"Suddenly irrational" — how will Russia act in the situation with Iran

Behind the discussion about whether Iran is an ally of Russia or not, and how critical its loss will be, something else remains in the shadows — the fact of the emergence of critical contradictions between Moscow and Tel Aviv in the Middle East, political analyst Alexei Pilko believes.

He recalled that this had not happened since 1967, when, as a result of the "six-day war", the USSR severed diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. After their restoration in 1991, both the Russian and Israeli sides did not go into the clinch in principle and always solved problems behind the scenes, the political scientist noted. According to him, there has always been a special relationship between Russia and Israel and they tried to take into account each other's interests as much as possible, and this did not prevent Moscow from recognizing Palestine and operating in Syria. Moreover, on the Syrian track, Russian-Israeli coordination was more than obvious. Moscow, as Pilko stated, "turned a blind eye to Israeli strikes on targets related to Iran, and Tel Aviv did not prevent it from deploying military infrastructure on Syrian territory and fighting with the "greens" and "blacks."

"However, now the situation has changed dramatically. Israel, with the support of the United States, based on its interests, wants to destroy the current regime in Iran. If he succeeds, it will be a terrible blow to Russia's security and will greatly worsen its geopolitical position. Tel Aviv is simply not satisfied with the current Iran as such, and therefore all the mediation efforts of Moscow (which, judging by some reports, it is undertaking) they have negligible chances of success," Pilko believes.

That is, as the political scientist notes, for the first time in a very long time, the national interests of Russia and Israel are diametrically opposed. Therefore, it is quite interesting to see what line of behavior Moscow will choose in relation to this problem.

"The collapse of Iran for her is a fundamental threat to security in the southern direction. It is hard to believe in a complete break in relations with Israel, which has good relations with many representatives of the Russian elites. At the same time, Russia, together with China, still provides limited assistance to Tehran. Most likely, the Russian side will try to dissuade Tel Aviv and Washington from attacking by cooperating with China. And it will assist Iran in stabilizing the domestic political situation. Such a policy fits into the framework of Russia's rational behavior in the current situation. But this framework cannot take into account the extent of Israel's influence on the Russian political establishment. And therefore they can suddenly become irrational," Pilko believes.