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New Yorker: Israel, SA, UAE pushed for US to drop Russian sanctions for Iran removal from Syria

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Sho_Nuff82

Sho_Nuff82

Member
Nov 14, 2017
18,420
Whoa Nelly. Funny how nearly every story that comes out of foreign contacts with the 2016 elections involves dropping either the Magnitsky sanctions or the Crimea sanctions.

Israeli, Saudi, and Emirati Officials Privately Pushed for Trump to Strike a "Grand Bargain" with Putin

By Adam Entous

July 9, 2018

During a private meeting shortly before the November, 2016, election, Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, floated to a longtime American interlocutor what sounded, at the time, like an unlikely grand bargain. The Emirati leader told the American that Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, might be interested in resolving the conflict in Syria in exchange for the lifting of sanctions imposed in response to Russia's actions in Ukraine.
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The special counsel, Robert Mueller, and his F.B.I. team, tasked with probing Russia's interference in the 2016 election, have been investigating whether the U.A.E. facilitated contacts between Trump's team and Russian officials and sought to influence U.S. politics. Nine days before Trump's Inauguration, Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater and a confidant of Steve Bannon, met at M.B.Z.'s resort in the Seychelles with Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, whom the Emiratis used as a go-between with Putin. (An April, 2017, Washington Post story that I co-wrote revealed the Indian Ocean encounter and stated that "the UAE agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump administration objective that would be likely to require major concessions to Moscow on U.S. sanctions.")
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As an inducement for Putin to partner with Gulf states rather than Iran, the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia started making billions of dollars in investments in Russia and convening high-level meetings in Moscow, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, and the Seychelles.

It is unclear whether M.B.Z.'s preëlection proposal came from Putin himself or one of his confidants, or whether the Emirati leader came up with the idea. But the comment suggested that M.B.Z. believed that turning Putin against Iran would require sanctions relief for Moscow, a concession that required the support of the American President.
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Israeli officials lobbied for rapprochement between Washington and Moscow soon after Trump's election victory. In a private meeting during the transition, an attendee told me, Ron Dermer, the Israeli Ambassador to the United States and one of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's closest confidants, said that the Israeli government was encouraging the incoming Trump Administration to coöperate more closely with Putin, starting in Syria, with the hope of convincing Moscow to push the Iranians to leave the country, the attendee said.
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A senior Israeli official declined to comment on Dermer's message but said that "Israel does believe it is possible to get a U.S.-Russian agreement in Syria that would push the Iranians out," and that doing so "could be the beginning of an improvement in U.S.-Russian relations over all."
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Separately, a former U.S. official recalled having a conversation after Trump's Inauguration with an Israeli Cabinet minister with close ties to Netanyahu in which the minister pitched the American on the idea of "trading Ukraine for Syria." The former official told me, "You can understand why Russia's help with Syria is a far higher priority for Israel than pushing back on Russian aggression in Ukraine. But I considered it a major stretch for Israel to try to convince the United States that U.S. interests are well served by looking the other way at Russian aggression in Ukraine. Of course, Trump may disagree for his own reasons."
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TL:DR, for their own reasons (Israel hoping to protect their country against Iranian weaponry being deployed in the region, UAE and Saudia Arabia wanting closer ties with Putin and a weakening of Iran, none of the three countries trusting Obama or Clinton to go along with the deal), these three countries pushed for a deal in late 2016 that would push Russia to handle the situation in Syria. Given their influence over Iran, the hope was that they could push Iranian forces and weapons out. In exchange, the US would ease/remove sanctions for the annexation of Crimea, or straight up recognize Crimea as Russian territory. The plan is the link between the UAE/Russia meetings in New York/Trump Tower, the Prince meeting in the Seychelles, the meeting of Kislyak and Flynn (discussing sanctions) in December, and Kushner trying to establish a backchannel of communications with Kislyak around the same time.

The deal blew up because Congress was pushing for even harsher sanctions against Russia during the transition, and ended up getting them during the big spending bill. But now with Trump's meeting with Putin next week, all signs point to him trying to revive the conversation. Keep watch on how the RNC reacts to Trump's gushing review of Putin's job in Syria in the coming weeks.
 
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