Eurasia Press & News
Moscow may temporarily profit from the West’s focus on the Middle East, but navigating its ties in the region will be tricky.
As Hamas launched its blitz attack against Israel on Oct. 7, some observers were quick to suspect the Moscow-Tehran axis at work.
Russia, so the argument went, was deliberately and directly fueling conflict in the Holy Land to broaden its battlefield with the West. Others drew direct comparisons between Hamas’s vicious onslaught and Russia’s war against Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky argued that one was “a terrorist organization that attacked Israel” and the other “a terrorist state that attacked Ukraine.” (Many Palestinians have taken issue with this characterization.)
It is true that Moscow has long maintained close relations with Hamas, an Islamist group that controls Gaza and enjoys Iranian backing. The militant movement won Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006 and took over Gaza during the ensuing Palestinian civil war. Hamas has both political and military wings, and some Western states, such as Australia and New Zealand, have only declared the military wing—the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades—to be a terrorist organization. Others, such as the United States, have not made this distinction.
The Kremlin, for its part, has never declared either wing of Hamas to be a terrorist group. Rather, eager to carve out a niche in the Middle East peace process, Russian diplomats have tried to unify different Palestinian factions, including Hamas, into a single political force in order to restart the peace process and promote a two-state solution.
Hamas delegations have frequented Moscow, meeting with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, who holds the Middle Eastern file at the foreign ministry. Russia consulted with Palestinian factions in Doha, Qatar, and Ramallah, in the West Bank, and hosted talks between them at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, which I used to frequent as a visiting scholar. Those talks showed that Hamas is far from a Russian puppet: In one round of negotiations, held in Moscow in February 2019, the group’s leadership refused to sign a final statement brokered by the Russian hosts.
Over the years, some Russian-made weapons—such as anti-tank and shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles— have made their way into Gaza, likely via Iran. But so far, there is no clear evidence that Russia supported Hamas in planning or executing its surprise attack on Israel.
But that does not mean that Russia is a nonentity in this latest Israel-Hamas conflict. Since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Moscow has dramatically deepened its cooperation with Iran. In return for Iranian combat drones and other military gear, Russia has stepped up its defense support for Tehran, including—as the United States fears—with assistance for its missile and space-launched vehicle programs. There has been a flurry of Iranian-Russian military engagement, including Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s tour of an arms exhibition in Tehran last month.
Once an eager mediator in the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program, Russia has also lost enthusiasm for seeing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action restored. After its invasion of Ukraine, Russia ceased to push for meaningful and timely progress in the nuclear talks, creating a de facto shield for Iran’s near-nuclear status.
In Syria, Russia and Iran have found common cause in harassing U.S. forces stationed in the northeast. Those troops—numbering about 900 at any given time—remain in Syria to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State, support U.S.-backed Kurdish forces, and thwart Iranian and Russian ambitions in the country. According to classified documents leaked earlier this year, Russia, Iran, and Syria have established a “coordination center” to direct a concerted effort to drive the U.S. military out.
Russia has taken some steps to compensate for Iran’s empowerment, eagerly supporting normalization between Syria and several Arab states. On balance, however, Russia is enabling rather than constraining Tehran in the region. Even though there is no evidence to support the idea that Iran was intimately involved in planning Hamas’s attack, it has long provided logistical and military support to the militant movement, as well as to other proxy groups in its increasingly decentralized “axis of resistance.”
A new war in the Middle East suits Russian President Vladimir Putin. Moscow hopes to deflect Western attention and resources away from Ukraine by cultivating global pressure points and distractions.
In walking away from the Black Sea Grain Initiative (which had ensured the wartime export of Ukrainian grain) in July, Russia has caused disruptions to global grain supplies, creating concern around the globe and especially among African states. Moscow is also regularly stoking fears of nuclear escalation over the war in Ukraine, most recently insinuating that it might de-ratify the multilateral Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Lamenting that the United States (among a few other countries, such as China, Iran, and Israel) never ratified the treaty, Russia has signaled its desire to establish parity with Washington.
Renewed instability in the Middle East would likely distract Western states, chiefly the United States, from NATO’s eastern flank and could impose resource constraints on the provision of arms and ammunition to Ukraine. Should Israel-Saudi normalization—which Washington has worked toward tirelessly over recent months—become a casualty of the latest Israel-Hamas war, Moscow would score an additional win. Russia has regarded all regional diplomacy arising from the Abraham Accords as a U.S. project that sidelines Russia.
While Russia could extract benefits from an uptick in violence between Israel and Hamas, there is no evidence that it did play a role in directly instigating Hamas’s actions. Israel has not provided Kyiv with lethal weapons, reluctant to antagonize Russia—and Putin would like to keep it that way. Despite experiencing rough patches over the past year and a half, especially under Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid (who was in office briefly from July to December 2022), Russian-Israeli relations remain rich and robust. The two countries trade, coordinate their air forces’ activities in Syria, and enjoy extensive diaspora ties. Current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Putin have personal chemistry. Directly aiding and abetting Hamas’s vicious attack would threaten to undo all that.
Russia also needs to be careful what it wishes for. While it might temporarily profit from a renewed Western focus on the Middle East and the scuttling of Arab-Israeli normalization, Moscow most likely does not want to see Iran and Israel drift into full-scale war. Broader conflict would surely engulf not just Lebanon but also Syria, where Russian-controlled air and naval bases underpin Moscow’s power projection into the Eastern Mediterranean and Africa. With most of its active-duty military and hardware committed to Ukraine, Russia would not have the bandwidth to get involved in a bigger Middle Eastern conflagration.
Most importantly, Russia still values its ties with Israel and the Arab states, notwithstanding its growing alignment with Iran. Since Oct. 7, Moscow has been keen to pose as peace broker while blaming this latest Middle Eastern war on past mistakes made by the West. In an act of diplomatic showmanship, Russian officials have also busily liaised with and hosted Arab counterparts. Russia also presented a draft resolution on the war in the U.N. Security Council earlier this week. Backed by Palestine as well as several Arab and non-Western states, the text—which did not mention Hamas by name—failed to elicit majority support.
Russia has maneuvered itself into a difficult balancing act. It took Putin nearly 10 days to call Netanyahu to express condolences for the Oct. 7 attack. Russia has refrained from referring to the massacre as terrorism, breaking with past precedent, and Russian media coverage of the unfolding war has adopted a clear pro-Palestinian slant. By emphasizing the suffering of Palestinian civilians and distancing itself from Washington’s unequivocal support for Israel, Moscow is tapping into powerful grievances about Palestine across the Middle East and global south. Here, the Kremlin hopes for backing in its broader confrontation with the West.
Yet, for all its catering to pro-Palestinian sentiments, Russia does not want a break with Israel. And for all its professed common cause with Iran in challenging U.S. primacy, Russia does not seek to go all in with Tehran, either. Russian diplomacy under Putin has always tried—and continues to try—to balance between mutually antagonistic players in the Middle East, since this maximizes Russian gains. Navigating small fires, rather than a big regional war, while dealing with all sides is the playbook that suits Moscow best.
But Putin won’t be the one to set the future course of events. The United States has sent an aircraft carrier strike group to the Eastern Mediterranean and vowed unequivocal support for Israel. Should the fighting escalate and expand, with Washington coming down hard on Israel’s side, Russia would likely drift yet further into Iran’s orbit given the broader geopolitical backdrop of this new Middle Eastern war.
