T-Rex
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They really should but some people are born ostriches, you can't make them see the truth as it is.
Russia and Israel are allies !
- Thread starter Torch_v2.0
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They really should but some people are born ostriches, you can't make them see the truth as it is.
SubWater
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lol,
The last time I heard this word was from ISIS supporter and medias.
nobody can stay forever.
Cthulhu
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ISIS guys are primitive Neanderthals, The Jews are our lords and masters who made up our history and control our weather, They're Gods walking the face of the earth. Israel will stay forever, deal with it.
Shapur Zol Aktaf
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It doesnt matter, "baqiya" means "remains" and Israel will baqiya till the sun dies. This is a fact which every muslim and country near Israel should accept. Only possible pressure on Israel will be diplomatic and economical pressure and that's only possible after recognition of Israel. Another issue is what is the benefit of pressuring Israel for certain countries like Iran. After making a balance of benefits and disadvantages countries such as Iran should decide how to position themselves towards Israel.
Cyrus the great was a zionist.
Torch_v2.0
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Torch_v2.0
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Ok !
So , Nearly 600 views for this topic !
Aim was to spread awareness !
Even if some of you don't buy it , remember one thing that this topic has been planted inside your brains as a parameter & from now you'll be forced to judge each and every event that occurs relvent to the parties involved in this topic !
Thank you all !
So , Nearly 600 views for this topic !
Aim was to spread awareness !
Even if some of you don't buy it , remember one thing that this topic has been planted inside your brains as a parameter & from now you'll be forced to judge each and every event that occurs relvent to the parties involved in this topic !
Thank you all !
T-Rex
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I call upon ostriches in Iran and Syria to look at this photo carefully. Perhaps they need to learn how to study facial expressions and gestures.
Torch_v2.0
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Home > Israel News
Analysis
Netanyahu May Offer Putin: Remove Iran From Syria for Lifting of U.S. Sanctions on Russia
Israel and the Saudis pushed for Trump-Putin deal, The New Yorker reports. Netanyahu could try and sell this idea to Putin, but can Moscow deliver the goods?
Zvi Bar'el
Jul 11, 2018 1:44 AM
7comments Subscribe now
Netanyahu and Putin in January, 2018.\ MAXIM SHEMETOV / REUTERS
Syria strike: On eve of Moscow meeting, Netanyahu sends Putin strategic message[/paste:font]
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday will be devoted mainly to Israel’s demand that all Iranian forces leave Syria – a demand that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has already deemed completely unrealistic.
Russia has told Israel on several occasions that it can’t make Iran leave Syria completely; the most it can do is try to get Iranian forces and Iranian-affiliated militias, including Hezbollah, to move a significant distance away from the Syrian-Israeli border in the Golan Heights. But Russia isn’t even managing to keep its promise to secure a partial withdrawal of Iranian forces.
>> On eve of Moscow meeting, Netanyahu sends Putin a strategic message / Analysis
According to reports from Syria, even during the Syrian army’s conquest of the Daraa district over the past few days, Iranian officers and observers and Hezbollah fighters participated alongside the Syrian troops. It also turns out that the Syrian army – which now controls most of the border between Syria and Jordan, including the Naseeb border crossing – is entering rebel-controlled areas in violation of an agreement it reached just last week.
Thus it’s not clear where Israel’s assessment, or faith, about Russia’s ability to oust Iran comes from. Nevertheless, Israel seems to have maintained this assessment for at least the last two years, since before Donald Trump was elected U.S. president and even more so afterward.
Trump and Bin Zayed at the West Wing of the White House in Washington, D.C., May 15, 2017.Bloomberg
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>> Trump's perverse appeasement of Putin will rebound on Israel / Opinion
The American magazine The New Yorker revealed on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel had suggested to Trump that America offer to cancel the sanctions it imposed on Russia four years ago, following Russia’s war in Ukraine and occupation of the Crimean peninsula, in exchange for Russian action to remove Iranian forces from Syria. Reporter Adam Entous wrote that shortly before the U.S. elections in 2016, the UAE’s crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, met with an American mediator and told him Putin might be interested in solving the Syrian crisis in exchange for an end to sanctions on Russia.
Bin Zayed, the reporter said, wasn’t the only one pushing this idea. Senior Israeli and Saudi officials also did so in conversations with senior American officials.
