Dr Sidharth Kaushal

Currently America has a very limited missile defence system aimed at North Korea,” says Sidharth Kaushal, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. Now, he says, the Trump administration “wants to explore everything from space-based sensors to space-based interceptors for a fully-fledged defence for the homeland”.

Russia already operates the Al Kadim air base in this region,” RUSI pointed out. “With a concentration of effort in eastern Libya, Tobruk and potentially also Benghazi could offer safe haven to a homeless Russian Mediterranean Fleet.

Last week, the HTS cancelled a 2019 contract with a Russian company, ending its control of the Tartus commercial port, which Moscow had hoped would be a $500m hub for exporting Russian agricultural products to the wider Middle East. That was a bad omen for the naval base, said Sidharth Kaushal, a senior research fellow on sea power at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) in London. “The cancellation of the commercial arrangement is the writing on the wall for the navy, given how hand-in-hand the commercial and the strategic positions were,” Kaushal said. The loss of Tartus would turn chronic problems in the Russian fleet into a crisis, he argued.