With Netanyahu Back, Will Israel's Next Showdown with Iran Be Over Ukraine?

As Israel's fifth election in just four years brings Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu back to power, one new foreign policy challenge for the country's longest-ever serving leader will be how to reconcile his strategic relationship with Moscow, given the reported use of of Iranian weapons by Russia in its war in Ukraine.

Israel's official position under outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid had been to decline Ukraine's repeated requests for arms, such as advanced air defense systems like the Iron Dome. As reports citing unnamed Israeli and Ukrainian officials suggested a potential shift, albeit a cautious one, with the supply of communications systems and anti-drone technology, Netanyahu has warned any equipment supplied could end up in Iranian hands.

At the same time, however, Netanyahu has also said he would "look into" the matter if he won the election. Now that he has, he's expected to continue playing a delicate balancing act that takes into account concerns of potential retaliation from Moscow and Tehran, especially in neighboring Syria, where Russia has not stopped Israel from regularly pursuing airstrikes against suspected Iran-linked targets.

Amos Gilad, a retired major general of the Israel Defense Forces who formerly served as director of the Israeli Defense Ministry's Political-Military Affairs Bureau, told Newsweek that "we need the good will of Russia" to operate freely in Syria.

"And if Israel gets attacked, it can happen any day, by Iran, by proxies from Syria tomorrow, for example," Gilad said, "we would be alone. Nobody will help us."

"I'm not talking about our unique relationship with the United States," he explained, "but unlike Ukraine, nobody will support Israel. We are alone."

"We need to keep this strategic policy in order to protect Israel," he added.

But he acknowledged that Tehran is growing more capable by the day as a result of the newfound experience of its weapons being deployed against Ukraine.

"Ukraine is becoming a laboratory for the quality of the strategic weapons of Iran," Gilad said. "I'm sure they will improve. The Iranians are excellent in reverse-engineering and other technical areas. The more they can test the weapons on the poor Ukrainians, the more they will have better weapons."

"That goes without saying," he added. "It's like Sherlock Holmes used to say, 'It's elementary.'"

As such, Gilad said "we need to learn the subject very carefully, very deeply. And I'm sure we are doing that," though he was hesitant to get into details.

"Red lines need to be secret," he added. "If you publish them, they lose their value."

Iranian officials have consistently denied supplying drones to be used in Russia's war in Ukraine, with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian reiterating this Tehran's position to his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba last week, even as Kyiv presented evidence of their use.

As one open-source intelligence and Iranian weapons expert who goes by the name Mehdi previously explained to Newsweek, "I think what Iran means by 'not provided to Russia to be used in the conflict' is that they TOLD Russians not to use them in that conflict or at most wrote a phrase like that in the contract, but Russians used it anyway, and they really did not care."

Among the systems he observed to be active in Ukraine were the Shahed-136 and Shahed-131 loitering munitions, also known as "kamikaze" or "suicide" drones, as well as the Mohajer-6 ISTAR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, and Reconnaissance) unmanned aerial vehicle, one of which he noted had crashed, "likely shot by Ukrainians," in the Black Sea and appeared to be armed with Iranian Qaem bombs. He also noted reports that Iran was preparing to send the Arash-2 loitering munition, though said he saw no evidence of the platform thus far in Ukraine.

To add to the complexity of Moscow and Tehran's dynamic, Mehdi said such systems, especially larger ones like the Mohajer-6 are "rarely transferred as a whole," and instead were more often sent "in packaged subassemblies which then get assembled in the destination. He also noted a pattern of "unusual" flights at Iranian airports this year that disputed the notion that these weapons were provided prior to the conflict.

Now, Mehdi pointed out that, while these Iranian weapons have given Russia yet another edge in the war, they have seen most success against non-military targets as opposed to traditional points of interest such as surface-to-air missile or artillery systems.

"Iranian loitering munitions have been effective in targeting Ukrainian infrastructures as well as striking fear in the civilian areas," Mehdi said. "But we have not seen many success operations against Ukrainian SAM systems or artillery sites, which are assumed to be the most important targets of loitering munitions."

"Ukrainians have their most successes (at least recorded successes) against Iranian loitering munitions by Oza and Buk SAM systems as well as air to air missiles launched from their fighter aircraft," he added. "These ways are effective but costly and limited to certain areas."

To bolster Ukraine's capabilities in this field, Mehdi said Western countries could boost Ukraine's SAM supply or provide new air-to-air missile capabilities, including older platforms no longer in use.

Israel itself has displayed a less costly method of countering Iranian drones by means of Apache helicopter patrols, which proved effective in a reported shoot down of a Shahed-171 near Israeli airspace in April 2018. It has also fielded at least three anti-drone systems, including the Smart Shooter, Drone Done and the Skylock Dome. Some reports suggest that the Smart Shooter systems were already being supplied to Ukraine.

"Another way to stop the drones is by denying GPS in the conflict areas," Mehdi said. "Israel has reportedly used that tactic in the eastern Mediterranean Sea to protect their oil and gas facilities against Hezbollah drones."