In April 2017, Entous reported in the Washington Post that Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, had met with Erik Prince at a resort in the Seychelles belonging to Bin Zayed. Prince is the founder of Blackwater, a private military company which worked in Iraq and was suspected of committing crimes there, but he’s also close to Steve Bannon, who was then Trump’s closest adviser.
The meeting was called to discuss whether Russia would be willing to curtail its ties with Iran, including its cooperation with Iran in Syria, in exchange for American concessions on sanctions. Later, Saudi Arabia and the UAE also invested billions of dollars in projects in Syria to encourage Putin to sever ties with Iran.
Entous said he doesn’t know whether the proposal came from Putin himself, one of his aides, or the UAE crown prince.
After Trump’s election, during the transition period before he took office, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer said during a private meeting that Israel was encouraging cooperation between Trump and Putin in the hopes of convincing Russia to push the Iranians out of Syria, a person present at the meeting told Entous.
“Israel does believe it is possible to get a U.S.-Russian agreement in Syria that would push the Iranians out,” a senior Israeli official told Entous, adding that doing so “could be the beginning of an improvement in U.S.-Russian relations over all.”
An American official who spoke with an Israeli minister close to Netanyahu told the New Yorker that the minister had tried to sell him on the idea of “trading Ukraine for Syria” – canceling sanctions on Russia in exchange for Iran’s removal from Syria. The Saudi and Emirati foreign ministers also marketed this idea.
At a private dinner with senior American officials, the two foreign ministers ask why America didn’t cancel the sanctions on Russia in exchange for Iran’s ouster. “It wasn’t a trial balloon. They were trying to socialize the idea,” a person present at the dinner told Entous.
Would Trump be willing to agree to such a deal? According to Entous’ sources, even if he were, Russia isn’t capable of supplying the goods. Moreover, at a time when Trump is under investigation for his ties to Russia before the election, even raising the idea could undermine his defense.
It’s not inconceivable that Netanyahu will try to sell this idea to Putin. Perhaps the idea will even arise at Putin’s summit meeting with Trump on July 16. But before anyone entertains the idea of an international persuasion campaign, it’s worth considering what Iran itself is willing to do.
Diplomatic common sense says that Iran would be willing to make concessions in Syria in exchange for cancelation of the new sanctions America has imposed on it and reinstatement of the nuclear deal which Trump scrapped. But this logic contradicts the adamant positions of Trump, Netanyahu, Saudi Arabia and the UAE on the nuclear deal.
Iran itself has been very clear about its interest in remaining in Syria, just as it still vehemently insists that the nuclear agreement isn’t subject to renegotiation. Thus at this stage, the most Israel can hope for is some kind of Russian plan to enable the Syrian regime to regain control of the Golan without Syrian forces entering the area, alongside Russian coordination with Israel on the status quo after the war ends.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news...an-out-of-syria-u-s-lifts-sanctions-1.6265530
2nd article on same topic !
Israeli, Saudi, and Emirati Officials Privately Pushed for Trump to Strike a “Grand Bargain” with Putin
By Adam Entous
July 9, 2018
President Trump greets Mohammed bin Zayed, one of the leaders who has encouraged an end to U.S. sanctions on Russia in return for help removing Iranian forces from Syria.
Photograph by Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post / Getty
During a private meeting shortly before the November, 2016, election, Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, floated to a longtime American interlocutor what sounded, at the time, like an unlikely grand bargain. The Emirati leader told the American that Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, might be interested in resolving the conflict in Syria in exchange for the lifting of sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
Current and former U.S. officials said that bin Zayed, known as M.B.Z., was not the only leader in the region who favored rapprochement between the former Cold War adversaries. While America’s closest allies in Europe viewed with a sense of dread Trump’s interest in partnering with Putin, three countries that enjoyed unparallelled influence with the incoming Administration—Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the U.A.E.—privately embraced the goal. Officials from the three countries have repeatedly encouraged their American counterparts to consider ending the Ukraine-related sanctions in return for Putin’s help in removing Iranian forces from Syria.
Experts say that such a deal would be unworkable, even if Trump were interested. They say Putin has neither the interest nor the ability to pressure Iranian forces to leave Syria. Administration officials have said that Syria and Ukraine will be among the topics that Trump and Putin will discuss at their summit in Helsinki on July 16th. White House officials did not respond to a request for comment.
