Syria border
Syria borderIsrael news photo: Flash 90

Syrian President Bashar Assad now has the upper hand in his ongoing war with Syrian rebels, according to Dr. David Bukai of Haifa University, an expert in Middle East affairs.

Iran and Hizbullah are helping Assad win, Bukai told Arutz Sheva. “This increases his weakness vis-à-vis Iran,” he warned.

“Syria will be more dependent on Iran, and that will affect our border, because if Assad is not independent and is open to Iranian and Hizbullah influence, there will be attempts to ‘heat up’ the border,” he warned.

Lebanon, too, could prove unstable, he said. “The Sunni Muslims, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are very concerned by Hizbullah and Iran. The Sunni Muslim religious leaders have issued a religious edict against Hizbullah and Shi'ite Islam, so Lebanon is apparently going back to being a conflict zone,” he predicted.

Israel cannot depend on the United Nations to provide protection in the north, he declared. “The U.N. is a corrupt organization. ‘Um, Shum’ [U.N., Shmu-N], as David Ben-Gurion said.”

“It’s an organization dominated by the Islamist states, and it is ineffective,” he continued. “Just now we saw the [Israel-Syria] border heat up, and the Austrian troops withdrew… They cannot be relied on.”