Netanyahu considered asking Putin to stop Iran
Benjamin Netanyahu considered asking Vladimir Putin to pressure Iran into calling off a missile attack, Russian media has suggested.
Mr Netanyahu had asked to talk with Putin on Tuesday afternoon, according to Russian news agencies, only hours before Iran launched a barrage of 200 ballistic missiles at Israeli cities.
The aim of the conversation may have been to convince Putin “to put pressure on Iran to prevent an attack”, reported the RBK news agency.
There was no comment from the Israeli government but the Kremlin said that the conversation never happened.
The alleged last-minute request shows how war in Ukraine, followed quickly by war in the Middle East, has reshaped the world order and fractured old alliances.
At the core of this new world order is an “Axis of Evil” shaped by the Kremlin via Tehran and Pyongyang, versus Ukraine and the US-led West.
With Russia and Iran isolated from the West, Putin is said to increasingly have the ear of the Iranian regime.
Putin and Mr Netanyahu, on the other hand, are thought to have fallen out.
Russia had long been seen as a friend of Israel. In his re-election campaign in 2019, Mr Netanyahu said that his friendship with Putin “was in a different league” and hung posters of himself with the Kremlin leader.
They even worked together to contain Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria once the Kremlin intervened in the Syrian civil war from 2015.
But the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 changed all that and forced countries to choose sides.
Russian sources have since told pro-Kremlin propaganda channels on Telegram that the Kremlin has no intention of criticising Iran for firing missiles at Israel.
“The Kremlin believes that the chain of escalation in the Middle East was started by the Israeli authorities and only they can fix everything,” the unnamed source said.
For Israel, it may have been conflicting to fully back away from Russia, a historic partner, towards the US, its main sponsor, but for the Kremlin it appears to have been a far easier decision.
Thousands of Russians fled to Israel in 2022 to escape Putin’s repression of anti-government protests, irritating the Kremlin, which mocked these refugees last year after the October 7 massacre that killed more than 1,000 people.
Over the past year, the Kremlin has hosted Hamas delegations in Moscow and supplied Iran’s Houthis allies in Yemen with missiles, infuriating Israeli observers who feel betrayed.
Semoin Goldin, an Israeli historian, called Putin’s failure to condemn the attacks on Israel a “foul betrayal”.
“Russia has come down squarely on the side of the aggressor, not at all on our side,” said Mr Golding, a researcher in Russian studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Isolated, and in need of allies and arms supplies, the Kremlin went even further and turned to Iran, a diplomatic partner for many years and a loose military ally since Russia intervened in the Syria War. In return for weapons, Russia sent oil, food and technical know-how to Iran.
For Mr Netanyahu and Putin, it appeared that classic realpolitik was still in play on Tuesday even though these alliances appear broken.
But Israel has less obvious allies in the region that it could possibly turn to for influence with Iran.
Azerbaijan, which neighbours Iran, is a rare predominantly Muslim country allied to Israel. In return for selling Israel oil and gas, it imported sophisticated Israeli weapons and spycraft that helped it defeat its enemy Armenia for control of the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh in wars in 2020 and 2023.
Azerbaijan’s relations with Iran are frosty and there have been no reports, so far, that Israel has asked Azerbaijan to try to persuade Iran to ease off its missile attacks.