The special counsel, Robert Mueller, and his F.B.I. team, tasked with probing Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, have been investigating whether the U.A.E. facilitated contacts between Trump’s team and Russian officials and sought to influence U.S. politics. Nine days before Trump’s Inauguration, Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater and a confidant of Steve Bannon, met at M.B.Z.’s resort in the Seychelles with Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, whom the Emiratis used as a go-between with Putin. (An April, 2017, Washington Post story that I co-wrote revealed the Indian Ocean encounter and stated that “the UAE agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump administration objective that would be likely to require major concessions to Moscow on U.S. sanctions.”)
Mueller’s team has also focussed on Trump transition-team meetings in December, 2016, that involved Emirati and Russian officials. One, at a New York hotel, was attended by M.B.Z., and another, at Trump Tower, was attended by Sergey Kislyak, then Russia’s Ambassador in Washington. During the December 1, 2016, meeting between Kislyak and Trump’s transition team, both sides wanted to discuss the conflict in Syria, and the Russian Ambassador proposed arranging a conversation between Michael Flynn, the incoming national-security adviser, and people he referred to as his “generals,” according to congressional testimony by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser. To prevent intelligence agencies from eavesdropping on the conversation, Kislyak proposed using a “secure line,” prompting Kushner to suggest using the secure communications gear housed at the Russian Embassy in Washington.
M.B.Z. is regarded as one of the Middle East’s strategic thinkers. More than other Arab leaders of his generation, he hails from the school of Realpolitik. During the Obama Administration, M.B.Z. sought to establish closer ties between the U.A.E. and Putin, in the hope of encouraging Moscow to scale back its partnership with Iran, particularly in Syria. (Much like Israel, the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia consider Iran their biggest strategic threat. They also lacked trust in President Obama.)
As an inducement for Putin to partner with Gulf states rather than Iran, the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia started making billions of dollars in investments in Russia and convening high-level meetings in Moscow, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, and the Seychelles.
It is unclear whether M.B.Z.’s preëlection proposal came from Putin himself or one of his confidants, or whether the Emirati leader came up with the idea. But the comment suggested that M.B.Z. believed that turning Putin against Iran would require sanctions relief for Moscow, a concession that required the support of the American President. If Hillary Clinton had won the election, the idea of accepting Russian aggression in Ukraine would have been a nonstarter, current and former U.S. officials told me. But Trump promised a different approach.
VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKER
The Immigrants Deported to Death and Violence
Israeli officials lobbied for rapprochement between Washington and Moscow soon after Trump’s election victory. In a private meeting during the transition, Ron Dermer, the Israeli Ambassador to the United States and one of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest confidants, said that the Israeli government was encouraging the incoming Trump Administration to coöperate more closely with Putin, starting in Syria, with the hope of convincing Moscow to push the Iranians to leave the country, an attendee told me.
Like M.B.Z., Netanyahu made courting Putin a priority, particularly after Russia’s military intervention in Syria in 2015. The Israeli leader wanted to insure that Israeli forces could continue to access Syrian airspace, which the Russians partially controlled, to prevent the deployment of advanced weapons systems by Iran and its proxies that could threaten the Jewish state. A senior Israeli official declined to comment on Dermer’s message but said that “Israel does believe it is possible to get a U.S.-Russian agreement in Syria that would push the Iranians out,” and that doing so “could be the beginning of an improvement in U.S.-Russian relations over all.”
Separately, a former U.S. official recalled having a conversation after Trump’s Inauguration with an Israeli Cabinet minister with close ties to Netanyahu in which the minister pitched the American on the idea of “trading Ukraine for Syria.” The former official told me, “You can understand why Russia’s help with Syria is a far higher priority for Israel than pushing back on Russian aggression in Ukraine. But I considered it a major stretch for Israel to try to convince the United States that U.S. interests are well served by looking the other way at Russian aggression in Ukraine. Of course, Trump may disagree for his own reasons.”
After Trump took office, the idea was raised again, by Adel al-Jubeir, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, and Abdullah bin Zayed, the foreign minister of the U.A.E., during a private March, 2017, dinner that included several other guests. “Their message was ‘Why don’t we lift the Ukrainian sanctions on Russia in exchange for getting the Russians to push Iran out of Syria,’ ” an attendee recalled the foreign ministers saying. A senior U.A.E. official said that he did not recall the discussion. The dinner attendee told me, “It wasn’t a trial balloon. They were trying to socialize the idea.”
