The efforts of Turkey, Israel, and Iran to manage relations with Moscow (and vice versa) could ultimately depend on the ongoing talks on Ukraine between the White House and the Kremlin. Russia’s demand that the Biden Administration renounce any plan for Ukrainian membership in NATO will complicate any bid to reach a compromise, a point underscored by Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent statement that Moscow’s demand is unacceptable to the United States and its NATO partners. Blinken is correct when he notes that Moscow must know that no such demand can possibly provide a path forward. But the exit ramp off the road to a more dangerous US-Russian collision is elusive at present. In the meantime, the Ukrainian conflict will have ripple effects in the Middle East and in Vienna. Moscow could conclude that the dangers of failure in Vienna are too great and thus will still try to get Tehran to back down from some of its demands. But if the Ukraine situation gets any hotter, Russia might be disinclined to push Iran toward compromise. Moscow, which not so long ago envisioned itself as a peacemaker in the Middle East, now has far less space to leverage its relationships with the region’s rivals. The lesson seems to be that even if the United States no longer has the clout it once enjoyed in the region, the course of US-Russian relations remains vital to the prospects for peacemaking in the Middle East and other volatile regions of the globe.

A recent Al Mayadeen TV news report questioning the seriousness of Israel’s recent, almost non-stop war threats against Iran. . […] ‘Israel attacking Iran is like one who hits his head against the wall’, this is what the former (Israeli) Minister of Justice Daniel Friedmann thought of the (Israeli) threats (against Iran).  (Friedmann argues) that Israel lacks the (necessary) readiness to be struck with one thousand missiles per day, and that it would be better for (Israel) to continue burying its head in the sand. In addition to the (non-stop) statements and psychological warfare (tactics) against Iran, a large number of officials well aware of Israel’s military capabilities believe that it is not certain whether the (Israeli) Air Force is capable of destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities, at least not in the coming years.

The raison d’etre of Iran’s ballistic missile force, however, is to deter Israel and the United States from conducting any large-scale attack against targets on Iranian soil–especially its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities. To date, this deterrence has worked and, given its proven ability to deliver precision conventional attacks over long distances, will continue to work in the foreseeable future. The US, together with its European and regional allies, has made Iran giving up its ballistic missile capability a prerequisite, along with the elimination of its nuclear enrichment infrastructure, for any normalization of relations. Iran’s argument that its missile force provides a necessary deterrence against military adventurism by the US, Israel, and the Gulf Arab states has fallen on deaf ears. With the US now remaining silent about Saudi Arabia’s new missile production effort, however, it will be extremely difficult for American policy makers to square the difference between their rejection of Iran’s missile capabilities while embracing Saudi Arabia’s acquisition of the same. Hypocrisy, however, is not a stranger to US policy and those who craft it, and one can rest assured that the US will continue to oppose the proliferation of ballistic missile technology in the Persian Gulf region as long as it has a Farsi accent.

The number of Houthi attacks against predominantly civilian targets in Saudi Arabia doubled over the first nine months of 2021 compared to the same period in 2020, according to new CSIS analysis. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force and Lebanese Hezbollah have played a critical role in providing weapons, technology, training, and other assistance to the Yemen-based Houthis. In response, the United States needs to provide Saudi Arabia additional aid to defend the country against stand-off attacks.