Is Russia Revising Its Strategy in the Middle East?

With every biased and reckless move into which U.S. strategy in the Middle East slips, Russian diplomacy shows up to fish in American-troubled waters.

Over the past decade—following the “Arab Spring” and the failure of American and European approaches to managing the regional scene—the West effectively outsourced to Russia the task of stabilizing the regional balance, starting from Syria. Whether through its deals with Turkey, Syria, or even Israel, Moscow used the “Syrian platform” to unleash a crude, crushing use of force against civilians, in return for adhering to the division of labor set out in the Sochi and Jerusalem understandings, under close U.S. supervision.

Yet after Russia’s intervention in Syria, the West discovered—belatedly—that a defiant Vladimir Putin was not playing by Washington’s rules. He slipped through the cracks of American failure, scrambled the board, rearranged the cards, and imposed himself—as in the 1950s—as an indispensable power broker in the Middle East. Russia entrenched its military bases and objectively became the arbiter of balances among regional states, and even among their “enforcers.”

The invasion of Ukraine toppled that project after Europe decided to “go cold” for years rather than keep buying energy under Russia’s thumb. The result was a complete reversal of the prior division of labor between Russia and the West: Europe—not the Middle East—became the main theater of international confrontation.

The war in Ukraine was supposed to end in weeks, but it produced negative, long-term strategic consequences for Russia. Beyond its encirclement by NATO to the north and south and the narrowing of its strategic margins, Moscow also lost in the Middle East the wager it had outlined with Turkey at Sochi—one that might have turned the two countries into strategic partners transporting energy from Central Asia via Ceyhan–Turkey to Europe, thereby pulling Turkey away from the Western alliance and the European Union.

After the adventure of October 7, the entire strategic context in the Middle East also shifted. Israel no longer accepts delegating “power-broker” states in the region to manage its cold war with Iran; it has chosen to settle matters directly. In addition, after October 7, Russia lost a wide arms market along with a whole roster of its allies—and its allies’ allies.

In Syria, Russia promised that Aleppo would be “a second Grozny,” and it succeeded in destroying the city; it did not, however, manage to rebuild it as it had done in Grozny. Then came a checkmate move with the defeat of the moribund Assad regime. What collapsed with it was Russia’s most important remaining strategic asset in the Middle East: the Syrian army. Russia’s bases in Syria are now exposed to any ground attack, left to the mercy of regional winds. Moscow also realizes that Ukraine played a key role in supplying Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham with drones—and we all saw what Ukrainian naval drones did to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

A short war between Israel and Iran followed, cutting off Tehran’s turn toward Russia. Thus, Moscow did not merely lose room to maneuver with Turkey; Israel also proved—once again—through its swaggering raids along the soft underbelly of the Caucasus that it remains nothing if not the long arm of the West and of the United States.

Experience has again shown that, when it counts (Gaza, Syria, Iran, Yemen), Russia has been unable to break into regional conflicts, to offer a peaceful alternative, or to intervene decisively on behalf of its partners—whether in Armenia, Syria, Iran, or Turkey.

Nor did matters stop at the West’s withdrawal of its earlier delegation to Russia in the region. In the strategic architecture proposed by the Trump project, the solution to the Gaza crisis does not exclude Russia and China, but it is a solution that would leave Europe and the United Nations with little more than implementation contracts for recovery and stabilization. The United States aims to become the sole power broker in the region. While all this remains ink on paper, it is important insofar as it reveals Washington’s true intentions.

I once knew in Russia some of the most seasoned strategists anywhere; I no longer have a clear sense of the new generation. Still, I am confident they grasp the meaning of these shifts: far-reaching revisions are underway in Russia’s long-term strategy.

These revisions take into account facts laid bare by massive transformations. The core flaw in Russia’s strategy lies in its tilt toward security understandings and transactional deals with oligarchs instead of betting on the forces of production and development. In a storm-tossed region like the Middle East—and in an era when governance and sound administration have become the pivot of strategic success for any alliance—pragmatic understandings and ad-hoc bargains with oligarchs cannot build durable partnerships for Russia. Their shallow roots are torn out by the first gust, turning into a burden and a loss.

A second flaw is that Russia cannot build a new regional strategy on merely filling the vacuum left by the United States’ periodic stumbles and follies—whether regarding Turkey, Syria, the Kingdom, or the region as a whole.

For more than three decades, Russian strategy has relied on uneasy, unstable, pragmatic alignments with everyone—Israel, Turkey, Iran, the Gulf states, and of course Syria. As the Sochi experience and Turkey’s S-400 saga make clear, one cannot construct a long-term strategic architecture on personal assurances or transient projects.

While a renewed delegation to Russia in the region appears entirely off the table; while globalization is unraveling and a multipolar world is emerging; and while regional architectures are being re-engineered across the globe—there nonetheless arises a genuine strategic opportunity for Russia, on the condition that it restructures its interests and alliances in the Middle East by betting on becoming a force for stability—not through bombardment, but through partnership with the new, rising forces seeking peace, good governance, genuine development, and stability.

Can Russia offer a credible alternative in governance and development to a number of failing regional states? Can it present a developmental alternative to Israel’s primacy and the West’s partiality and predominance? Can it craft an integrated new strategy aligned with the preferences of Arabs—and Gulf states in particular—for a just peace, stability, and development? Can it offer an option other than military intervention and swapping out Kalashnikov parts?