA? It is a good posture actually, but if it is part of a different road-map than anything originating in Israel.

On another matter, too, Bennett and Putin found, however tacitly, a kind of reciprocity. Bennett, like Netanyahu, has been a fierce opponent of the Iran nuclear deal, which lifts sanctions on Iranian trade. The Biden Administration and its European allies want the deal, but, in the Moscow meeting with Bennett, Putin elaborated on a new roadblock to its signing. Sanctions imposed on Russia by the U.S. and European powers mean that any third-party company or government entity that trades with Russia may itself be sanctioned. Putin now insists that Russia’s support for the final deal is contingent on its being able to trade freely with Iran—which the original deal allowed. (Some observers think that Russia does not want Iran to be a nuclear power and, thus, a rival, but its immediate concern is lifting sanctions.) Iran is eager to sell its oil reserves while prices are soaring. Yet its Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, had already agreed to Russia’s demand before the Moscow meeting. (“Iran’s ties with countries, including Russia, should not be impacted by sanctions,” he told Lavrov, perhaps thinking of continuing Russian arms sales.) Bennett’s Moscow delegation, for its part, “did not urge this roadblock,” Haaretz’s veteran defense analyst Amos Harel told me, but they were openly “happy about the outcome.”
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The Israeli politicians are, like Trump, the gift that continues giving.

It seems worth emphasizing that Bennett’s opposition to the deal is not widely shared in the Israeli defense community. The former army chief Gadi Eisenkot called the Trump Administration’s decision to exit the deal, in 2018, a “strategic mistake.” True, there was nothing in it to deter Iran from advancing its missile program, or supporting clients in Lebanon, Yemen, and elsewhere. But, in the absence of a deal, Iran just continued enriching uranium and is now thought to be possibly weeks away from having a sufficient quantity for a nuclear weapon.“There is no realistic alternative to this new deal,” Eran Etzion, the former deputy head of Israel’s National Security Council, told me. “We have yet to see the details, but the deal reportedly includes steps like the old one, such as sequestering enriched uranium, which distances Iran from producing a bomb.” Bennett and his government, like Netanyahu’s before it, “are still spending billions of dollars on preparing for a so-called military option.” But, he added, “there is no military option without full coördination with the Americans—dragging them into another Middle East adventure.”
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War with Iran is what the Israelis want the Americans to handle, while the Americans want the Israelis to do the job.

On two fronts, then, Bennett’s government has a choice to make between American leadership and its own course; and on bot h it has defaulted to expediencies that are arguably in Israel’s security interest but are challenged by Israeli security experts, and correspond with Putin’s interests. Bennett’s mediation gambit—his play for ostensible neutrality—may impress “realist” foreign-policy strategists, but it does not impress everyone.
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The Russians need to make their choices clear too. If they still want to chase the Israel/UAE/Saudi Arabia/Trump Bargain, and its motley crew of white nationalist, Christian Zionists, ultra-Zionist enablers in the the US, I hope they would have learned by now: as critical as these groups were in bringing Trump to power, they are only as powerful as the MIC (military-industrial complex) crowd behind them lets them be. Without MIC also on their side, even as POTUS and despite his best efforts, Trump ultimately couldn't even stop sending arms to Ukraine!

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Naftali Bennett’s Calculated Effort to Engage with Vladimir Putin on Ukraine—and Iran

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Naftali Bennett’s Calculated Effort to Engage with Vladimir Putin on Ukraine—and Iran

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