[00:00:01] Due to the themes of this podcast, listener discretion is advised.

[00:00:07] I think it's clear and I will say this to your listeners, I don't buy, I really don't buy that there was not some kind of backroom deal that was occurring between HTS, Russia and the Iranians.

[00:00:19] And I say it for a variety of reasons from conversations that I've had, but also just watching how this was playing through.

[00:00:26] Lock your doors, close the blinds, change your passwords. This is Secrets and Spies.

[00:00:45] Secrets and Spies is a podcast that dives into the world of espionage, terrorism, geopolitics and intrigue.

[00:00:52] This episode is presented by Matt Fulton and produced by Chris Carr.

[00:00:57] Hello everyone and welcome back to Secrets and Spies.

[00:01:00] After a despotic reign of over five decades, marked by 13 years of bloody civil war that killed over half a million people and displaced millions more,

[00:01:08] the Al-Assad dynasty's rule over Syria has come to a sudden, shocking end.

[00:01:13] In just under two weeks, rebel groups mounted an offensive that captured a string of major cities culminating in the fall of Damascus with barely a shot being fired and Bashar al-Assad fleeing into exile in Moscow.

[00:01:25] It's difficult to understate what a complete sea change these events are for Syria and the Middle East as a whole.

[00:01:31] Today, Philip Smythe returns to help us make sense of how this all unfolded so quickly, so unexpectedly,

[00:01:36] and what it means for Iran and its proxies like Lebanese Hezbollah, who propped up the Assad regime and counted on Syria as a hub to export their influence throughout the region.

[00:01:47] As always, a couple of housekeeping notes first.

[00:01:49] If you enjoyed the show, please leave a five-star rating and review on your podcast streaming app of choice.

[00:01:54] And if you're not already, please consider supporting us on Patreon to access ad-free episodes.

[00:01:59] Just go to patreon.com forward slash secrets and spies.

[00:02:03] Your generosity helps keep this podcast going.

[00:02:05] Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy our conversation.

[00:02:08] The opinions expressed by guests on Secrets and Spies do not necessarily represent those of the producers and sponsors of this podcast.

[00:02:33] Philip Smythe, welcome back on, sir. It's good to see you again.

[00:02:36] I feel like this year has been a nonstop rigmarole, a cavalcade, if you will, of insane Middle Eastern events.

[00:02:45] Yes. So has anything fun or interesting happened since we last convened?

[00:02:51] Nah, no.

[00:02:53] No?

[00:02:53] No. Just, you know, massive turnover in the Middle East to the point where it's—

[00:02:58] I said this on Twitter that it was like 20 years wrapped into less than 20 months.

[00:03:04] And actually, I meant to say 40 years wrapped into less than 20 months.

[00:03:09] Yeah.

[00:03:09] Just absolutely insane.

[00:03:11] From October 7th until October 7th, it has been nonstop.

[00:03:15] And then even past that year mark, we now have had, again, some of the biggest news to come out of the Middle East in ages.

[00:03:22] Yeah, I think totally—

[00:03:23] I'll give a breakdown at the last couple weeks here in a second.

[00:03:27] But I think totally warranted to say that for the Middle East, at least, very much comparable to the fall of the Berlin Wall or the Six-Day War.

[00:03:36] Right up in that category for just like immediate sea change of like the entire board got cleared and what comes next is—

[00:03:46] I don't know. We'll see.

[00:03:47] But we'll talk about that.

[00:03:48] So as always, as we do here, let me give a rundown of the last couple weeks and we'll go from there.

[00:03:56] So starting on November 27th, Syrian rebels led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham or HTS, which is Arabic for the Levant Liberation Committee, launched a major offensive in western Aleppo, targeting Assad's forces after years of the conflict remaining relatively frozen.

[00:04:14] On November 30th, Aleppo fell to the rebels.

[00:04:17] So in a rapid and unexpected assault, rebels took the city, Syria's second largest city, just three days after their initial offensive began.

