Israeli official: Tel Aviv looks positively at the Syrian regime’s rapprochement with Gulf countries | Politics news

An Israeli official said that Tel Aviv is looking positively at the recent rapprochement between the Syrian regime and the Gulf states, and hopes that this will lead to Iran’s exclusion from Syria.

Yesterday, Tuesday, the Hebrew newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth quoted the high-ranking Israeli official, without naming him, adding that “such a Syrian rapprochement with the Sunni Gulf states may lead to the exclusion of Iran and other elements of the Shiite axis from Syria.”

In the past few months, the pace of rapprochement between the Syrian regime and the Gulf states increased. Observers considered this the beginning of an Arab normalization train with the Assad regime, about 12 years after the suspension of Syria’s membership in the Arab League.

The Israeli official considered that the biggest challenge to the Assad regime on the domestic scene is the economic challenge, in light of successive crises and a real difficulty in moving forward.

“One of the solutions that can help him (Bashar al-Assad) is embodied in the foreign investments that can come from the Gulf states, which in recent months have indicated to Assad that they are ready to talk,” he added.

The official added that there is an opportunity in the new year to reduce the Iranian presence in Syria, without further explanation.

For years, Israel has launched air strikes in Syria against what it describes as “Iranian entrenchment” in the country, as well as other targets belonging to the Syrian regime and Lebanese Hezbollah.

Gulf Arab states, with the exception of Oman, reduced their level of diplomatic representation or closed their diplomatic missions in Damascus after the Syrian regime used force to quell the uprising against it in 2011.

However, some of those countries have taken steps towards normalizing the relationship, the most recent of which was Bahrain’s appointment two weeks ago as its first ambassador to Syria in more than a decade.

While the UAE – which reopened its mission to Damascus in late 2018 – sent its foreign minister, Abdullah bin Zayed, to Syria last November, where he met with the President of the Syrian regime, Bashar al-Assad.