• Commentary Medio Oriente e Nord Africa · Russia, Caucaso e Asia Centrale
  di Boris Sharov
• whatsapp

During December 2025 and January 2026, newspapers frequently reported on secret messages exchanged between Iranian and Israeli authorities through a third party. The major purpose of these contacts was to avoid a new phase of confrontation: Israel was anxious that Iran was perceiving new Israeli airstrikes as inevitable and was preparing to attack first. Israel was trying to assure Iran that it did not plan any new attacks against the Islamic regime, while Iran also assured Israel that it would not strike first. Notably, Moscow was the trusted side for this secret exchange between the adversarial regional powers. How did it happen that Russia became a mediator between Iran and Israel? To answer this question, it is essential to examine the relationships within the Russia-Iran-Israel triangle over the last decade.

First of all, the war in Syria became the contemporary forge of Russia's relationships with both regional powers, especially after Russia's military involvement in the conflict in 2015. Moscow saved the Assad regime in Damascus from a disastrous defeat and totally changed the situation on the battlefield, both against ISIS and the Syrian opposition. The Assad regime was then the major ally and the pillar of the Iranian Axis of Resistance against Israel and the US in the Middle East. Despite Moscow's cooperation with Tehran and Damascus against ISIS and the Syrian opposition militants, Russia did not want to undermine its relations with Israel, which has a vast Russian-speaking population and whose leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, maintains positive personal relationships with Vladimir Putin. Therefore, the General Staffs of both countries agreed to coordinate airstrikes to avoid any accidents.

The full-scale war in Ukraine since February 2022 has become another testing ground for the relationships within the Russia-Iran-Israel triangle. Iran became one of the closest Russian allies, supplying large amounts of cheap Shahed drones and technologies to produce them to Russia. Massive utilization of these low-cost, high-volume, and cheap drones has changed the face of contemporary warfare by exhausting the enemy's defense systems for subsequent penetration by ballistic missiles and the changes in the very approach to anti-air defense systems: making them cheap and more mobile. As a response, Moscow agreed to sell dozens of Sukhoi Su-35 jets to Tehran. Despite Israel being an old friend of NATO and Ukraine, Israel refused to impose sanctions against Russia and decided that it would not provide Ukraine with weapons to fight back the Russian onslaught, but would limit its assistance to Kyiv to humanitarian aid. This move allowed Israel to preserve positive relationships with Russia, maintaining the agreement on coordination in the Syrian airspace.

The third testing ground for Russia's relations with Israel and Iran was the war in Gaza and Israel's conflicts with Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. The Hamas attack of October 7 is perceived as a national trauma in Israeli society. Thus, when Russia invited the Hamas delegation to Moscow to discuss the question of hostages, Israel's MFA summoned the Russian Ambassador to express protest. Russia condemned Israel's military operation in Gaza and in Lebanon, and airstrikes in Yemen. The fall of the Assad regime in December 2024 could have put a period in Russia-Israel military coordination. But it did not happen.

In contrast, amid the growing Turkish military influence in the new Syria and its movement toward the Israeli borders, the latter was looking for a possible ally to balance Turkish power in Syria. As I argued earlier in another paper, Russia became an external balancer with a solid military stance on the ground, which was potent to secure the area between Turkey and Israel to avoid a new conflict in Syria. The 12-day war between Iran and Israel has also demonstrated that Russia de facto allowed the former to reach its goal of the destruction of Iran's uranium enrichment program. However, as I claimed in a different paper, Russia was not ready to close its eyes to Israel's attempts to annihilate the Islamic regime in Tehran. Despite both Israel and Iran declaring themselves as victors of the 12-day war, it seems that neither of the sides is ready for a repetition. The countries do not have diplomatic relations or direct contacts. Thus, both must rely on mediators to send signals to each other that they are not going to attack first. As this paper has demonstrated, Russia's policy of preserving positive relationships with both sides has provided it with an opportunity to become such a mediator. Although this grants Russia a special status in this triangle, it also imposes additional challenges. The possibility of the start of a new military operation by the US and Israel, and Donald Trump's threats of new strikes against the Islamic regime for oppressing the continuing protests in Iran, imposes a dilemma on Russia: will it allow the US-Israel tandem to attack its old strategic partner, or will Russia drag itself into a new conflict in the Middle East? The answer depends on many factors. At the moment, Russia's major priority is the war in Ukraine. Therefore, if Russian involvement in the conflict in the Middle East will harm Russia's interests in Ukraine, I assess the probability of such involvement to be low.