[00:04:25] Government forces retreated under heavy fire with the regime vaguely describing it as a redeployment operation.

[00:04:30] There's some Baghdad Bob vibes there.

[00:04:33] On December 5th, advancing south, rebels then captured Hama, a vital logistical hub connecting Damascus to Aleppo, disrupting regime supply lines.

[00:04:44] On the 6th, a bit south of Damascus, near the Israeli border, rebels took control of Dara, the birthplace of the 2011 uprising that started the civil war, assisted by Druze factions from Asueda.

[00:04:57] The attack forced the Syrian army to withdraw, leaving rebels in control of both northern and southern approaches to Damascus.

[00:05:04] On December 7th, the city of Homs, a longtime regime stronghold, fell next, marking a significant symbolic and military victory.

[00:05:13] And then on the 8th, Damascus was taken with minimal resistance as rebel forces entered the city early in the morning.

[00:05:21] Asad and his immediate family fled to Moscow and effectively ending 50 years of Assad family rule over Syria.

[00:05:30] From the Umayyad mosque, HTS leader Ahmad Hussein al-Shara proclaimed victory, calling it a historic turning point for the Islamic nation.

[00:05:39] Philip, how – I mean, I never thought that we would see this day come.

[00:05:46] Like, it just seems sort of just frozen in time for the last several years with support from Iran, Hezbollah, the Russians.

[00:05:55] Assad had eked it out.

[00:05:57] And, you know, he would control the capital and large swaths of the country and live out his days.

[00:06:03] And that seemed like how it was going to go.

[00:06:06] But, man, in under two weeks, it just kind of fell apart.

[00:06:10] So, I guess my first question to you is, like, how?

[00:06:16] So, a few things.

[00:06:18] You know, I do think I have to say this just about me.

[00:06:21] My career really took off because of the Syrian war.

[00:06:26] Yeah.

[00:06:27] And I think it marked – I mean, the war itself marked a major turning point when – and I can say this from a research angle.

[00:06:34] I'm sorry to go off on this tangent, but it's –

[00:06:36] No, no, no.

[00:06:36] Go ahead.

[00:06:37] I think it's kind of important.

[00:06:38] We now look at things online using, you know, Twitter and using a lot of other different mediums, social media, for instance, to see what's going on in the battlefield.

[00:06:47] That really got its start because of the Syrian war.

[00:06:50] And I can say from my angle, building – I hate to call it a career, too.

[00:06:55] I mean, it's a passion, but – and also I hate kind of the monetary reward from doing stuff that unfortunately involves a lot of death and suffering.

[00:07:05] But I was able to tell a lot of things in this kind of weird gray zone period that we had when most people in Washington, D.C., most people in the research world did not take social media seriously.

[00:07:16] At that time, yeah.

[00:07:17] Yeah, and I think – I still remember this.

[00:07:20] Somebody who worked at the State Department had said, you know, they'd seen some of my work going up, and it was getting a lot of traction because, oh, you know, how is he doing this?

[00:07:27] Ugh.

[00:07:28] Now we look at it, it's like, oh, yeah, that's old hat.

[00:07:31] But, you know, he said to me before even really launching into it, he goes, you know, I got to tell you, I read some of these reports.

[00:07:37] Sometimes they'll even cite something like Facebook, which I can't take seriously.

[00:07:41] And I'm going, oh, buddy, I don't think you know who you're talking to.

[00:07:45] Yeah.

[00:07:45] Yeah, because I was finding a lot of these Shia militia developments on Facebook.

[00:07:48] They were recruiting on Facebook.

[00:07:49] They were doing this on Facebook.

[00:07:50] And it's just – it's fascinating to me that how many years later – this is, what, 13 years later?

[00:07:57] Yeah.

[00:07:57] That – I also don't like saying, you know, it's ended because it hasn't ended yet.

[00:08:03] It's entering a different phase.

[00:08:04] Yes.

[00:08:05] But, I mean, I think it's fascinating the amount of time and how it's changed the entirety of how we view war, all because of the Syrian civil war.

