Russia’s increasing Middle East influence

As Russia becomes increasingly influential in the Middle East, US policymakers question what that might mean for American interests in the region. The Atlantic Council convened a panel Monday to discuss Russian interests in the region, how they might shift in a Trump presidency, and where the Russian relationships with Turkey, Iran, and Syria are heading. The panel featured Anna Borshchevskaya, Ira Weiner Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Thomas Cunningham, the Deputy Director for the Global Energy Center at the Atlantic Council, Alireza Nader, a Senior International Policy Analyst at the RAND Corporation and Aaron Stein, a Senior Fellow at the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council.

Borshchevskaya said Putin has had his eye on the Middle East since he first took power in 2000. However, it wasn’t until recently that he has made his interventions more obvious. The most obvious move was Russia’s increasingly friendly relationship with Iran, even though the two countries have been historic rivals. Russia’s and Iran’s mutual resentment towards the US has led them to cooperate in the region. Their cooperation is most obvious in the Syrian crisis, where both are working to legitimize Assad’s rule over Syria. Trump has said he will cooperate with Russia in Syria, but it is still uncertain as to whether he will actually do so.

Stein said that Turkish-Russian cooperation is also a very new phenomenon. There was a sense that the two might have become enemies once Turkey shot down a Russian plane in 2015 when Russians pilots tested the Turkish safe zone on the Syrian-Turkish border. However, at the same time, Turkey had begun to distance itself from the US, partly because the US wasn’t doing enough to combat Kurdish forces in both Turkey and Syria. Thus, Turkey was pushed into Russia’s arms. Since the July coup, Turkey has reoriented itself as a hyper-nationalist, isolationist and anti-Western state that is looking to Russia as a “replacement ally” (for the US).

Cunningham said that since both Russia and some Middle Eastern countries are the world’s major oil producers, they are natural competitors and not cooperators. This is the major reason why Russia wants to maintain influence in the Middle East. Russia is producing tons of oil in response to the depreciation of the ruble and trying aggressively to sell this oil to Turkey. Russia is pushing for the creation of a Russia-Turkey oil pipeline, which many European countries oppose. It would be bad from a European diversification standpoint, since at least some of this oil would be directed west. Additionally, Russia is operating oil refineries in Syria, which will give them a leg up with the Assad regime once the civil war in Syria ends.

Nader echoed what Borshchevskaya said about the Russian-Iranian relationship being one that is mutually beneficial to both parties. However, he said, if Putin and Russia begin to cooperate in the region, it is possible that Russia might abandon Iran, since Iran is a weaker ally for them. If they do that, then Iran would have no powerful allies, which would be a major blow. However, Nader does not expect any US-Russian cooperation to be long term. Their goals in the region are much too different. An Iranian-Russian friendship is much more sustainable, since Iranian and Russian hegemonic ambitions in the Middle East can coexist.

I asked whether Russia’s aggressive support for Shiite groups in the Middle East would have repercussions for Sunni groups. Bolshchevskaya responded that Putin maintains that he is friends with everyone and is not favoring Shiite groups over Sunni groups. Instead, he claims, his ultimate goal in the Middle East is to combat terrorist groups and alliances with Shiite entities like Iran and the Assad regime are the best way to go about doing this. Thus far, Sunnis in the region and even Sunni Russians have accepted this explanation.

The panel was also asked to explain Russia’s relationship with Israel. Bolshchevskaya said that Russia is successfully restoring relations with Israel through economic cooperation, tech cooperation and tourism. However, there are limits to this partnership since Israel is still a Western democracy. The partnership between the two states is fundamentally pragmatic rather than idealistic. But given the chill between Obama and Netanyahu, Israel has found Putin to be a welcome new friend.

When asked whether the US is losing out by allowing Russia to exert their influence in the region, Bolshchevskaya said that that we absolutely are. Prior to Russian intervention in Syria, Assad was weak. Once Russia began intervening, the conflict got much, much worse. Additionally, increased Russian influence degrades US credibility in the region. Stein disagreed, saying that there is a lot of hype about the loss of US credibility in the region. ISIS isn’t as big of threat to the US as many politicians make it out to seem and there is no good reason for the US to make any big commitments to eliminating ISIS. Instead, he thought, the US should focus on strengthening relationships with NATO allies and stay away from the Middle East.