This story has been changed to reflect factual inaccuracies that have been discovered.

If there’s anything about the Middle East that has more people worried than its current state, it’s what might come next. They would certainly have reason; the region has seldom delivered good news. Now things are more chaotic than they’ve been since the birth of the modern Israeli state.  Who’s going to come out on top of the Arab world when this is all over? Well, here’s an answer: Syria.

This might seem perplexing. Syria has, for the most part, not been at the forefront of news the past few months. People have seen Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, etc., but Syria has remained comparatively quiet. However, given the current state of affairs, that might not be such a bad thing.

Bashar Al-Assad has been the president of Syria since July of 2000. Al-Assad has taken Syria on an interesting course of action: one that echoes its recent past yet takes a new path as to how to achieve its goals. One of these goals is undermining Israel. Syria has been Israel’s enemy since the birth of Israel as a nation.

In 1948, when the small Jewish state just came into existence, several Arab states under the watchful eye of King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia attacked. The Arabs were defeated soundly. However, in less than 20 years, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt pushed some of the Arab nations into into a tense situation once again with Israel, who attacked the Egyptian air force and began the Six Day War.

But now Israel has a new enemy that has become quite powerful in the past decade: the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran has become the default leader of the unofficial “anti-Israel league,” for the Jordanians and Egyptians previously signed peace agreements with Israel. Iran and Syria have become good friends over the past decade and have begun to create their own sphere of influence in the region.

Given the current events, this will only become more prevalent. Greek correspondent Iason Athanasiadis pointed out during and after his lecture for the Stony Brook School of Journalism’s “My Life As…” that many of the previously powerful Arab states, such as Egypt, will lose their dominant positions in the region while they try to re-create their respective countries.

One interesting thing that Athanasiadis said was that Saudi Arabia will lose its position as the boss of the Arab world. This shouldn’t be shocking. The Saudi royal family was close allies with Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, etc. Even their next door neighbor Bahrain is beginning to slip from their grasp. Yemen is also tumbling into chaos, which would create a nightmare on the Saudi southern border.

So, if the Saudis lose their grip on the region, what nation will fill their shoes? It’s not going to be Iraq; they’re still getting their act together after the fall of Saddam Hussein. It’s Syria. Somewhat by token of survival, Syria will have the best positioning in the region. They have a powerful neighbor to the east in Iran, and they’ve got Hezbollah in Lebanon to be their friend as well, whether or not they deny it.

The point is that Syria has it made right now. Any rival powers in the Middle East have either crumbled already or will soon, and the ever-present Saudis have their own security to deal with. So what does this mean?

Unfortunately, it may mean even more violence in the region. Israel has done nothing with the allies it had for the past couple of decades and is now running short on friends in the region. The Syrian-Iranian bloc will become more powerful, and it’ll be up to cooler heads from anywhere to sort out things before they get even uglier.