Is Rus­sia, “Israel”, and the US work­ing against Iran?

There’s no more con­vinc­ing proof that last week’s his­toric National Secu­rity Sum­mit in Jerusalem between Rus­sia, “Israel”, and the US was a suc­cess than the self-​professed “Jew­ish State’s” lat­est anti-​Iranian strikes in Syria, which were more than likely approved by Moscow in advance as part of its regional “bal­anc­ing” strat­egy in pur­suit of a “New Detente”. (Won­der how this didn’t get on RT) No one is perfect!

“Israel” car­ried out sev­eral strikes against what media reports allege were IRGC bases in Syria around mid­night on 1 July, defy­ing pop­u­lar expec­ta­tions that this wouldn’t hap­pen ever again after Rus­sia gave some very high-​profile but nev­er­the­less mis­lead­ing state­ments about its sup­pos­edly “allied” com­mit­ment to Iran the week prior. The his­toric National Secu­rity Advi­sor Sum­mit in Jerusalem between Rus­sia, “Israel”, and the US was widely described as a fail­ure after Moscow defended Tehran’s mil­i­tary pres­ence in the Arab Repub­lic and reaf­firmed that the two are “allies”, but that doesn’t tell the full story because Russ­ian Secu­rity Coun­cil Sec­re­tary Patru­shev was only talk­ing about their anti-​terrorist coop­er­a­tion in Syria and didn’t mean any­thing more broadly than that.

The same goes for the Russ­ian For­eign Ministry’s envoy to Asian coun­tries and in par­tic­u­lar the pres­i­den­tial advi­sor on Afghanistan Zamir Kab­ulov’s promise a few days later that Iran “won’t be alone” if the US attacks it. Alt-​Media inter­preted this through its mem­bers’ typ­i­cal wish­ful think­ing per­spec­tive to mean that Rus­sia was imply­ing a direct mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion against the US in sup­port of Iran if a con­flict were to break out, when in real­ity he was most likely talk­ing about the polit­i­cal and moral sup­port that the rest of the world would extend to the Islamic Repub­lic in that sce­nario. Shortly after, a Russ­ian offi­cial told Sput­nik that “we are open to dis­cus­sions” with Iran about sell­ing it the S-​400s, which was also wrongly reported in the outlet’s own head­line as “Rus­sia ready to deliver S-​400 to Iran” when it lit­er­ally only sig­naled its inter­est in start­ing talks about this.

The com­bi­na­tion of Patru­shev, Kab­ulov, and the military-​technical official’s state­ments cre­ated the false per­cep­tion that Rus­sia would mil­i­tar­ily defend its Iran­ian “ally”, which is why many peo­ple were so sur­prised when “Israel” just car­ried out sev­eral strikes against its forces in Syria. Not only that, but the S-​300s once again failed to respond, con­firm­ing that they’re just sta­tus sym­bols wor­shiped by those who suf­fer from a “sav­ior com­plex”. The lat­est attacks were par­tic­u­larly painful for those who sin­cerely thought that Rus­sia would pre­vent this from hap­pen­ing since some of them tar­geted the Homs Gov­er­norate close to where the S-​300s are report­edly located in neigh­bor­ing Hama Governorate’s nearby city of Masyaf, send­ing the clear-​cut mes­sage that Moscow won’t let them be used against “Putinyahu’s Rus­rael“.

As the shock of what hap­pened begins to set in, the Alt-​Media Com­mu­nity would do well to remem­ber that none other than Bibi him­self spilled the beans about what was about to hap­pen just days before the strikes took place when he said that “all of us (Rus­sia, “Israel”, and the US) agree on the end goal of get­ting Iran out of Syria” when brief­ing his com­pa­tri­ots on the out­come of the National Secu­rity Advi­sor Sum­mit. Many peo­ple mocked him at the time and dis­missed his com­ment as noth­ing more than Zion­ist boast­ing, but he was actu­ally telling the truth in hind­sight as proven by the fact that Rus­sia once again “pas­sively facil­i­tated” “Israel’s” anti-​Iranian strikes in Syria, shat­ter­ing the world­view of those who fell for Moscow’s mes­sag­ing in the days prior. In fact, one can’t help but won­der whether that said mes­sag­ing was designed to cover up a deal that it struck.

To elab­o­rate, the three quoted Russ­ian offi­cials were unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cally enthu­si­as­tic about their sup­port of Iran, which should have imme­di­ately been a dead-​giveaway to keen observers that some­thing was up. Fur­ther­more, the fact that Alt-​Media didn’t report on the entirety of Patrushev’s com­ments from that event, espe­cially about how “Rus­sia puts spe­cial atten­tion on ensur­ing Israel’s secu­rity“, should have been another sign that a per­cep­tion man­age­ment oper­a­tion was in progress. More than likely, Rus­sia wanted to cap­i­tal­ize on the out­pour­ing of global sup­port for Iran after it downed an Amer­i­can drone ear­lier that week and mis­portray itself as the Islamic Republic’s loyal “ally” in order to redi­rect some of the sym­pa­thy towards its Mideast pol­icy as well, all of which would make “Israel’s” forth­com­ing strikes all the more unexpected.

It’s doubt­ful that Iran­ian deci­sion mak­ers fell for this per­cep­tion man­age­ment oper­a­tion that was prob­a­bly mostly tar­get­ing the gen­eral audi­ence at large and not the strate­gic one in the Islamic Repub­lic, but then again, Tehran still can’t seem to accept that India has turned against it so it’s the­o­ret­i­cally pos­si­ble that it also didn’t see this com­ing either. That said, many Ira­ni­ans have report­edly been killed over nearly the past four years since Rus­sia mil­i­tar­ily inter­vened in Syria and began to “pas­sively facil­i­tate” “Israel’s” strikes there, so it would be strange for them to think that this would change after what Patru­shev said at the his­toric Jerusalem Sum­mit about ensur­ing “Israel’s” secu­rity, which is noth­ing more than a euphemism for con­tin­u­ing to allow it to bomb the IRGC in Syria.

Given what just took place, there’s no doubt that the National Secu­rity Advi­sor Sum­mit in Jerusalem was a suc­cess in more ways than one. Not only did Rus­sia appar­ently approve — if not coor­di­nate — “Israel’s” lat­est strikes (and likely the many more that will occur in the com­ing future) as part of its regional “bal­anc­ing” strat­egy aimed at “pas­sively facil­i­tat­ing” Iran’s dig­ni­fied but “phased with­drawal” from Syria as a quid pro quo for clinch­ing a “New Detente” with the US, but Moscow’s mes­sag­ing strat­egy also suc­ceeded in man­ag­ing inter­na­tional per­cep­tions and obscur­ing its behind-​the-​scenes role in the lat­est attacks. Alto­gether, all of this works out very well for Netanyahu’s upcom­ing re-​election cam­paign and it’s pre­dicted that he’ll con­tinue strik­ing the IRGC in Syria with Putin’s tacit approval in the run-​up to September’s vote.

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Andrew Kory­bko is an Amer­i­can Moscow-​based polit­i­cal ana­lyst spe­cial­iz­ing in the rela­tion­ship between the US strat­egy in Afro-​Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road con­nec­tiv­ity, and Hybrid War­fare. He is a fre­quent con­trib­u­tor to Global Research.

Fea­tured image is from @Ibra_Joudeh/Twitter

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