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<\/a><\/p>\nAmong the presidents, prime ministers, kings and princes who have visited Moscow over the past year to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin are some of the United States\u2019 closest allies, who once might have been expected to devote their travel time to Washington.<\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019s a new power rising in the Middle East, and it needs to be wooed.<\/span><\/p>\n Three decades after the Soviet Union collapsed and the United States emerged as the undisputed superpower in the Middle East and North Africa, a resurgent Russia is back. Under the personal direction of Putin, Russia is stepping into the vac\u00aduum<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0left by the disengagement of the Obama administration and the unpredictability of the Trump one to challenge the United States\u2019 dominant role in the region.<\/span><\/p>\n Russian oilmen, arms dealers and financiers have been fanning out across the region, striking billions of dollars\u2019 worth of deals, reviving old relationships and forging new ones from Libya to the Persian Gulf<\/span><\/p>\n At the center of it all is Putin, whose strongman image resonates with the region\u2019s authoritarian rulers at a time when doubts are growing about Washington\u2019s commitment to the Middle East.<\/span><\/p>\n Russia\u2019s\u00a02015 military intervention in Syria<\/a><\/strong><\/span> has given Putin perhaps the single biggest boost, burnishing his credentials as a decisive and effective leader who delivers what he set out to achieve: the survival<\/a><\/strong><\/span> of President Bashar al-Assad.<\/span><\/p>\n It also positioned Putin at the nexus of the Middle East\u2019s overlapping conflicts, leveraging Russia\u2019s influence far beyond Syria\u2019s borders to include all the countries with a stake in the outcome of the war \u2014 foes such as Israel and Iran, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey. As a result, he has frequently been on the phone with U.S. allies such as Turkey and Israel \u2014 nearly three dozen times with the leaders of those two countries just in the past year<\/span><\/p>\n Apart from Syria, Russia has shown little inclination to wade into most of the region\u2019s myriad conflicts, such as the Yemen war, the Arab-Israeli peace process and the dispute between Qatar and its neighbors. But Putin has welcomed anyone who wants to visit, making Moscow a must-stop destination for leaders with a problem to solve.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cPutin is effectively working as the psychoanalyst of the region,\u201d said Malik Dahlan, a Saudi who is a professor of international law and public policy at Queen Mary University of London. \u201cThe Russians are happy to hear all sides, and anyone who wants to speak, they\u2019re happy to listen.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The U.S.-allied leaders who have traveled to Moscow this year include Saudi Arabia\u2019s King Salman, who gave President Trump a lavish welcome in Riyadh last year but then chose Moscow over Washington for his first and so far only official overseas visit \u2014 the first visit ever by a Saudi monarch to Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n The emir of Qatar unexpectedly flew to Moscow to meet with Putin on the eve of his visit to Washington in April, earning a rebuke from the Trump administration. The crown prince of Abu Dhabi, a close U.S. ally, declined an invitation to Washington this spring, diplomats say. But he traveled to Moscow in June, his seventh trip in five years, signing a \u201cstrategic partnership\u201d agreement with Putin.<\/span><\/p>\n Most recently, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi in October made his fourth visit to Moscow \u2014 compared with one to Washington \u2014 and also signed a strategic-partnership agreement with Putin in the Russian resort town of Sochi, marking a significant shift of a U.S. ally toward Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n Putin greets Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Beunos Aires recently. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n The meetings are providing Putin with new levers of influence just when the United States is drawing down forces in the Middle East, in part to counter Russian and Chinese expansion elsewhere. His hearty greeting at the Group of 20 summit in Argentina<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman illustrated the personal rapport Putin is establishing with regional leaders.<\/span><\/p>\n Those visits are also translating at times into substantive policy. An agreement between Russia and Saudi Arabia to cut oil production, resulting from King Salman\u2019s Moscow visit last year, has given Russia new weight in world energy markets. The joint announcement Monday that the two countries would further cut production reflects an emerging partnership that has the potential to rival the clout of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.<\/span><\/p>\n When not hosting visitors, Putin is often on the telephone, usually sorting out problems relating to Syria but, in the process, cultivating close relationships with some of the United States\u2019 dearest friends.<\/span><\/p>\n Israel\u2019s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called Trump a\u00a0\u201ctrue friend<\/strong><\/span>\u201d of Israel<\/a>, has spoken 11 times on the phone with Putin over the past year and only three times with Trump, according to a tally of the calls reported on Putin\u2019s and Netanyahu\u2019s websites. Netanyahu has visited Moscow four times in the past year. He has visited Washington twice since Trump became president.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear whether Putin and Netanyahu\u2019s rapport will survive building tensions between Israel and Iran in Syria and also Lebanon, where the \u00adIranian-backed Hezbollah militia has expanded its influence. They have spoken only once since the downing of a Russian plane in Syria <\/a><\/strong><\/span>in September, which Moscow blamed on Israel. But phone calls between Putin and Netanyahu at the time played a part in tamping down the worst of the animosity, diplomats say.