[00:08:14] Right.

[00:08:14] And just everything that's gone into it.

[00:08:17] I mean, right down to how foreign fighters are deployed by, you know, mid-range powers to –

[00:08:22] Right.

[00:08:22] You know, how great power competition – I always love that little term.

[00:08:27] But how that looks in a place like a kind of a secondary battlefield and how certain countries kind of show themselves off.

[00:08:34] But anyway, I – that all began there.

[00:08:37] You know, what we see in Ukraine, what we see in other battlefields like Burma, for instance, all of that really found its genesis because of Syria.

[00:08:44] I just can't sort of – I still haven't grasped just – I mean, I know the last, you know, year of conflict in Gaza and Lebanon really crippled the Iranians and Hezbollah.

[00:08:59] And the Russians are sort of bogged down and distracted in Ukraine and have been for quite a long time.

[00:09:07] So, you know, Assad's enforcers, the people who came in in – what was that, 2015?

[00:09:12] Did the Russians come in?

[00:09:14] 2015, yes.

[00:09:16] And the Iranians started to trickle in initially in 2012.

[00:09:19] Right.

[00:09:20] So, I mean, since then, those enforcers who have sort of propped up the Assad regime, I mean, they've – over the course of the last year, they've had their own issues, their own distractions.

[00:09:33] But I'm still just – I haven't grasped how quickly the regime just sort of essentially just gave up, just, you know, threw down their guns, threw down their – shed their uniforms and as much as they could just sort of melted back into the population like Damascus being taken essentially without a shot being fired.

[00:09:53] So, what was the impetus for the rebels led by HTS to sweep in from the Northwest and begin this assault on Aleppo, which kicked off this chain of dominoes?

[00:10:06] Well, they were prepping HTS – and by the way, HTS, to give a little background, the main faction within HTS used to be known as Jabhat al-Nusra.

[00:10:15] And there's going to be a lot of talk about this.

[00:10:17] Jabhat al-Nusra was essentially al-Qaeda in Syria.

[00:10:21] It then went through a few development stages.

[00:10:24] And my colleague and friend Aaron Zellin actually writes probably the most hyper-detailed documents that are on HTS.

[00:10:32] And he's big on the Sunni jihadism, whereas I do the Shia jihadism.

[00:10:35] But, you know, he actually tracks this quite well.

[00:10:38] So, if you ever look up his stuff, he's been kind of doing the press circuit on a lot of that.

[00:10:42] So, it's always highly advised to check it out.

[00:10:45] But HTS, to kind of give you a rundown of this, it's not just Jabhat al-Nusra, but Jabhat al-Nusra really does make up that key contingent.

[00:10:55] But there's been a process.

[00:10:56] Some have described it as evolutionary.

[00:10:58] Others have described it as a fig leaf.

[00:11:01] I think it's a mixture of both.

[00:11:04] I mean, I'm not of the belief that they've – you know, it's very, very hard for somebody who is in al-Qaeda to shed a lot of that, you know, that al-Qaeda type of thinking.

[00:11:14] But they've become a bit more pragmatic.

[00:11:16] Now, pragmatism doesn't necessarily mean you've shed your other extremist values.

[00:11:21] But they were – they really metastasized and kind of turned into a far better trained element that was within – I'm broadly terming it Syrian rebels.

[00:11:35] Because jihadists, different Islamist groups, there are different – you know, secular rebel groups.

[00:11:40] There are different rebel groups that, well, were co-opted by different local regimes.

[00:11:45] I mean, you name it.

[00:11:46] It was quite a few – it was quite a diverse and also had a very, very kind of crazy history in terms of where it was developing and where it went.

[00:11:54] Meaning the Free Syrian Army and then the Syrian rebels and then even different jihadist groups.

[00:11:59] But HTS, think of it as kind of an amalgamation of mostly Syrian Sunni Islamist organizations, some that are more jihadi than others.

