By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Despite Moscow’s military shortcomings and Western efforts to make it an international pariah, Vladimir Putin remains a capable player in the region.

Before Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, the prevailing view in Washington was that Russian President Vladimir Putin had become a master of the geopolitical game. He had a well-armed and capable war machine and had managed to extend Moscow’s influence well beyond Russia’s near abroad into Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Yet, although Putin has not lived up to this hype given his disastrous late-February blitz, the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction.

Moscow’s war on Ukraine has revealed Russia to be weak, inevitably undermining Putin’s global influence. The hedge against U.S. decline and withdrawal that Washington’s partners, especially those in the Middle East, have undertaken with Moscow will likely end. After all, who would want Russian military equipment and doctrine after such spectacular military failures as, for instance, the attempted crossing of the Siverskyi Donets River, during which Russia lost an entire battalion. Of course, the Russians seemed to have recovered and learned from these disasters, proving themselves more effective in more recent battles in Luhansk and Donetsk.

Yet, despite Russia’s military shortcomings and Western efforts to make Moscow an international pariah, not only does Putin remain a capable player in the Middle East, but he also has willing partners there.

On Tuesday, perhaps in direct response to U.S. President Joe Biden’s recent trip to the region, Putin traveled to Tehran for a meeting of the Astana Peace Process with his Iranian and Turkish counterparts—a trilateral effort to manage the three governments’ competing interests in Syria’s decadelong conflict.

Previously uneasy partners in rescuing the Bashar al-Assad regime, the Russians and Iranians have drawn closer to one another since Russia invaded Ukraine. Tehran has the expertise that Moscow wants, specifically on how best to skirt Western sanctions. The Iranians also produce military equipment the Russians need, such as lethal drones to attack Ukraine’s Western-provided advanced weaponry. Iran also has historic and current geographic significance to Russia, serving as the gateway to much of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had his agenda in meeting with Putin and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. After presiding over the Turkish-Iranian High-Level Cooperation Council, Erdogan pushed his main objective: an agreement to launch another Turkish incursion into northern Syria, where Erdogan wants to set up a safe zone for the forcible return of Syrian refugees—likely a popular move at home ahead of a dicey election next year.

Moscow has long resisted a Turkish offensive because Turkey’s territorial control in the north would jeopardize Putin’s vision of victory in Syria as a unified country under Assad’s leadership. Yet Putin may be willing to countenance a limited and temporary Turkish invasion because it would complicate the U.S. mission in Syria and exacerbate strains in NATO over Ankara’s relationship with Moscow.

Despite their differences over Syria, Libya, and Nagorno-Karabakh, both Putin and Erdogan chafe at a U.S.-led order in the regions around them—especially in Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Middle East. This is where the Gulf states come in. If Biden’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia was partly to shore up that order in an era of great-power competition, it does not look like he achieved all that much. This is because few in the Middle East want to choose between Washington and Moscow—or Washington and Beijing, for that matter.

Washington’s friends in the Middle East undoubtedly want U.S. security guarantees and weaponry. Yet the combination of two decades of failure in the region, the clear U.S. desire to de-emphasize the region in favor of Asia, and ongoing U.S. domestic political dysfunction raise questions among the region’s potentates about Washington’s commitment to regional stability and security. The meager results of Biden’s visit to the region suggest that none of the regional actors, especially in the Gulf, are willing to give up their hedges with Russia or China.

During Biden’s visit, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman explained that his agreement with the U.S. president to produce more oil was contingent on market conditions and agreement by OPEC+ members. In doing so, the crown prince, perhaps posturing for effect at home and in the region, was implying that ties to the United States do not trump his relationship with Russia—an essential member of the “plus” part of OPEC+.

Nevertheless, the Russian leader’s visit to Iran highlighted how far his country has fallen from its superpower ambitions.

It isn’t hard to guess why Vladimir Putin’s trip to Tehran was announced as Joe Biden made his way to Jerusalem and Jeddah. The Russian president may hanker for a time when the occupants of the White House and the Kremlin were held in equal regard across the Middle East and North Africa; in reality, he can only hope for superpower status by association.

But the illusion that Putin’s travels are of equal import as Biden’s can’t be sustained by his meetings with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his fellow guest, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

If anything, Putin’s war on Ukraine has diminished his country’s stature in the region. Rather than offer solutions to geopolitical, economic, and security problems created by US disengagement, Russia is now a source of new crises.

Mounting grain scarcities and food inflation in the poorer Arab nations are a direct consequence of Putin’s belligerence. His continued support for Iran despite its nuclear brinkmanship is cause for frustration for Israel and the Gulf Arab states menaced by the regime in Tehran. Not that the Iranians are feeling especially grateful at the moment: Russia is undercutting their oil exports to China.

Meanwhile, the poor performance of Putin’s forces in the battlefield is hardly reassuring for those who get their military supplies from Moscow. It won’t have escaped the attention of weapons buyers from India to China to sub-Saharan Africa that Russia has been reduced to seeking drones from Iran. If it was embarrassing for Biden to bump fists with the Saudi prince he once vowed to make a pariah, it is even more ignominious for Putin to have to plead for arms from a regime that actually is an international pariah.

Unlike the US president, the Russian leader can count on a cowed and coopted media back home to spare his blushes. But this is a small mercy for a man who compares himself with Peter the Great, the tsar who inflicted military humiliation on the Iranian Safavid empire in the 18th century.

If Biden’s ambitions for his Middle East trip were limited to getting Saudi Arabia to pump more oil, Putin’s goal is, commensurate with his lower status, humbler still. He is hoping to protect the delicate balance of power in Syria, where Russia, Iran and Turkey all have military forces and support opposing sides.

With his forces strained by the war in Ukraine, Putin can ill afford a disturbance to the Syrian equilibrium that might require him to invest more military resources there. But Erdogan is threatening to expand the Turkish sphere of influence by mounting a new invasion in northern Syria, ostensibly against Kurdish groups.

 

 

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