The timing, however, could not have been worse politically, current and former U.S. officials said. In addition to the looming Mueller investigation, members of Congress were pushing at the time to expand sanctions against Russia, not reduce them. Trump told aides that he was frustrated that he could not make progress because of political opposition in Washington. The Americans who heard the Israeli, Emirati, and Saudi pitches in late 2016 and early 2017 assumed that the idea was dead. But ahead of the Helsinki summit, Trump started making statements that suggested he could be open to making a deal with Putin after all.
On June 8th, Trump called for Russia to be readmitted to the Group of Seven industrial nations. (Russia was expelled four years ago, after it annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region.) Then, during a dinner at the G-7 summit in Canada, Trump reportedly said that Crimea was Russian because the people who lived there spoke Russian. Several weeks later, when asked whether reports that he would drop Washington’s long-standing opposition to the annexation of Crimea were true, Trump responded, “We’re going to have to see.”
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news...or-trump-to-strike-a-grand-bargain-with-putin
Analysis
Netanyahu May Offer Putin: Remove Iran From Syria for Lifting of U.S. Sanctions on Russia
Israel and the Saudis pushed for Trump-Putin deal, The New Yorker reports. Netanyahu could try and sell this idea to Putin, but can Moscow deliver the goods?
Zvi Bar'el
Jul 11, 2018 1:44 AM
7comments Subscribe now
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Netanyahu and Putin in January, 2018.\ MAXIM SHEMETOV / REUTERS
Syria strike: On eve of Moscow meeting, Netanyahu sends Putin strategic message[/paste:font]
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday will be devoted mainly to Israel’s demand that all Iranian forces leave Syria – a demand that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has already deemed completely unrealistic.
Russia has told Israel on several occasions that it can’t make Iran leave Syria completely; the most it can do is try to get Iranian forces and Iranian-affiliated militias, including Hezbollah, to move a significant distance away from the Syrian-Israeli border in the Golan Heights. But Russia isn’t even managing to keep its promise to secure a partial withdrawal of Iranian forces.
>> On eve of Moscow meeting, Netanyahu sends Putin a strategic message / Analysis
According to reports from Syria, even during the Syrian army’s conquest of the Daraa district over the past few days, Iranian officers and observers and Hezbollah fighters participated alongside the Syrian troops. It also turns out that the Syrian army – which now controls most of the border between Syria and Jordan, including the Naseeb border crossing – is entering rebel-controlled areas in violation of an agreement it reached just last week.
Thus it’s not clear where Israel’s assessment, or faith, about Russia’s ability to oust Iran comes from. Nevertheless, Israel seems to have maintained this assessment for at least the last two years, since before Donald Trump was elected U.S. president and even more so afterward.
Trump and Bin Zayed at the West Wing of the White House in Washington, D.C., May 15, 2017.Bloomberg
Keep updated: Sign up to our newsletter
>> Trump's perverse appeasement of Putin will rebound on Israel / Opinion
The American magazine The New Yorker revealed on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel had suggested to Trump that America offer to cancel the sanctions it imposed on Russia four years ago, following Russia’s war in Ukraine and occupation of the Crimean peninsula, in exchange for Russian action to remove Iranian forces from Syria. Reporter Adam Entous wrote that shortly before the U.S. elections in 2016, the UAE’s crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, met with an American mediator and told him Putin might be interested in solving the Syrian crisis in exchange for an end to sanctions on Russia.
Bin Zayed, the reporter said, wasn’t the only one pushing this idea. Senior Israeli and Saudi officials also did so in conversations with senior American officials.
In April 2017, Entous reported in the Washington Post that Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, had met with Erik Prince at a resort in the Seychelles belonging to Bin Zayed. Prince is the founder of Blackwater, a private military company which worked in Iraq and was suspected of committing crimes there, but he’s also close to Steve Bannon, who was then Trump’s closest adviser.
The meeting was called to discuss whether Russia would be willing to curtail its ties with Iran, including its cooperation with Iran in Syria, in exchange for American concessions on sanctions. Later, Saudi Arabia and the UAE also invested billions of dollars in projects in Syria to encourage Putin to sever ties with Iran.
Entous said he doesn’t know whether the proposal came from Putin himself, one of his aides, or the UAE crown prince.
After Trump’s election, during the transition period before he took office, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer said during a private meeting that Israel was encouraging cooperation between Trump and Putin in the hopes of convincing Russia to push the Iranians out of Syria, a person present at the meeting told Entous.
