The fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad will break the Iranian-Syrian axis and will be good for Israel, Intelligence Minister Dan Meridor told Army Radio Sunday morning.

“There is an Assad-Ahmadinejad axis, a Tehran-Damascus axis. Breaking this axis would be good for Israel,” said Meridor, who is on the left flank of the Likud party.

“We are not giving advice,” he added. “Practically the whole Arab world is against the regime. We have to wait to see what will happen.”

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu appointed Meridor to a Cabinet position after the last elections, despite his views that favor ceding most, if not all, of the strategic Golan Heights to Syria in return for a peace treaty.

Meridor said the IDF is prepared for a Syrian attack on Israel intended to take attention off his brutal suppression of the year-long uprising, but he asserted, “I don’t think that is on the agenda.”

Thousands of refugees and army deserters have fled from Syria into Jordan and Lebanon, and the government, and the IDF has said it is prepared to absorb thousands of Syrians.

If Assad loses power, tens of thousands of his Alawite loyalists may want asylum in another country out of fear of reprisals from the majority. The Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shi’ite Muslims, which reject several of its planks.