Daniel Brumberg
Responsible Statecraft, Jan. 16, 2022
“Moscow’s top priority is ensuring that the internal politics of the 14 countries with which it shares a border do not pose a threat to Russia and, perhaps most of all, to Putin’s rule.”
A former Israeli national security advisor recently insisted that Russia shares Israel’s position that Iran is a “destabilizing force in the Middle East.” If this assertion was meant to pressure Moscow (or Tehran), it probably did not achieve its purpose. Russian President Vladimir Putin probably sees Iran’s problematic behavior as either irrelevant or, more likely, strategically useful. Russia’s primary goal is to defend its security interests, and for that purpose it has diplomatic relationships with the region’s key players, all of which are adept at causing geostrategic trouble.
If maintaining these relations has been a challenge, recent events in Russia’s immediate neighborhood have complicated its Middle East diplomacy. In the hierarchy of its security interests, Moscow’s top priority is ensuring that the internal politics of the 14 countries with which it shares a border do not pose a threat to Russia and, perhaps most of all, to Putin’s rule. Thus, it is the percolating conflict with the United States over Ukraine, and the early January protests in Kazakhstan, that are now commanding Moscow’s attention.
To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
