The Saudi website Elaph revealed earlier today (Monday) that Syrian President Bashar Assad has conveyed a message to Israel that he is interested in military aid for the official regime's fight against the rebels who have occupied huge chunks of northwestern Syria in recent days.
According to the report, the message was conveyed from President Assad to Israel through one of the president's aides who is in Europe, directly to an Israeli security source.
Israel, according to Elaph, conveyed a message to Assad that the events and developments in Syria do not threaten Israel, but it did not reject the Syrian president's request out of hand.
The same Israeli security source conveyed a message to Assad that the Iranian militias must leave Syrian territory before Israel considers a positive response to the request for assistance.
It should be noted that Tehran is stirring up what is happening in Syria because there is a territorial contiguity of the Shiites from Tehran to the Golan. The takeover by the Sunni rebels interrupts the continuity and harms Iran's national interest, which does not bother Israel too much, although Israel is concerned about the possibility that extremist terrorist elements will enter a vacuum that could be created in the wild territories of northwestern Syria.
Earlier, the Elaph website quoted the words of Middle East scholar Mordechai Kedar, who spoke about the Syrian rebels and claimed that "they are friends of Israel." According to Kedar, quoted by Elaph, if the rebels complete the occupation of Syria and topple the Assad regime, an Israeli embassy will be opened in Damascus.
* Kikar Hashabbat contributed to this article.