“Israel does believe it is possible to get a U.S.-Russian agreement in Syria that would push the Iranians out,” a senior Israeli official told Entous, adding that doing so “could be the beginning of an improvement in U.S.-Russian relations over all.”
An American official who spoke with an Israeli minister close to Netanyahu told the New Yorker that the minister had tried to sell him on the idea of “trading Ukraine for Syria” – canceling sanctions on Russia in exchange for Iran’s removal from Syria. The Saudi and Emirati foreign ministers also marketed this idea.
At a private dinner with senior American officials, the two foreign ministers ask why America didn’t cancel the sanctions on Russia in exchange for Iran’s ouster. “It wasn’t a trial balloon. They were trying to socialize the idea,” a person present at the dinner told Entous.
Would Trump be willing to agree to such a deal? According to Entous’ sources, even if he were, Russia isn’t capable of supplying the goods. Moreover, at a time when Trump is under investigation for his ties to Russia before the election, even raising the idea could undermine his defense.
It’s not inconceivable that Netanyahu will try to sell this idea to Putin. Perhaps the idea will even arise at Putin’s summit meeting with Trump on July 16. But before anyone entertains the idea of an international persuasion campaign, it’s worth considering what Iran itself is willing to do.
Diplomatic common sense says that Iran would be willing to make concessions in Syria in exchange for cancelation of the new sanctions America has imposed on it and reinstatement of the nuclear deal which Trump scrapped. But this logic contradicts the adamant positions of Trump, Netanyahu, Saudi Arabia and the UAE on the nuclear deal.
Iran itself has been very clear about its interest in remaining in Syria, just as it still vehemently insists that the nuclear agreement isn’t subject to renegotiation. Thus at this stage, the most Israel can hope for is some kind of Russian plan to enable the Syrian regime to regain control of the Golan without Syrian forces entering the area, alongside Russian coordination with Israel on the status quo after the war ends.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news...an-out-of-syria-u-s-lifts-sanctions-1.6265530
2nd article on same topic !
Israeli, Saudi, and Emirati Officials Privately Pushed for Trump to Strike a “Grand Bargain” with Putin
By Adam Entous
July 9, 2018
President Trump greets Mohammed bin Zayed, one of the leaders who has encouraged an end to U.S. sanctions on Russia in return for help removing Iranian forces from Syria.
Photograph by Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post / Getty
During a private meeting shortly before the November, 2016, election, Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, floated to a longtime American interlocutor what sounded, at the time, like an unlikely grand bargain. The Emirati leader told the American that Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, might be interested in resolving the conflict in Syria in exchange for the lifting of sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
Current and former U.S. officials said that bin Zayed, known as M.B.Z., was not the only leader in the region who favored rapprochement between the former Cold War adversaries. While America’s closest allies in Europe viewed with a sense of dread Trump’s interest in partnering with Putin, three countries that enjoyed unparallelled influence with the incoming Administration—Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the U.A.E.—privately embraced the goal. Officials from the three countries have repeatedly encouraged their American counterparts to consider ending the Ukraine-related sanctions in return for Putin’s help in removing Iranian forces from Syria.
Experts say that such a deal would be unworkable, even if Trump were interested. They say Putin has neither the interest nor the ability to pressure Iranian forces to leave Syria. Administration officials have said that Syria and Ukraine will be among the topics that Trump and Putin will discuss at their summit in Helsinki on July 16th. White House officials did not respond to a request for comment.
The special counsel, Robert Mueller, and his F.B.I. team, tasked with probing Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, have been investigating whether the U.A.E. facilitated contacts between Trump’s team and Russian officials and sought to influence U.S. politics. Nine days before Trump’s Inauguration, Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater and a confidant of Steve Bannon, met at M.B.Z.’s resort in the Seychelles with Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, whom the Emiratis used as a go-between with Putin. (An April, 2017, Washington Post story that I co-wrote revealed the Indian Ocean encounter and stated that “the UAE agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump administration objective that would be likely to require major concessions to Moscow on U.S. sanctions.”)
Mueller’s team has also focussed on Trump transition-team meetings in December, 2016, that involved Emirati and Russian officials. One, at a New York hotel, was attended by M.B.Z., and another, at Trump Tower, was attended by Sergey Kislyak, then Russia’s Ambassador in Washington. During the December 1, 2016, meeting between Kislyak and Trump’s transition team, both sides wanted to discuss the conflict in Syria, and the Russian Ambassador proposed arranging a conversation between Michael Flynn, the incoming national-security adviser, and people he referred to as his “generals,” according to congressional testimony by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser. To prevent intelligence agencies from eavesdropping on the conversation, Kislyak proposed using a “secure line,” prompting Kushner to suggest using the secure communications gear housed at the Russian Embassy in Washington.
