“Israel has to worry about potential Russian deployment in Syria, because in the Middle East, if you don’t worry, you pay the price,” Dr. Dan Schueftan, director of the National Security Studies Center at the University of Haifa, told The Algemeiner this week.

He was responding to recent reports about Moscow’s stepped-up efforts to assist the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, which purportedly involve the dispatching of military personnel and equipment, for the purpose of setting up an air base in the area of Latakiya, which Assad controls.

More specifically, Schueftan was referring to claims in the Arab press indicating that this turn of events could mean Israel will be prevented by Moscow from conducting its own operations against terrorists over Syrian skies. According to the Beirut-based, pro-Hezbollah daily, Al-Akhbar, Tel Aviv “will face the predicament of a resistance region in southern Syria that has Russian cover.”