Putin draws a red line for Tehran, Bennett will try to leverage it

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Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin should give Israel a better understanding of the overall picture of the Iranian nuclear program issue.

Moscow has been pressuring Tehran behind-the-scenes in recent weeks, aiming to ensure that Iran does not further infringe upon the already weak international arrangement regarding the international monitoring of its facilities. This is an interesting development and good news for Israel in the tangled state of affairs that has evolved around the talks to restart the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA agreement.

According to diplomatic sources in Vienna, as a result of Russia’s efforts, Iran has refrained from shutting down the cameras installed by international inspectors at its nuclear facilities and from rendering the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency moot. Israeli sources have confirmed that Russia has indeed been trying to tame Iran and estimate that China supports this position.

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Russia’s position regarding the Iranian nuclear program is complex and its moves are often hard to decipher. The current impression is that the Kremlin may be indifferent to the enrichment issue, but does care about monitoring, contrary to the impression among the Western powers hitherto.

The sources in Vienna further explained that while Israel and the West fear the possibility that Iran will become a nuclear threshold state and are doing everything they can to keep it from reaching that status, Russia’s aim is to ensure that Iran does not further erode inspection. Russia wants to know if and when Iran decides to push forward on a weapon, turning it from a threshold state to one that possesses a tested and assembled nuclear weapon. In this context, it must be noted that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has previously scoffed at Iran’s very ability to assemble a nuclear weapon.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi visits the Bushehr nuclear power plant, in Iran, this month. OFFICIAL PRESIDENTIAL WEBSITE/

Bennett has already spoken with Putin by phone about Iran’s attempt to position itself as a nuclear threshold state. Now the two leaders will have their first private, in-person meeting. Israel is concerned about the pace of uranium enrichment, the quality of enrichment and other steps taken by Iran. But, as noted, this is not necessarily what concerns Russia.

The short trip to Sochi will be joined by National Security Council Head Eyal Hulata, Political Adviser Shimrit Meir and Military Secretary Avi Gil. It is unclear whether the three will meet with their Kremlin counterparts. Housing and Construction Minister Ze’ev Elkin, who served as interpreter for former PM Benjamin Netanyahu, will continue in the same capacity on this journey as well. No journalists are to be included on the flight.

Bennett and Putin will mainly focus on two topics. The first is the Iranian involvement in Syria, and Tehran’s attempt to create a second front against Israel there, alongside that of Hezbollah in Lebanon. The second topic is of course nuclear Iran.

Vladimir Putin and Syrian President Bashar Assad at an orthodox cathedral in Damascus in 2020.Alexei Druzhinin / AP

Russia, which is aiding Bashar al-Assad in his attempts to reassert sovereignty over the entire country, has been discomfited by two events over the past week. The first, which was prominently highlighted by the news media, is the assassination of Madhat Salah, a Druze man from the village of Mas’adeh. Madhat served a 12-year sentence in Israel for security violations. Following his release, he moved to Syria and became a parliament member, who was considered to be close to Assad. It is understood that his killing is unrelated to his past, but instead to establish terror infrastructures with help from Iran.

The other event, which went relatively unnoticed, is an attack attributed to the Israeli Air Force in the Tanf area of south-east Syria. The area is under American control, near the Syria-Iraq-Jordan triple border point. The target of the attack was a phosphate ore factory. It should be noted that phosphate ore can also produce uranium, but it is unclear whether this was the case.

In the report by Sputnik, the news website close to the Kremlin, Russian admiral Vadim Kulit was quoted as saying that the Syrian aerial defense systems (which are controlled by Russia) refrained from firing at the Israeli F-16s because the radar had also picked up a civilian aircraft in the vicinity. The identity of the civilian aircraft was not reported. Kulit said there was a risk that the Syrian anti-aircraft systems would hit it.

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Israel’s third option for dealing with Iran

Such an incident occurred about three years ago, when a Russian surveillance aircraft was accidentally shot down by a Syrian missile during an Israeli attack. After that mishap, in September 2018, Air Force Commander Amiram Norkin hastened to Moscow to mollify the Russians and mend fences. Following the incident, new coordination protocols were put in place, which limited Israel’s freedom of action in Syria.

The key remains in Washington

And back to the nuclear issue: Last month IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi and the head of the safeguard and verification department at the agency, Massimo Aparo, met with the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Commission, Muhammad Islami, in Tehran.

At the meeting, the three agreed that Iran will allow inspectors to maintain the cameras and continue collecting information. However, in the weeks since the meeting, it has become clear that Iran is not strictly adhering to this promise. While Iran does fear IAEA condemnation, it continues to try and buy time in order to further advance its nuclear program.

While Grossi has escalated his wording in periodical reports, his powers are limited and any decision by the UN Security Council would require consensus with Russia and China anyway.

Therefore, the key to Israel was and remains Washington. Israel believes that Iran has no intention of returning to the 2015 nuclear deal. Israel believes that at best, Iran will agree to a softer, milder deal that will not infringe upon what has already been achieved in the 2015 agreement.

That is to say, any progress made thus far in uranium enrichment, centrifuge upgrades, metallurgy and missile development will not be rolled back.

In such a state of affairs, Israel’s clock is ticking down. It’s true that Iran is still a good distance away from assembling a bomb, but it continues to accumulate know-how, experience, and abilities. Should the Bennett-Putin meeting show that Russian pressure on Iran is limited in its effect or restricted to a single issue, Israel will be left with three options:

The first and most favored option is for the United States to announce an end to negotiations with Iran over restarting the deal. In this scenario, the U.S. – along with the U.K., France, Germany, and the European Union – will impose harsh sanctions that have already been passed, but are not currently being implemented. This primarily includes implementing sanctions against overt and covert Revolutionary Guard front companies and entities that trade with other nations. Such sanctions may cause the Iranian economy to collapse and force the regime back to the nuclear deal.

The second, which is the least likely, is for Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities on its own. The third is to resign ourselves to Iran becoming a nuclear threshold state.