M.B.Z. is regarded as one of the Middle East’s strategic thinkers. More than other Arab leaders of his generation, he hails from the school of Realpolitik. During the Obama Administration, M.B.Z. sought to establish closer ties between the U.A.E. and Putin, in the hope of encouraging Moscow to scale back its partnership with Iran, particularly in Syria. (Much like Israel, the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia consider Iran their biggest strategic threat. They also lacked trust in President Obama.)
As an inducement for Putin to partner with Gulf states rather than Iran, the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia started making billions of dollars in investments in Russia and convening high-level meetings in Moscow, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, and the Seychelles.
It is unclear whether M.B.Z.’s preëlection proposal came from Putin himself or one of his confidants, or whether the Emirati leader came up with the idea. But the comment suggested that M.B.Z. believed that turning Putin against Iran would require sanctions relief for Moscow, a concession that required the support of the American President. If Hillary Clinton had won the election, the idea of accepting Russian aggression in Ukraine would have been a nonstarter, current and former U.S. officials told me. But Trump promised a different approach.
VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKER
The Immigrants Deported to Death and Violence
Israeli officials lobbied for rapprochement between Washington and Moscow soon after Trump’s election victory. In a private meeting during the transition, Ron Dermer, the Israeli Ambassador to the United States and one of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest confidants, said that the Israeli government was encouraging the incoming Trump Administration to coöperate more closely with Putin, starting in Syria, with the hope of convincing Moscow to push the Iranians to leave the country, an attendee told me.
Like M.B.Z., Netanyahu made courting Putin a priority, particularly after Russia’s military intervention in Syria in 2015. The Israeli leader wanted to insure that Israeli forces could continue to access Syrian airspace, which the Russians partially controlled, to prevent the deployment of advanced weapons systems by Iran and its proxies that could threaten the Jewish state. A senior Israeli official declined to comment on Dermer’s message but said that “Israel does believe it is possible to get a U.S.-Russian agreement in Syria that would push the Iranians out,” and that doing so “could be the beginning of an improvement in U.S.-Russian relations over all.”
Separately, a former U.S. official recalled having a conversation after Trump’s Inauguration with an Israeli Cabinet minister with close ties to Netanyahu in which the minister pitched the American on the idea of “trading Ukraine for Syria.” The former official told me, “You can understand why Russia’s help with Syria is a far higher priority for Israel than pushing back on Russian aggression in Ukraine. But I considered it a major stretch for Israel to try to convince the United States that U.S. interests are well served by looking the other way at Russian aggression in Ukraine. Of course, Trump may disagree for his own reasons.”
After Trump took office, the idea was raised again, by Adel al-Jubeir, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, and Abdullah bin Zayed, the foreign minister of the U.A.E., during a private March, 2017, dinner that included several other guests. “Their message was ‘Why don’t we lift the Ukrainian sanctions on Russia in exchange for getting the Russians to push Iran out of Syria,’ ” an attendee recalled the foreign ministers saying. A senior U.A.E. official said that he did not recall the discussion. The dinner attendee told me, “It wasn’t a trial balloon. They were trying to socialize the idea.”
The timing, however, could not have been worse politically, current and former U.S. officials said. In addition to the looming Mueller investigation, members of Congress were pushing at the time to expand sanctions against Russia, not reduce them. Trump told aides that he was frustrated that he could not make progress because of political opposition in Washington. The Americans who heard the Israeli, Emirati, and Saudi pitches in late 2016 and early 2017 assumed that the idea was dead. But ahead of the Helsinki summit, Trump started making statements that suggested he could be open to making a deal with Putin after all.
On June 8th, Trump called for Russia to be readmitted to the Group of Seven industrial nations. (Russia was expelled four years ago, after it annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region.) Then, during a dinner at the G-7 summit in Canada, Trump reportedly said that Crimea was Russian because the people who lived there spoke Russian. Several weeks later, when asked whether reports that he would drop Washington’s long-standing opposition to the annexation of Crimea were true, Trump responded, “We’re going to have to see.”
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news...or-trump-to-strike-a-grand-bargain-with-putin
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