The Jerusalem Post published a piece earlier this week headlined “Russia using Israel to distract world from Ukraine, analysts say”, which claims that Moscow’s reported plans to condemn Tel Aviv at the UNSC for its crippling strike against the Damascus Airport are intended “to bring the world’s attention away from Ukraine.” This is an inaccurate interpretation of events that deserves to be clarified in order to prevent the public from being misled by this information warfare product.

Russian-Israeli relations impressively remain solid in spite of American pressure on the self-proclaimed Jewish State to sanction its de facto Eurasian ally. This observation is proven by Tel Aviv’s reported refusal to greenlight Berlin’s transfer of jointly produced anti-tank missiles to Kiev. These two asymmetrically sized geostrategic partners also closely cooperate in Syria, though they occasionally end up at odds over some of Israel’s strikes against the IRGC and Hezbollah there.

Such is the reason why speculation about their ties is once again in the public spotlight. Russia condemned Israel’s latest attack and described it as regionally destabilizing. It put the Arab Republic’s primary airport out of commission for a while and therefore negatively impacted its development prospects, which in turn can create new opportunities for terrorists to once again rise there. This attack was also so high-profile that the Kremlin absolutely had to condemn it and couldn’t keep silent.

Unlike in years past where Russia clearly leaned closer towards Israel than Iran when it came to their proxy war in Syria, nowadays Moscow appears to be recalibrating its balancing act somewhat more in Tehran’s favor. The Kremlin still isn’t letting Damascus use the S-300s that were dispatched there in late 2018 following the mid-air incident with Israel in September of that year, but it’s also more publicly criticizing Tel Aviv for its attacks, including potentially at the UNSC as was recently reported.

While purely symbolic since nothing of tangible substance appears to be changing in their relations apart from occasional rhetoric prompted by Israel’s increasingly reckless attacks in Syria, this nevertheless serves to send a positive signal to Iran that Russia is at least more aware of its concerns in the proxy war between it and the self-proclaimed Jewish State in that Arab Republic. This is important because it shows that Iran’s increasing role in Russian grand strategy is starting to reshape Moscow’s policies.

Iran is Russia’s gateway to India, the latter of which serves as its irreplaceable valve from Western pressure and thus preemptively averted Moscow’s potentially disproportionate dependence on China that in turn sustainably secured its strategic autonomy in this dynamic phase of the global systemic transition to multipolarity. Without Iran, Russian-Indian relations couldn’t ever come anywhere near their full game-changing potential in the larger geostrategic context of the evolving world order.

By reportedly considering making Israel’s latest attack against Syria an issue of global importance by bringing it up before the UNSC, Russia isn’t seeking to distract from Ukraine like the first-mentioned’s media dishonestly claimed but is standing up for international law while also sending a wink in Iran’s direction. The last thing that Moscow wants is a so-called “southern front” opening up in the New Cold War and turning hot in West Asia while’s still dealing with the “western front” in Eastern Europe.

Moreover, Russia doesn’t have any desire to feud – let alone clash – with Israel, which explains why it still hasn’t let Syria use the S-300s to defend itself out of fear that this could lead to an uncontrollable escalation that at the very least reverses Moscow’s anti-terrorist successes over the years and at worst leads to a tense standoff between these two nuclear-armed countries. All that’s happening is that Russia was prompted to publicly respond by Israel’s attack and also wants to send a positive signal to Iran too.