Concern in Israel of Turkey’s possession of the Russian S400

An Israeli security and intelligence analyst warned on Saturday that Turkey has a Russian anti-aircraft and anti-missile defense system, the S400, adding that Tel Aviv should be deeply concerned by the conduct of both Washington and Moscow.

Yossi Melman wrote in the Israeli newspapers Maariv in Hebrew and the Jerusalem Post that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not interested in the United States or the NATO member states.

Turkey has defied US pressure to prevent it from carrying out the deal.

On July 12, the S400, one of the most advanced air defense systems in the world, Milman said that Tel Aviv cannot trust Ankara, which in the past 10 years has become “an anti-Israeli enemy”.

The Turkish position, ten years ago, was the discovery of a Lebanese spy network for Israel by transferring information it received from Washington after Israeli intelligence transferred it to its American counterpart.

He added that Turkish intelligence transferred the information to its Iranian counterpart, and handed it over to the Lebanese Hezbollah group, which contributed to the detection of the network.

Milman also cited repeated statements in which Erdogan attacked Israel, as well as Turkey’s allowing Hamas leaders to reside on its territory.

He added that the Israeli Foreign Intelligence Service (Mossad), the Military Intelligence Division and the General Security Service (Shabak) have stopped cooperating with their Turkish counterparts, and Israeli military industries aren’t cooperating with their Turkish counterpart.

On what should worry Israel after handing over the Russian S400 to Turkey, Milman said it was linked to Russia, which proved that there was nothing to prevent it from strengthening its defense industries and marketing its weapons to those who wanted to acquire them.

He said that Russia and Israel are alike in the policy of manufacturing weapons and selling it almost to anyone who asks for it.

However, he felt that Israel should be aware of the fact that, despite Israeli-Russian cooperation and coordination on Syria, Tel Aviv’s influence on Russia’s political and economic strategy in the Middle East was “limited”.

Melman didn’t exclude other countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia from buying the S400, especially since they have shown interest in the system in recent years.

Milman pointed to Syria’s recent acquisition of the S300 system, despite Israel’s refusal to do so, to the extent that the Defense Ministry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to destroy the system Syria obtained if necessary.

Melman linked the reality imposed by the Russian-Turkish deal to the contradiction in the remarks and behavior of US President Donald Trump.

“Trump threatened North Korea and then listened to its leader, Kim Jong-un, but without any results, and imposed severe sanctions on Iran, but he refrained from any military action against it, and seeks to renew negotiations with them”.

This has led Milman to say that countries in the region are convinced that Trump cannot be relied on, so Russia is resorting to it, and this should worry Israel.

The Russian decision is linked to the interests of Russia itself, not the interests of Israel, so Russia may decide to implement the sale of Iran system S300, which Moscow declined to abide by; because of US and Israeli pressure, if Russia believes that its interest requires the implementation of the deal.