On of the major casualties of the disastrous Obama administration foreign policy was the loss of trust from Israel in the United States as an unwavering ally. Obama actively tried to undermine the Netanyahu government, even paying for opposition party funding before and during the poll. Obama ‘negotiated’ the Iran nuclear ‘deal,’ which basically gave Israel’s arch-nemesis the nuclear bomb, an existential threat to the Jewish State.
This change in the dynamics of the Middle East forced Israel into Moscow’s hands as the new power broker in the Levant and the Fertile Crescent. This new relationship was forged into reality as this week Moscow became one of the first nations to recognize West Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish State.
“We reaffirm our commitment to the UN-approved principles for a Palestinian-Israeli settlement, which include the status of East Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state. At the same time, we must state that in this context we view West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” the Foreign Ministry in Moscow said in a statement, reports Israel National News.
For its part, Israel seemed surprise and said, “We are studying the matter,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon declared.
The effort by Putin seems to be aimed at cementing gains that Russia has made since its expeditionary force landed in Syria several years ago.
Now that the Trump administration is starting to put meat on its foreign policy in the region, with the recent missile attack on a Syrian air base in retaliation for the use of chemical weapons, Moscow may be afraid of losing what it has gained during the weak Obama years.
