We are changing the face of the Middle East

On the situation in Syria

Netanyahu: We are changing the face of the Middle East

Israel sees the fall of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad as a result of his military strikes against the allies of arch-enemy Iran. The fight is not over for Prime Minister Netanyahu.

According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel is in the process of “changing the face of the Middle East” after the overthrow of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. Israel is defeating its enemies “step by step” in a “war of existence that was forced upon us,” Netanyahu told the press in Jerusalem that evening. Assad’s Syria was “the most important link in Iran’s axis of evil.” It stoked hatred toward Israel, attacked it in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and was an “arms pipeline” from Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon, he said.

Netanyahu said the collapse of the Syrian regime was a “direct result of the severe blows” Israel dealt to the Islamist Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Shiite militia Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran. However, Iran’s “axis of evil” has not yet disappeared. But “we are changing the face of the Middle East,” Netanyahu said. “The State of Israel is establishing itself as a center of power in our region in a way that has not been the case for decades.” According to activists, Israel has been carrying out heavy attacks in Syria since Assad’s fall.