<\/span><\/p>\n Turkey, a longtime U.S. ally and NATO partner with a centuries-old history of rivalry with Russia, has been drifting deeper into Moscow\u2019s orbit of influence as their cooperation in Syria expands<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0and relations with the United States have become strained.<\/span><\/p>\n According to a count of their interactions, Turkey\u2019s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the past year has spoken 20 times on the phone with Putin and seven times with Trump. Erdogan\u2019s decision to purchase Russia\u2019s advanced S-400 missile system<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, which Moscow says will be delivered next year, offers one example of how their burgeoning relationship could challenge the cohesion of NATO.<\/span><\/p>\n Russia has also been warming up to Lebanon and Iraq, both U.S. allies and recipients of U.S. military aid. In Iraq, Moscow has completed arms deals with the government, invested in a strategically significant oil pipeline linking the Iraqi region of Kurdistan to Turkey and opened an intelligence-sharing center with the Iraqi military in Baghdad, signaling its return to a country lost as an ally after the United States toppled Saddam Hussein.<\/span><\/p>\n Lebanon came under intense U.S. pressure earlier this year to rebuff a $1 billion arms deal offered by Russia that would have ended a decades-old U.S. and Western monopoly on supplying aid to the Lebanese army, according to a Lebanese government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the subject. Late last month, however, Prime Minister Saad Hariri accepted a donation of \u201cmillions of Kalashnikov bullets\u201d from Russia, which will be given to the internal security forces, his office said.<\/span><\/p>\n Putin recognizes that many of the Middle East\u2019s problems cannot easily be solved, Russian officials say. Becoming too deeply entangled in the region\u2019s disputes might expose the limits of Russian capabilities, which they acknowledge lag far behind those of the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe Russians understand their limits very well. I don\u2019t think Russia wants to replace America everywhere, and it would be very costly,\u201d said Yury Barmin of the Russian International Affairs Council. He sees much that is ad\u00a0hoc and opportunistic in Russia\u2019s pursuit of influence.<\/span><\/p>\n Russian special Forces in Syria<\/p><\/div>\n To the extent that Russia has a military strategy for the region, he said, it is focused on the Mediterranean. Russia has secured long-term basing rights for its forces in Syria, including an\u00a0expanded naval base at Tartus<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, giving Russia its strongest presence ever in the Mediterranean.<\/span><\/p>\n Moscow has also been extending its reach into Egypt, a U.S. ally since the 1970s. After the Obama administration suspended some arms sales to Egypt in 2014 over human rights abuses, Russia stepped in to sell fighter jets and attack helicopters. That has been followed by a deal giving Russia the right to use Egyptian military bases and a commitment to hold regular joint military exercises.<\/span><\/p>\n In neighboring Libya, another former Soviet ally, Russian military officials have established a close relationship with the Libyan warlord Khalifa Hifter while signing oil deals with the U.N.-backed Libyan government, potentially positioning Moscow to play a role in any future peace settlement among Libya\u2019s warring parties.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cVery generally, the Mediterranean has been of strategic importance to Russia for a long time,\u201d Barmin said. \u201cRussia sees that region as a crucial area for hard power, for countering NATO.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Elsewhere, Russia\u2019s role has largely focused on business deals, which serve the dual purpose of compensating for the impact of U.S. and European sanctions on Russia and cementing its role as a regional influencer, said Carole Nakhle, an energy expert at Britain\u2019s Surrey University. Russian companies have signed billions of dollars\u2019 worth of deals in oil and gas ventures in markets as diverse as Saudi Arabia, the region\u2019s \u00admega-producer of oil, and Iraqi Kurdistan, one of the newest and smallest oil producers. Russia\u2019s state-owned nuclear energy firm Rosatom has contracts to build nuclear reactors in five Middle Eastern countries, giving Moscow a long-term foothold in their infrastructure and transportation networks.<\/span><\/p>\n This is not a return to the era of the Cold War, in which Moscow and Washington competed for the loyalties of regional powers and Middle Eastern countries had to choose sides, analysts say. Even with Russia\u2019s extended commitment in Syria, its presence in the region is \u201cnowhere near as robust\u201d as it was during the Cold War, when Russia maintained thousands of troops in Egypt as well as Syria, said Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution.<\/span><\/p>\n The United States\u00a0maintains about 45,000 troops<\/a><\/strong><\/span> in the Middle East, according to the Heritage Foundation, mostly on bases in Persian Gulf countries, including Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. A total of about 60,000 Russian troops have served in Syria at some point in the past three years, according to figures published by the Defense Ministry. Though that is a higher number than what Russia had previously acknowledged, the troops serve rotations and the total number at any given time is thought to be far smaller.<\/span><\/p>\n Russia has boasted of a surge in regional sales of its weapons, newly tried and tested on the Syrian battlefield. But this increase is part of the overall growth in the region\u2019s purchases of arms, and the United States is also seeing a big increase in exports to the Middle East, said Ben Moores, who tracks Russian weapons sales for the IHS Markit defense consultancy.<\/span><\/p>\n Russia has nearly doubled its weapons exports to the region over the past five years, with $24\u00a0billion worth of orders due to be fulfilled over the next decade, Moores said. By comparison, U.S. sales have increased by almost as much, and U.S. firms have booked more than $81\u00a0billion in deliveries due over the equivalent period.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>