Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is coming to Moscow on Wednesday to meet with President Vladimir Putin. According to an Israeli analyst, Israel may offer to lobby the Trump administration to remove US sanctions on Russia in exchange for the latter applying pressure on Iran to withdraw from Syria, Sputnik reported.
Haaretz journalist Zvi Bar'el believes that Prime Minister Netanyahu will "try to sell" the idea of an Iranian withdrawal to Putin in exchange for lobbying the Trump administration to remove US sanctions introduced against Moscow following the 2014 Ukrainian crisis.
"It's not inconceivable that Netanyahu will try to sell this idea to Putin. Perhaps the idea will even arise at Putin's summit meeting with Trump on July 16," Bar'el wrote. Israel, the analyst noted, has been trying to lobby Moscow to "oust Iran" from Syria for two years and has been pressuring Trump on the issue as well.
Ultimately, Bar'el stressed that "before anyone entertains the idea of an international persuasion campaign, it's worth considering what Iran itself is willing to do."
"Diplomatic common sense says that Iran would be willing to make concessions in Syria in exchange for cancellation of the new sanctions America has imposed on it and reinstatement of the nuclear deal which Trump scrapped. But this logic contradicts the adamant positions of Trump, Netanyahu, Saudi Arabia and the UAE on the nuclear deal," the columnist noted.
