Israel would prefer President Assad to survive his country’s bloody two-year insurgency if the alternative were a takeover by rebels infiltrated by Islamic extremists, Israeli officials said yesterday.
Intelligence sources said that an intact, but weakened, Assad regime would be preferable for the country and the whole troubled region.
“Better the devil we know than the demons we can only imagine if Syria falls into chaos and the extremists from across the Arab world gain a foothold there,” one senior Israeli intelligence officer in the north of the country said.
Another defence official said that his country had believed that Mr Assad’s regime would collapse sooner. “We originally underestimated Assad’s staying power and overestimated the rebels’ fighting power,” the official said. The Israeli reassessment accords
