Members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps march in a parade in Tehran, Sept. 22, 2011. Photo: Reuters / Stringer / File.

Prominent former Israeli diplomat Dore Gold called on Tuesday for the establishment of a NATO-like body in the Middle East to “guarantee that Iran’s dreams of regional hegemony will never be realized.”

Gold — now the president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs think tank — said the withdrawal of US troops from Syria could be viewed in “a larger regional context of the strategic struggle over postwar Syria between Israel and Iran.”

“Iran is not standing still with the defeat of the ISIS caliphate, but rather it seeks to fill the vacuum that has been created,” he noted.

“The most tangible expression of the Iranian interest in Syria has been its plan to complete a land corridor from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea,” Gold went on to say. “The land corridor would allow Tehran to re-supply Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria without being dependent on potentially vulnerable air transport of weapons and manpower across the Middle East.”

Watch Gold’s remarks in full below: