Over the past several years, Israel has been regularly carrying out airstrikes in Syria. Talks are underway now with Russia which could severely curtail that air war.
Israeli officials believe Russia is engaged in a policy change, which is going to involve joint air patrols with Syria, and necessarily that means Israel won’t be able to attack consequence-free like they have been.
There have been suggestions that Russia would want to curb Israel’s strikes, but so far Israel has managed to avoid any big issues by staying away from the Russian bases.
Syria has substantial air defenses which intercept some of the missiles Israel fires, but never really threaten the warplanes. With Russian air patrol support, they could seriously threaten attacking Israeli planes, and that’s almost certainly going to mean Israel won’t launch any sorties that might run afoul of these new patrols.
Well if Russia finally allowed Syria to shoot back now and then, that would definitely cool Israel’s enthusiasm to bully from the air.
And if it doesn’t curb their enthusiasm, it’ll highly likely start a shooting war between Israel and Russia. Then should US forces in Syria intervene, something much worse.
Extremely unlikely, I’d say. Neither Russia nor the US have enough forces inside Syria to start something against the other. Israel really wouldn’t want to tick off Russia more than it has. Most of Israel’s operations have been essentially meaningless anyway. Syria isn’t going anywhere and neither is Russia. So Israel is likely to back off – especially since Hezbollah in Lebanon might get involved if anything kicked off – and Israel can’t afford that, at least not without US help.
I’d say this is less a signal to Israel than it is to NATO, especially the US and Turkey — basically notice that if they want to escalate, the reciprocal escalations won’t be limited to a Russia-Ukraine theater. It puts the Mediterranean into play.
Given the recently improved relations between Turkey and Russia, it would surprise me if, in the face of severe escalation, Russia didn’t lean on Turkey to close the Bosporus to US military traffic.
Could be. The Russian naval games in the Med factor into that, causing the US to conduct a snap naval exercise of their own. The Pentagon spokesman said that exercises was planned in 2020 – but it wasn’t on the NATO list of exercises as of last Friday.
I very much hope that you are correct Richard… Although I would add, it isn’t always easy to predict what Israel will or will not do… It depends largely on what Israel’s real intentions are and how far they are prepared to go to obtain those objectives…
It takes two to tango-if Syria would keep Iranian proxy forces away from Israel’s northern border,it would remove a causus belli.
And Israel could seize more Syrian territory.
Sure it is. Israel will use deflective news to allow more settlements, more Palestinian tortured and dead.
We think that the Empire has its hands full with the Ukraine crisis.
And China has been flying along the shores of Taiwan recently too.
We don’t know about plans from Iranian militia to attack US bases in Iraq with rockets yet…
Then there is Venezuela possibly inviting Russian missiles to come over to defend its coast.
Did we forget the Arctic ? Yes we did…
Geopolitics… a very nice 5D Game…
Ah Iran, to me this is an important aspect, which still remains to be seen… But in this chess game it seems that anything is possible…donna
Well said Darren, this is a paramount concern…
About damn time. I know Russia wants to keep cordial relations with Israel, and Russia is in no way intending to get between Syria and Israel, but enough is enough, as they say.
“There have been suggestions that Russia would want to curb Israel’s strikes, but so far Israel has managed to avoid any big issues by staying away from the Russian bases.”____ Yeh, they are notorious to hide behind civilian aircrafts like chickens…!
A smart warrior attacks where the enemy is weak.
I connect this to Ukraine. That is the only thing that has really changed. Israel’s constant bombardment of Syria is just more of the same. So, why now? Ukraine.
If so, I’d expect to see similar changes at other points of contact, such as Iran.
This situation could so easily spiral out of control. This is my greatest concern. I’d very much like to see de-escalation as quickly as possible…
Israel is the wild card… Always the bloody fly in the ointment…
Good!
The linked article sounds like the Israeli high command is crapping themselves. “What happened, Russia? I thought we were in this together!” Sounds like Putin is no longer interested in “close cooperation”. Good, this may be what Putin meant by asymmetrical response.
That seems like a step in the right direction, Israel bombing civilians in Syria is criminal and needs to end.