The Israeli premier and the Turkish president fear that Iran will strengthen. Di Maio: “Giving airplanes to Ukraine can trigger the Third World War”
Two new players have decisively entered the diplomatic match that is being played between Russia and the West: Israel and Turkey. Yesterday, not even 24 hours after the long conversation between Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Vladimir Putin in Moscow, the two resented by telephone. In the meantime, Bennett had spoken with the French president Macron (who yesterday, after having heard for over an hour Putin called the conversation useless, “He does not give in on anything”), with the German chancellor Scholz and with the Ukrainian president Zelensky, while its foreign minister, Yair Lapid, flew to Riga to meet with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.
A network – to which Turkish President Erdogan joined, who yesterday had a long phone call with Putin – which began to structure itself when Russia decided to “take hostage” the talks on Iranian nuclear power to obtain a easing of Western sanctions.
Before the invasion of Ukraine blew up relations between Russia and the West, in fact, on the table of the Iranian nuclear talks in Vienna, it seemed an agreement had been reached for a return of Tehran to the terms of nuclear non-proliferation defined in 2015 , and a consequent lifting of US sanctions on the Ayatollah regime. The project, with the 5 + 1 format (France, Germany, United Kingdom, Russia, China and Iran), was negotiated with the consent of the Americans and was to be finalized in the coming days. But the Russians, given the situation, have decided to ask the US administration for “written guarantees” that the package of sanctions imposed following the invasion of Ukraine would not hamper trade relations with Iran. A move that cannot please other Westerners – because unblocking a channel of sanctions means allowing Russia an opening that at this stage would be politically unacceptable – and which has embarrassed the State Department (“Irrelevant requests – commented Anthony Binken – the sanctions imposed on Ukraine have nothing to do with Iran “). A move, at the same time, which offered the Israelis – staunch opponents, with the Turks, of the agreement with Tehran – the opportunity to enter the mediation and try to “negotiate” a suspension of hostilities in exchange for a setback on the Vienna talks. In the short term, Moscow also has an interest in postponing the agreement: Iran is a super oil producer, and if its supplies reached global markets – which is only possible in the presence of a lifting of the current sanctions – Russia would have many more difficulty in raising the price of oil and facing the economic crisis that is beginning to bite Russian society.
The Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan also moved on the Israeli line, who yesterday invited Putin to proclaim a ceasefire in Ukraine, to open humanitarian corridors and to sign a peace agreement. We do not know what chance these appeals have of being heard, but between the two leaders there is a channel of communication that could give rise to some form of strategic dialogue: Turkey – also hostile to the Iranian nuclear deal – shares a maritime border with Russia and Ukraine in the Black Sea and has good ties with both countries (on the one hand she called the invasion of Russia unacceptable and offered to host talks, on the other she opposed sanctions against Fly).
Hence, Turkey and Israel, which among other things share a strategic military cooperation on the Syrian chessboard with Moscow, are currently among the few players capable of managing mediation. According to Israeli sources, the same Ukrainian leader Zelensky would have asked Bennett to mediate in the crisis: the presence of an important Ukrainian community in Israel has always cemented relations between the two countries. In view of a resumption of negotiations today in Belarus, on which hopes are practically nil, Zelensky worked yesterday to strengthen his network of allies.
He spoke first with Boris Johnson, then with Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who reaffirmed the Italian willingness to give assistance to Ukraine and its population and reiterated that Italy supports “Ukraine’s belonging to the European family”. Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio reiterated on RaiTre that “there is only room for diplomacy, no other solution can be imagined. A no-fly zone in Ukraine means sending our fighters: if only one is shot down, the Third World War breaks out ».
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