Russia is making common cause with Iran and its Persian Gulf neighbours in a bid to kickstart the much touted “new world order”, albeit at the risk of becoming entirely beholden to West Asia’s main players.

Military intervention in Syria put Russia in Israel’s neighbourhood starting in 2015. This, on top of the 1.4 million Russian-speaking Jews already living in Israel, has made for an interesting dynamic in Russian-Israeli relations.

For contemporary Israel, Russia is not just a country that is more than three thousand kilometres away: Russia is already in Israel. Having absorbed more than one million “Russian” Jews, Israel is not the same anymore. What is more, the Middle East has, again, become a strategic region for the Kremlin. By intervening in neighbouring Syria, and backing Bashar al-Assad in his struggle to stay in power, Russia has made spectacular inroads into Israeli national security debates.