Russia is "playing the spoiler" in the Middle East by continuing the old Soviet policy of encouraging the Arabs and Iran to provoke Israel into destabilising military engagements, according to Gideon Remez, an Israeli expert on Soviet military involvement in the region.

There was a danger the Russians could displace the Americans as the dominant outside influence on Middle Eastern politics if Barack Obama did not find a way of rebuilding US credibility in the region, he said.

"The Americans are overstretched and have been outmanoeuvred, especially in Iraq," Remez said.

Remez, author of Foxbats over Dimona, a groundbreaking study of Soviet instigation in the Six Day War in 1967, was in Dublin this weekend for a conference on the Cold War at UCD's Clinton Institute.

Russian involvement is also limiting Israel's policy options as it seeks to confront Hamas, Hizbollah and Iran ? all of which enjoy better relations with Russia than with any other world power, he said. This fact, and the very negative worldwide reaction to Israel's recent offensive in Gaza, has pushed the Israeli electorate further to the right and scuppered the chance for disengagement from the West Bank anytime soon.

Russia was supplying Lebanon with advanced fighter jets and its navy began strategically using the Syrian port of Tartus just as the fighting in Gaza broke, inhibiting Israel's "freedom to patrol" its neighbours, Remez explained. Russia is also a major supplier of nuclear technology to Iran.

"It is very similar to when the Soviets in 1967 were arming the Egyptians and Syrians and giving them a blueprint for provoking Israel into a war as an excuse for further intervention," he said. "Only because Israel destroyed the Egyptian airfields on the first day of the war did they not launch their strategic bombers to strike [the nuclear facility at] Dimona."

Remez and his wife, Isabella Ginor, both Russia specialists, uncovered evidence that the Soviets planned the 1967 war as a pretext for destroying Israel's nascent nuclear programme to push back against the West. Remez sees a similar dynamic at work now, with Russia pushing back on Nato influence in the Middle East and central Asia, where the Americans stumbled badly under George W Bush.

"The Six Day War was not a local conflict ? it was a regional front in a wider war, the cold war. It is the same today with Gaza, Lebanon, Iran," he said.