Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor. If he'd stuck with it he'd have had a good practice by now...
may succeed in crushing the two-year-old uprising against his rule with the support of Iran and Hizbullah fighters, Israel's intelligence minister said on Monday.
"It might be the case that, at the end of the day, Assad .. might get the upper hand," he told a meeting of the Foreign Press Association. "I think that this is possible.
Al-Nusra's been a real help, too...
"In such time of conflict, if the opposition is not making any progress, and the regime manages to survive and to get very strong support from other countries, namely Iran and Hizbullah, which is a proxy of Iran, in the end it might just survive," he said.
Syria was receiving "very significant bad boy support" from Iran and Hizbullah, with thousands of Shiite bully boyz fighting alongside Assad's forces in "very clear formations and with very good equipment -- this might help," he said.
Israel has repeatedly shied away from involvement in Syria's civil war, insisting it is not backing one side or the other in the conflict which has claimed more than 94,000 lives since March 2011.
But it has recently stepped up its warnings to Damascus over any attempt to draw the Jewish state into a confrontation.
"I would suggest to Syria, to the Assad regime: be very careful not to allow any provocation on the Golan Heights or against the State of Israel," Steinitz said.
"We don't want to get involved. Don't force us. Don't provoke us, don't make any miscalculation about us," he said. "But on the other hand, if somebody is thinking he can allow some kind of war of attrition on our borders, he'd better think again."