[00:12:10] They've claimed that they have kind of ditched their external focus on jihadism.

[00:12:15] You can do with that as you may.

[00:12:17] Meaning, oh, well, that's nice.

[00:12:19] They won't do that in the – they won't crash two planes into two buildings.

[00:12:23] Right.

[00:12:24] It's that kind of thing.

[00:12:24] Or it doesn't really mean that.

[00:12:26] But what's interesting is, you know, I think this also needs to be said because it's – for me, looking at it as somebody who does policy research, what does that mean if you have ostensibly a Sunni jihadist group now taking over and now administering wide swaths of territory within Syria?

[00:12:45] And now also pretty much claiming the mantle place for the national salvation government, as they were calling it.

[00:12:52] You know, it's all HTS guys who are taking this over.

[00:12:54] You know, I think it's fascinating.

[00:12:58] You can have a lot of criticisms of Obama policy when it came to Syria, what was inherited by President Trump, and the general handling of Syria in general.

[00:13:07] I mean, we were talking before.

[00:13:09] I mean, had I read headlines that Damascus was falling in October, I would have told you you were crazy.

[00:13:16] I don't think there's a single analyst out there who legitimately could tell you that they predicted that this would happen at all.

[00:13:23] Not a single one.

[00:13:24] You want to talk about a black swan?

[00:13:25] This was like the darkest of black swans.

[00:13:28] So, I mean, I think you have that element that's there.

[00:13:31] But let's not ignore kind of the HTS issue.

[00:13:33] HTS had been training, re-equipping, engaging in kind of institutional buildup.

[00:13:39] They learned a far more pragmatic and kind of slow process to establish themselves.

[00:13:44] I don't want anyone to think that that means like, oh, they have institutions now, and that means they're just like us.

[00:13:49] Hooray.

[00:13:49] No, not necessarily.

[00:13:51] No at all, actually.

[00:13:53] You know, they were going off and killing foes to their organization quite a bit, and people who would not kind of bend the knee to Jolani, their leader.

[00:14:01] You know, it was – they came about in kind of the true, you know, revolutionary process, if you will, where there was a lot of killing, a lot of destruction, and a lot of kind of showing themselves for what they really were.

[00:14:13] And that had been going on for a number of years where these groups were kind of developing in northern Syria right along the Turkish border.

[00:14:20] Idlib was kind of a centerpiece.

[00:14:22] This is the one city that had remained under, you know, quote-unquote rebel control or at least Syrian opposition control for quite a while.

[00:14:30] Again, it didn't mean that just because HTS was a major element there that there were not other elements that were operating there as well.

[00:14:37] But I think it really says a lot the fact that it was a kind of half-hearted plan by the Americans to supply, you know, certain vetted, quote-unquote rebel groups.

[00:14:46] And, you know, they would dump some tow missiles on them and some other Western arms.

[00:14:48] And like a focus on the Kurds mostly in the Northeast.

[00:14:51] Then there was the focus also on the SDF, the Syrian Democratic Forces, which their primary element is the YPG, which is, I mean, associated with the PKK, which is, you know, a prescribed terrorist organization.

[00:15:04] The Turks really do not like the PKK for obvious reasons.

[00:15:08] There's also another issue where the Turks often have their own proxies, you know, for some of the Syrian national forces, Syrian national army.

[00:15:15] That's one of the other rebel groups that has become essentially a kind of a mercenary force for the Turks abroad, but also within Syria where they have really gone after those different Kurdish units or those attached to the SDF.

[00:15:27] It is a kaleidoscope of different factions, you know, and who's really a rebel one day and who's really just, you know, supplying an ethno-nationalist project the next.

[00:15:37] You know, there's a discussion over that.

[00:15:39] Who's, you know, an Islamist?

[00:15:40] Who's a jihadist?

[00:15:41] I mean, it's been highly complicated since 2013.

[00:15:45] But to kind of see how it's coalesced around HDS, that has been kind of a long-boiling kind of peace that's been in the north of Syria.

