Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday played up the global danger of Iran as he sought to persuade Russia to scale down its cooperation with Israel’s foes in the increasingly volatile region.
The Israeli leader met Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and was to hold separate talks with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin a day after a deadly bus bombing killed a British woman and injured 39 people in Jerusalem.
Mr Netanyahu went into the talks vowing to show Israel’s “iron will” to those who attack his country and he underscored the risk of Islamic regimes rising to power amid the turbulence now wracking North Africa and the Middle East.
“There is a danger to Israel, Russia and the modern world that radical regimes, possibly radical Islamic regimes will emerge that threaten us,” Mr Netanyahu told Mr Medvedev at his suburban Moscow residence.
“One regime is already doing so. That is Iran, which threatens to torpedo all attempts at peace and to return us all to the ninth century,” he said.
“We have an interest in stopping this evil and promoting good.”
Russia has been keen to repair its post-Soviet relations with Israel and was one of the first countries to strongly condemn Wednesday’s attack – the first such bombing in the Holy City since September 2004.
Mr Medvedev repeated his personal condolences yesterday and said Russia faced many of the same problems after being hit by two devastating suicide bombings in a little more than a year.
“Our meeting today shows terrorists that they will not achieve their evil goals,” Mr Medvedev said.
But the shocking attack and shared grief are unlikely to ease all tensions in a relationship that has been frustrated by Russia’s nuclear cooperation with Iran and continued arms sales to nations such as Syria.
One Israeli official said such controversial deliveries are “something that takes up a lot of our time” and Mr Netanyahu tried to press home the point that well-armed Islamic regimes posed an equal danger to Russia.
“If the Tehran regime manages to create nuclear weapons, it will never fall,” he told Russian reporters.
“If this happens, no one – neither you (Russia) nor anyone else – will be safe from threats, blackmail and attacks,” Mr Netanyahu added.
Russia remains a key supplier of arms to the Arab world and has recently confirmed its intention to send a large shipment of anti-ship Yakhont cruise missiles to Syria – a country still technically at war with Israel.
Israeli officials fear the shipment will ultimately land in the hands of the Syrian-supported Hizbollah movement in Lebanon.
Moscow officials had also hoped to use the talks to reassert Russia’s place in the Middle East peace process after ceding its role as a power broker in the post-Soviet era to the US.
But the Jerusalem bombing appeared to shatter any hopes of the long-stalled talks resuming and Israeli officials said they were now investigating whether the Gaza-based Hamas movement was behind the attack.