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Is Israel in Secret Contact with Syria?

(BESA Center for Strategic Studies-Bar-Ilan University) Lt.-Col. (res.) Dr. Mordechai Kedar - Reports have appeared about secret contacts between Israel and Syria. On Dec. 23, 2020, Israeli journalist Majdi Halabi published an interview on the Arabic website Elaph with an officer of the IDF General Staff. The officer said: "Assad brought the Iranians into Syria so they would solve the problem of ISIS and the civil war, but once ISIS was defeated...Iran, which was a big plus for Syria, turned into a burden for both Syria and Russia." The Syrians "need money to pay the Iranians to get out of Syria, and they want to solidify their regime. Assad sees the reality, and he wants to forge ties with the Sunni axis so that he can pay his debts to Iran and get them out of Syria. He sees that Israel can help him with the U.S. on the one hand and with the Gulf axis and the Sunni axis on the other. The Russians, too, see us as a bridge to the U.S., to the Gulf, and to the Sunni axis." "Assad...is now prepared to talk with us so as to shore up his rule, defray the financial debt to Iran, and create a situation of non-belligerency with Israel....The important thing is that there's a possibility of breaking up the radical axis, the Iranian axis." The writer, a senior research associate at the BESA Center, served for 25 years in IDF military intelligence.
2021-02-01 00:00:00
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