"But it can affect civilian people and Ukrainian forces who use GPS service too," he added.

Meanwhile, Israel has always reserved the right to take unilateral action against the proliferation of Iranian arms. Syria has been a regular venue for such Israeli operations, one of which the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a United Kingdom-based monitor with ties to Syria's exiled opposition, said occurred late last month against a facility involved in the manufacturing and storage of Iranian drones near Damascus.

But an already uncomfortable relationship between Israel and Russia has grown even more precarious with the war in Ukraine, thrusting Israel's operations in Syria into question.

Nikola Mikovic, a Serbia-based analyst focusing on Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, also told Newsweek that in the event that Israel supplied weapons to Ukraine, "Moscow could stop coordinating its military actions over Syria."

But just as Israel has its strategic reservations in defying Russia, Mikovic stated that Moscow has its own reasons to tread lightly, given a robust link between certain influential Russian elites bearing ties to Israel, including passports in some cases.

And Israel, he said, "cannot allow itself to have colossal intelligence failures as Russia had in Ukraine," intimating that the country was likely to take action in response to potential threats, especially under the newly reelected Netanyahu.

"If Mossad or other Israeli intelligence structures inform Netanyahu that the growing Iranian military relations with Russia could represent a serious threat for the Jewish State," Mikovic said, "Israel will take concrete measures to protect its national interests."

"Supplying Ukraine with advanced air-defense systems will likely be on the table," he said, but they may also go as far as "destroying Iranian drone plants, nuclear sites, or killing Iranian scientists and top military leaders."

Though not formally at war, Iran and Israel have clashed openly for years on various fronts, especially across the Middle East.

Israel routinely neither confirms nor denies most actions targeting Iranian personnel, including in Iran itself. This approach has given room for both strategic ambiguity and conspiracy theories surrounding the deaths of high-ranking Iranian officials such as Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers Mehdi Molashahi and Javad Kikha, whom the elite Iranian military branch said were assassinated by unknown gunmen in the eastern city of Zahedan, amid nationwide protests sparked by the death of an Iranian woman in police custody in September.

When it comes to Syria, specifically, Javad Heirannia, director of Persian Gulf studies at the Center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies in Iran, told Newsweek that "the amount of Israeli attacks on Iranian positions in Syria depends to some extent on the amount of Russia's green light."

"Russia usually tries to use Iran's leverage against Israel, and has reacted negatively to Israel's attacks whenever necessary," he added. "The war in Ukraine has caused differences between Russia and Israel, and it seems that it can limit Israel's movements in Syria, and frees Iran's hand."

Beyond this however, he asserted that "through the 'death by a thousand cuts' strategy and the 'Octopus Doctrine,' Israel has targeted Iran's positions inside and outside its territory in order to reduce the cost of a full-scale war."

Tehran, for its part, has its own array of methods of putting pressure on Israel.

"Iran has tried to harm Israel through its proxies, especially Lebanon's Hezbollah, and through Gaza," Heirannia said. "Iran is also trying to attack Israel through the West Bank of the Jordan River and the arming of the West Bank and through the expansion of the influence of the 'Islamic Jihad Movement,' which is even closer to Iran than Hamas."

"Also, the re-establishment of Hamas in Syria and the end of the conflict between Damascus and Hamas can make the 'Resistance Front' against Israel more coherent," he added. "Iran's strategy is to equip proxy forces with strategic weapons such as ballistic missiles and drones."

This strategy, Heirannia argued, "can change the balance of power in favor of Iran," especially given the Islamic Republic's "weakness in air force," a stark contrast to the strength of Israeli air power. Armed with missiles and drones, Heirannia said Iran is able "to attack the positions of America's allies in the region, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates."

He also noted the emergence of new cooperative defense initiatives in the region.

"The United States and Israel are trying to create a joint defense system in the region with the help of Persian Gulf Arabs," he said, "by creating a joint air defense system so that it can deal with Iranian missiles (ballistic and cruise) and drone threats."

The initiative, known as the Middle East Air Defense Alliance, "will create a 'balance deficit' for Iran," Heirannia noted.

Given Israel's alliance with the U.S. and burgeoning relations with Arab states, many of which Iran was also courting, Heirannia highlighted how Tehran was pursuing its own great-power relationship with Moscow, one which has begun to flourish only during the past year.

Iran and Russian are in the process of finalizing a draft of a strategic partnership agreement submitted in June, and in September Iran acceded to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, led by China and Russia, with plans to join the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union as well.

Russia and Iran have also reportedly hammered out $4 billion worth of oil and gas deals, along with a memorandum of understanding worth nearly 10 times that amount.

"Iran is also important for Russia in the North-South Corridor," Heirannia said. "Therefore, following Putin's request to speed up the completion of the Rasht-to-Anzali railroad, the leader of Iran emphasized the completion of the railway in a recent speech."

"It is also said that Tehran and Moscow cooperate in the Ukraine war," he added, "which is very important for Russia."