President Trump and Vladimir Putin hinted Monday that they had reached an agreement in principle to crack down on Iranian proxy groups in war-torn Syria and to guarantee Israel’s security in the process — but experts warned that Moscow can’t be trusted and said the White House is in danger of being played by the Russian president on the world stage.
At their long-awaited press conference in Helsinki, Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin each expressed a joint interest in protecting Israel and to de-escalating the violent civil war in neighboring Syria, where Russia remains allied with President Bashar Assad and where the U.S. persists with a bombing campaign against what is left of the Islamic State.
Both leaders also suggested that the U.S. and Russia have a common goal of preventing an all-out proxy war between Israel and Iran-backed paramilitary groups such as Hezbollah in Syria.
“President Putin also is helping Israel, and we both spoke with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and they would like to do certain things with respect to Syria, having to do with the safety of Israel,” Mr. Trump said after his two-hour summit with the Russian president and former KGB agent. “So in that respect, we absolutely would like to work in order to help Israel.”
While Mr. Putin did not explicitly reference the presence of Iran-backed forces inside Syria — which are widely seen to be working with Moscow in upholding the Assad regime — he otherwise echoed Mr. Trump’s remarks on Israel.
The Russian president specifically said he would like full enforcement of a decades-old agreement calling for the demilitarization of the Golan Heights, an area in southwestern Syria that has been the epicenter of clashes between Israel and Iran-backed militant groups.
“The south of Syria should be brought to the full compliance with the Treaty of 1974 about the separation of forces — about separation of forces of Israel and Syria,” Mr. Putin said. “This will bring peace to Golan Heights and bring a more peaceful relationship between Syria and Israel and also to provide security of the state of Israel.”
The calls to fully guarantee Israel’s security and the suggestion of pushing Iran-backed forces away from the Israeli border and crushing their influence elsewhere in Syria were welcome news in Jerusalem.
Fears have been soaring in Israel that Moscow is alternatively bent on upholding an “Axis of Resistance” comprised of Iran, Mr. Assad’s Syrian forces and Hezbollah that could be poised to launch direct attacks against the country.
Within hours of the Trump-Putin summit, Mr. Netanyahu’s office said the Israeli prime minister “commends the abiding commitment of the US and @POTUS Trump to the security of Israel, as expressed at the meeting.”
“Prime Minister Netanyahu also very much appreciated the security coordination between Israel and Russia and the clear position expressed by President Putin regarding the need to uphold the 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement,” the office tweeted.
But the details of an agreement were lacking Monday, even as Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin returned to their respective countries. Neither went into any serious specifics about their discussion on Syria, and no materials were publicly released by the White House or the Kremlin regarding how Washington and Moscow intend to guarantee war doesn’t break out between Israel and Iran-backed proxies.
Doubts in Washington
Regional analysts say Mr. Putin’s verbal commitments are essentially meaningless, and they point to Russia’s breaking of a recent cease-fire agreement in Syria as proof.
Last month, Russian forces resumed airstrikes against anti-Assad rebel forces in southwestern Syria in a clear breach of the cease-fire deal that Washington and Moscow brokered last year.
“The Trump team has talked about splitting Russia from Iran in Syria since its first days in office. It is something that Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, very actively advocated and pursued. But it hasn’t yet produced a tangible result on this front,” said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who specializes in the Middle East.
“Trump’s approach has largely been one of passive appeasement of Russia and Iran in the southern and western parts of the country — which is why Israel has felt the need to increase its strikes inside of Syria over the past year,” Mr. Katulis said Monday. “It would be a good thing if Russia could get Iran and its proxies away from Israel’s border. We need to avoid a wider escalation of tensions in that corner of the Middle East. It’s just not clear that the Trump administration is engaged with sufficient skin in the game and actions to back its rhetoric to make it stick.”
In an interview with The Washington Times, Mr. Katulis argued that Mr. Trump is absolutely being played by Mr. Putin and that it’s doubtful that Moscow has any real intentions of moving against its Iranian allies in Syria.
Israel, meanwhile, has taken matters into its own hands in recent months by accelerating the pace of its military action against Iran-backed proxies in Syria.
In February, anti-aircraft fire from inside Syria downed an Israeli F-16 fighter jet, and the Israeli army that same month claimed to have captured an Iranian armed stealth drone that had flown into the country’s airspace from Syrian territory.
Those incidents led Israel to ramp up its three-year bombing campaign against Hezbollah positions inside Syria.
Geopolitically sticky
In addition to the rising Israel-Iran tensions, analysts say, the circumstances facing Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin are geopolitically complex, with little in the way of easy solutions.
Some analysts argue that if Russia is willing and able to push Iran-backed forces out of Syria, then it could leave the Assad regime’s army unable to effectively fight remaining elements of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.
Mr. Putin “could ask the Iranians and Hezbollah to leave. But then what you would have is a weaker Syrian army that would be unable to finish the job. That’s the Catch-22,” said Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Mr. Schanzer, who also spoke with The Times on Monday, is co-author of a recent comprehensive report that examined Israeli-Iranian tensions in Syria and the roles of U.S. and Russia in preventing all-out war.
While Syria remains on edge and a gruesome humanitarian crisis continues to wreak havoc on the Syrian civilian population, the U.S. and its allies have achieved significant military success against Islamic State in the past year. Maintaining those gains and not losing ground to the terrorist group remains central to Washington’s broader strategy in the region.
Mr. Trump argued Monday that Russia has at least partially played a positive role in the process. “When you look at all of the progress that’s been made in certain sections with the eradication of ISIS, we’re about 98 percent, 99 percent there, and other things that have taken place that we’ve done and that frankly Russia has helped us with in certain respects,” the president said.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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