Israel, Russia, US & Europe re Syria - Understanding where true power lies

So many commentators on events in Syria involving Israel, Russia, Iran, the US & European countries completely misread the true balances of forces & power.
Even otherwise insightful commentators like Tom Luongo aka @goldgoatsnguns draw incorrect conclusions about what's going on because they have not carefully studied the actual military capabilities, the relative strength of the relevant actors and the geographic reality.

Tom's latest article (as yet unpublished on Steem) is a case in point: https://tomluongo.me/2018/09/19/decoding-putin-attack-syria/ It assumes that Russia is the most powerful actor and has freedom of action in Syria and that Israel would somehow need to conspire with France! in order to kick Russia out.

Nothing could be further from the truth!

Russia's forces in Syria are quite small and at the end of a very long and tenuous supply line.
They have 45 combat aircraft, 4,300 lightly armed troops with no heavy armour and some air defence batteries backed by a modest naval presence and 25 long range bombers flying in from Russia. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_military_intervention_in_the_Syrian_Civil_War

In contrast, Israel is right next door (2-3 hours drive from Russian bases) with one of the most powerful land armies and air forces in the world.
500 combat aircraft, 650,000 heavily armed troops with 3000 heavy tanks, 8000 other armoured vehicles deploying world best technology such as Trophy APS (that both Russia and the US are playing catch up with).

It would be impossible for Russia to come even close to matching Israel's strength in the Syrian theatre without leaving Russia itself completely undefended from its many enemies. Indeed the entirety of Russia's land forces are fairly closely matched with those of Israel.

Israeli land forces are far larger and better equipped than the entire of NATO's Europe based land forces! Its does not need to engage in complicated conspiracies with France to involve the US (which itself has very limited forces in and near Syria). If Israel wanted Russia out of Syria, Russia would be gone!

But it is in Israel's interests for Russia to be in control in Syria, so long as it does not constrain Israel's freedom of action against Iran & Hezbollah. Putin respects Israel's massive local superiority and Israel respects Russia's global power. Both parties work closely to ensure they do not infringe each other's core interests.

Thus Russia will never threaten Israeli aircraft or attempt to limit its freedom of action. To do so would be to risk the rapid destruction of everything that Russia has achieved in Syria.