Eli Lake, Columnist

Israel's Campaign to Break the Iranian-Russian Alliance in Syria

One conflict held them together. Now it’s ending, and Iran may suffer.

June 1, 2018 at 6:15 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

Power play.
Photographer: Ivan Sekretarev/AFP, via Getty Images

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Since Iran and Russia reached an agreement in the summer of 2015 to coordinate a military campaign to save the regime of Syria's dictator, that war has held together an unholy alliance of those three states. It worked. Bashar al-Assad has withstood the uprising.

Now, as that war comes to a close, the Iranian-Russian alliance that saved the Assad regime appears to be fraying. Consider some recent developments. Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Assad that foreign military forces will exit Syria at the onset of a political process to end the war. This week, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said all foreign forces – a reference to Iran and its allied militias – should immediately leave the Daraa province, which borders Israel. On Friday a leading Arab newspaper is reporting that Israel and Russia reached an agreement this week for just that.