Netanyahu’s Clandestine Moscow Visit

What is the political background to the secret visit which Benyamin Netanyahu paid to Moscow on Monday, 7 September? As has been widely reported, Israel’s prime minister hired a private aircraft and, accompanied by Uzi Arad, his main security adviser, disappeared for some fifteen hours, triggering a storm of speculation in Israel and elsewhere about his whereabouts.

Moscow first denied that the visit had taken place. But when the flimsy cover story put about by Lt. Gen Meir Kalili, Netanyahu’s military secretary, was exposed as a lie, a Russian newspaper Kommersant, quoting a senior Kremlin official, confirmed that Netanyahu had indeed paid a fleeting visit to the Russian capital.

On Wednesday night, 9 September, Netanyahu’s office issued a brief statement: ‘The prime minister was busy with secret, classified activity.’

What was this mysterious ‘secret activity’? In the absence of hard information, one can only speculate. But there have been enough leaks on all sides for one to say with some confidence that the main subject of Netanyahu’s talks in Moscow was Iran -- and, from Israel’s point of view, the vexed question of Russian arms sales to the Islamic Republic.

Netanyahu is clearly obsessed with the danger to Israel from Iran’s nuclear programme, which he depicts as an ‘existential threat’, which must be ‘nipped in the bud’. He has mounted a strident international campaign calling for ‘crippling sanctions’ against Tehran to force it to give up uranium enrichment. If sanctions prove ineffective, he has threatened military action. Military experts doubt, however, that Israel could, in fact, destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities without American help.

According to most intelligence estimates, Iran is still some years away from military nuclear capability – if indeed it has such an ambition, which it denies. Israel, on the other hand, has had nuclear weapons for more than forty years, as well as increasingly sophisticated means to deliver them. Its nuclear arsenal is estimated conservatively at more than 200 warheads – it may indeed be twice as big -- including a ‘second strike’ capability in the form of nuclear-tipped, submarine-based cruise missiles.

Israel has thus more than ample means to deter an Iranian attack, however grossly improbable such an attack may be. The obvious conclusion is that Israel is not so much concerned by the possibility of an Iranian nuclear attack, but rather that an Iranian bomb could greatly restrict Israel’s own freedom of action against its Arab neighbours. Israel’s real fear, therefore, would seem to be that the military dominance it now enjoys over the entire region might be eroded, and that it might be forced to accept something in the nature of a balance of power – which it has always fiercely resisted.

Russia’s view of Iran is altogether different. Iran is one of Moscow’s important commercial and strategic partners. Russia happens to be completing Iran’s first nuclear power plant. Russia has firmly opposed imposing further international sanctions on Iran and has welcomed Tehran’s offer of talks with the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany – the so-called 5 + 1. To Israel’s great displeasure, these talks are due to start on 1 October.

Far from destabilising the Middle East – as Israel and France claim --the Russian view is that selling advanced air defence systems to Iran contributes to regional stability by checking Israeli adventurism.

There is, however, a paradoxical twist to the affair. An Israeli strike on Iran -- which would almost inevitably suck in the United States -- could be greatly to Russia’s advantage. U.S. President Barack Obama’s attempts to conciliate the Arab and Muslim world would be doomed. Gulf oil producers might become vulnerable to Iranian counter-strikes. The Straits of Hormuz might be closed. An immediate surge in oil prices could safely be predicted. This would be a boon for Russia, but a very severe blow to both the United States and China, Russia’s two main geopolitical rivals.

From Russia’s point of view, therefore, an Israeli strike against Iran would not be a calamity, far from it. At the same time, however, Russia would be inclined, and even have an interest, in giving Iran some means to defend itself.

This brings us to the mysterious case of the Arctic Sea, a Russian-crewed freighter of some 4,000 tons, sailing under a Maltese flag which, on 23 July, set sail from the Finnish port of Pietarsaari. It was due to arrive at the Algerian port of Bejaia on 4 August with a cargo of wood. But the Arctic Sea never arrived at its destination.

It is widely believed in Western intelligence circles that, hidden deep in its hold, the cargo ship was carrying Russian-made weapons, perhaps even S-300 anti-aircraft missiles, destined for Iran. The weapons could have been loaded on the ship – and sealed deep inside it – when , earlier in the summer, it underwent two weeks of repairs at Kalilingrad, a Russian naval base in the Baltic Sea.

On the night of 23-24 July, when the Arctic Sea was in Swedish waters, it was boarded by eight armed and masked men travelling in an inflatable boat. Some sources say they left some hours later having searched the ship; others say they stayed on board. Other sources still say the vessel was boarded a second time off Portugal. In any event, the boat disappeared from radar screens and switched off its radio contact.

It was not until 17 August that Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency carried a statement by Defence Minister Anatoli Serdioukov. The Arctic Sea, he declared, had been located at 21:00 GMT on 17 August 300 miles off the Cape Verde archipelago The Russian navy and air force had taken control of the ship without firing a shot. The crew were freed, and were safe and well. The boat was being taken to the Russian port of Novorossisk on the Black Sea (where it could no doubt unload the weapons discretely.) The eight ‘pirates’ had been arrested.

But who were these pirates? According to Tarmo Kouts, a former commander of the Estonian army who is now the European Union’s rapporteur on piracy, the only logical explanation is that Israel seized the boat. On 18 August Israel’s President Shimon Peres paid a visit to Moscow – apparently in connection with the affair. On 21 August, the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta (where the murdered Anna Politkovskaia used to work) reported that the Mossad had hijacked the ship to prevent delivery of its arms cargo to Iran.

A senior American source has told this writer that, in all probability, Netanyahu went to Moscow to secure the release of the Mossad team -- and no doubt plead with the Russians not to do it again.

Whatever bargain he managed to strike – if indeed there was a bargain -- will no doubt be revealed in due course.

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