BICOM

Both the US and Russia have tried to reassure Israel that a new ceasefire deal in southern Syria took its security needs into consideration, despite media reports to the contrary.

The Russian Tass news agency reports that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said: “I can guarantee that the American side and we did the best we can to make sure that Israel’s security interests are fully taken into consideration.”

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said that that the US and Israel have a “shared goal” in Syria of stopping Iran from getting a permanent foothold there.

A White House official told the Jerusalem Post: “Both governments – the United States and Israel – are rightly concerned about Iran’s malign influence in the region.  A core goal of US policy in Syria is to ensure that no vacuum is created which Iran can fill.”

On Monday, Israel’s Channel 2 news reported that Israel was not consulted by the Trump Administration about the details of the ceasefire.

The former head of Israel’s National Security Council, Yaakov Amidror, told journalists that the failure to take Israeli security concerns into consideration “might lead the IDF to intervene and destroy every attempt to build [permanent Iranian] infrastructure in Syria”.

He said that Israel needs to “take care of its strategic goal,” of “keeping Iran and Syria from building launching pads in Syria,” and that both military and diplomatic options should be considered to achieve this. Amidror said preventing Hezbollah and Iran being victorious in Syria was ultimately Israel’s responsibility, not that of Russia or America.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously said that Israel is totally opposed to the terms of the US-Russian brokered ceasefire in southern Syria. The agreement establishes safe zones inside Syria and forbids foreign militias supported by Iran from operating on the Israeli and Jordanian borders.

Former US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro said that the current US-Russia dynamic will make restructuring the deal to Israel’s satisfaction difficult, adding that “absent Russian enforcement, anything short of US boots on the ground won’t counter Iranian moves”. He said that, even with the modest increase in involvement indicated by Secretary of Defence James Mattis, it is doubtful that the Trump administration is willing to invest that much to keep Iran from Southern Syria.