The routes of the Russian scam targeting Tehran

On Sunday evening, at 9.00 pm Israeli time, a Tupolev Tu-154 that had taken off from Chkalovsky airbase, outside Moscow, landed at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. According to reports in the Israeli press, on board was the head of the GRU, the Russian military intelligence service, Igor Kostjukov, who is said to have met with senior Israeli defence officials and possibly also American officials. This is not a routine visit; the Russian military has not maintained frequent contact with Israel in recent years, and it is rare for them to set foot on Israeli soil. However, two known facts help to piece together not so much the purpose of the visit as its background: the meeting took place at the request of the Americans, and the aircraft departed the following day for Abu Dhabi, where trilateral talks between the Ukrainians, Russians and Americans are still taking place today. Military talks between the Israelis and Russians were more frequent in previous years, focusing mainly on Syria and Iranian activities within Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Once the regime fell, these contacts also became redundant. Then the war with the Islamic Republic of Iran began, and Israel did not remain indifferent to the news that it was Moscow that had provided intelligence to strike American bases in the region, as well as Israeli targets. Even before the Twelve-Day War – the first direct conflict between Jerusalem and Tehran – the Kremlin had also, on more than one occasion, received a delegation from Hamas, the terrorist group that organised and carried out the 7 October attack on the kibbutzim in southern Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government had maintained a semblance of neutrality between Moscow and Kyiv, to the point of irritating the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, who had instead immediately given his support to Israel, both after the 7 October pogrom and during the war with Iran. However, even Netanyahu’s balance has begun to falter, and the Prime Minister has started to speak more openly about support for Ukraine, about the Israeli cause standing alongside that of Kyiv, and to condemn Russian online activities in the spread of anti-Semitism. Israel had not anticipated receiving the head of the GRU, but the American request made the meeting possible on the eve of the trilateral summit in Abu Dhabi.

The Kremlin leader, Vladimir Putin, has convinced Donald Trump that he can help him with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The US president’s statements on the conflict with Tehran in recent days differ from those made a week ago. 

Following the mid-term elections, Trump appears less inclined to launch a strong attack on Tehran, and yesterday, during his speech at the inauguration of the new Knesset, the parliament in Jerusalem, Benjamin Netanyahu said that a difficult period lies ahead for Israel, in which international pressure on Israel to accept a nuclear-armed Iran will intensify. The Israeli Prime Minister speaks to Trump on a daily basis; he may have received information about a change in the White House’s plans, or he may simply be playing along with the charade that the US President and the Israeli Prime Minister have been carrying on for two years.

Netanyahu could soon become leader of the opposition; for the time being, it is not his turn to form a government, and his speech to the Knesset yesterday was criticised by many leaders of other parties as divisive. There is division on every issue in Israel, but not on Iran. There is division on every issue, but not on how to deal with the new United States emerging from the mid-term elections. For Trump, Putin is now an ally. For Israel, during the years of the war in Syria, he was someone to compromise with, but not to be trusted. Now he is someone to watch your back against.

Trump isn’t interested in Ukraine; he’s interested in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Whilst he keeps repeating that ‘Ukraine isn’t my war, it’s Joe Biden’s war’, the war against the Islamic Republic of Iran is his own – and Putin has convinced him that he can lend a hand. The first time he offered his support and mediation was in June last year, but Trump refused. The Kremlin leader, undeterred, continued to present himself as the right person to talk to about uranium, Tehran and enrichment. He identified the weak point in Trump’s interests. When the White House chief became convinced that Russia could exert influence over Iran, he once again called into question any right Ukraine had not to surrender. The CIA has also stated that Russia helped Iran, but – just as had happened during his first term, when Trump dismissed the US intelligence services by saying he trusted Putin’s word that there had been no Russian interference during the 2016 presidential election – Trump has once again downplayed reports of US bases in the Middle East being targeted by the Iranians thanks to intelligence from Moscow. He believes Putin, believes his promises to secure a victory for him in Iran, and wants to accommodate him on Ukraine.