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Why am I not surprised? :roll:
"We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren't backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran," Oren said in the interview, excerpted on Tuesday before its full publication on Friday.
Assad's overthrow would also weaken the alliance with Iran and Hezbollah, Oren said.
"The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc," he said.
Oren said that other anti-Assad rebels were less radical than the Islamists.
Because you already knew this?:
Or does that come as a shock to you?
The public nature of the call is new. The actual position is not. Moreover, the actual position has been reported on well before this story broke. For example, the February 21, 2012 edition of The New York Times reported:
Nearly a year into the Syrian uprising, the predominant view in Israel today is the former, that Mr. Assad must go, not only because he has killed thousands of civilians, but because he is a linchpin in the anti-Israel Iranian power network that includes Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
“Iran is investing very heavily in trying to save the Assad regime,” Dan Meridor, Israel’s intelligence minister, said at a briefing on Monday. “If the unholy alliance of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah can be broken, that is very positive.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/w...opeful-and-fearful-about-unrest-in-syria.html
The big question involved is whether the anti-Assad movement would give greater priority to seeking to heal rifts with Hezbollah and Iran than to working toward better relations with Israel. The growing composition of its forces, Al Qaeda leader Zawahiri's recent call about avoiding Muslim-on-Muslim violence (in the past Shia were seen as legitimate targets by Al Qaeda), and the absence of any credible commitments toward a rapprochement with Israel suggest that one cannot assume that the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah chain would necessarily be broken for long. Nevertheless, Israel might well have gone public with its preference, as it continues to see growth in the Iranian threat and any impairment of its Iran's reach could be welcome, even if that outcome is a short-lived complication.
If they're being funded by SA or Qatar then there's little chance of reproachment with Iran or Hezbollah.
Or does that come as a shock to you?
No, but I start to get some antisemitic thoughts. I'm afraid I cannot share them with you guys.
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