It's difficult for me to admit it, and it’s not easy for me to write it, but Russian policy on Syria has the one-up on American policy. Although it is convenient to welcome the final outcome, I still find it hard to congratulate Russian President Vladimir Putin and his foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, on their policy, which blindly backed and supported Syrian President Bashar al-Assad all along the body-strewn way.

When the horrific images of dead civilians filled television screens around the world, Russia claimed that it was a provocation on the part of the rebels. When chemical weapons were introduced to the fighting, killing 1,400 people, a quarter of them children, the Russians brazenly argued that there was no evidence that Assad was the culprit responsible for the horror, and that most likely, the rebels were the ones who had made use of the banned weapons, unleashing the deadly sarin gas against civilians, to induce the international community to step in and bail them out of the series of losses they had recently suffered on the battlefield.

When Assad was about to lose control and his army was on the verge of collapse, the Russians assured him of their full support and armed him to the teeth. The alliance between Putin and Assad was apparently so important that the Syrian president was guaranteed a supply of advanced anti-aircraft S-300 missiles, which Israel regards as a major threat and a game-changing weapons system.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled all the way to Moscow half a year ago, in May 2013, in a desperate, and it should be said, even naive attempt to plead with Putin to call off the deal. Indeed, one may wonder how it could be that Netanyahu failed to realize that it was a waste of time and that his trip to the Kremlin was a hopeless mission. How could he believe that he had the power to move Moscow off the track of its blind support for its only remaining ally in the Middle East? How could he possibly hope to change the Russian policy of steadfast support for Assad to which Moscow adhered even when President Barack Obama raised his fist and threatened to beat it?