For one thing, clashes between Israel and Iranian forces located in Syria have grown recently, raising the prospect of a serious conflict between the Jewish state and the Islamic Republic.
From Putin’s perspective, it would be a shame for ongoing Israel-Iran tensions to further destabilize a perfectly good Kremlin client state right in the heart of the Middle East.
From the perspective of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who met with Putin a couple weeks ago — a cold peace with a Russian-backed Assad is probably perfectly acceptable (Israel was entirely pragmatic in dealing with Assad’s father), provided that Iranian forces are squeezed out of Syria.
And as Damascus sees it, a stable border with Israel and the protection and support of a distant patron in Moscow may be preferable to the more destabilizing long-term presence of Iranian forces who, some analysts say, Syria’s own military brass doesn’t want around anyway.
The bottom line: The big loser here, of course, would be Iran, which has put thousands of its best troops — and Hezbollah proxies — on the line to save Bashar al-Assad’s neck. You can bet that Iranian hardliners — confronted with the collapse of the Iran deal and a more hostile US policy generally — won’t accept being pushed out of a Syrian peace easily. The bloody kaleidoscope of external influence in Syria’s civil war may be about to take a fresh turn.
Sign up for Signal, a twice-weekly newsletter from GZERO Media, a Eurasia Group company, and follow @saosasha on Twitter.