[00:15:54] And I think for a lot of people who watch earlier offensives or earlier defensive operations by HDS, it was kind of like, okay, they might launch an offensive into, you know, Aleppo.

[00:16:04] But when we're thinking Aleppo, we're thinking Rif Halab.

[00:16:06] So it's kind of, it's the countryside around Aleppo.

[00:16:10] Yeah, they'll take some territory probably because the Assad guys are not the best.

[00:16:14] And it's, you know, it's the time of year where there's an offensive and a counteroffensive.

[00:16:18] And they had launched an offensive pretty much every year for the past five years.

[00:16:21] And all of them were kind of middling at best in terms of what was achieved back in 2020, 2021.

[00:16:29] Actually, no, I want to say 2019, 2020.

[00:16:31] The Turks were involved with some conflict with the Syrian Arab army.

[00:16:36] That's Bashar al-Assad's army.

[00:16:38] And in addition to that, to a number of Syrian Hezbollah-style units and Lebanese Hezbollah,

[00:16:43] the Iranians deployed some other people like the Afghan Shia Lashkar Fatemiun and also Lashkar Zainabiyun,

[00:16:50] which is the Pakistani Shia and some of the Iraqi units up there.

[00:16:54] So there was like a whole firefight that was up there also involved HDS.

[00:16:57] And I mean, if you were looking at that, it was kind of like this.

[00:17:00] Well, I mean, you know, Syrians under Bashar al-Assad, they made some advances, not very much,

[00:17:05] but it really didn't amount to too much.

[00:17:08] And I think the thought there was kind of like, eh, well, this is kind of, it might just grind into something.

[00:17:13] Hey, maybe they, you know, at the last minute, it was the, oh my God, are they actually taking Aleppo?

[00:17:18] They're actually, you know, whoa, how did that happen?

[00:17:21] So, I mean, to get the HDS bit out of the way, what happened with Assad's army,

[00:17:26] and again, I was following this markedly more closely than HDS,

[00:17:30] mainly because this is kind of more in my wheelhouse in terms of groups that I focus on.

[00:17:35] There has been a, there was a general degradation of the Syrian Arab army and a lot of Bashar al-Assad's units.

[00:17:44] Criminality had swept through the ranks.

[00:17:46] That was, everybody kind of knew about that.

[00:17:48] Like when there's Captagon labs everywhere, Captagon being a drug that is widely distributed in the Middle East.

[00:17:54] And also it's usually made with the help of different terrorist groups.

[00:17:57] Lebanese Hezbollah comes to mind, a few other organizations,

[00:18:00] but the Syrian regime was behind that quite a bit, making Captagon.

[00:18:04] And then you have these smugglers who would kind of push it over using drones into Jordan and stuff.

[00:18:08] That was going on for a couple of years.

[00:18:09] So you had essentially a quasi-narco state type operation.

[00:18:13] You had corruption through the wazoo in Damascus and pretty much everywhere.

[00:18:19] You had a lot of, when I say degradation too,

[00:18:23] there wasn't a single Alloy family that did not lose a young man in combat or in some form of conflict.

[00:18:30] I want to put a pin in that real quick because you mentioned the Alloyes.

[00:18:35] So like Lebanon, although perhaps not pronounced, Syria is divided by sectarian factions, right?

[00:18:43] So the Alloyes are a Shia minority group within Syria, sort of concentrated along the western coastline cities like Latakia and stuff.

[00:18:57] And the Bashar al-Assad family, his family, they're Alloyes.

[00:19:01] Yes.

[00:19:02] The Alloyes, they only make up around 10%.

[00:19:06] I mean, I've seen estimates for 13%.

[00:19:07] I've even seen low estimates say like 8%.

[00:19:09] Obviously, they are not a huge population.

[00:19:13] They're essentially an esoteric mountain sect.

[00:19:16] When we say they're Shia, there are chunks that are Shia.

[00:19:19] There's also chunks they've borrowed from Christianity and from a number of other kind of religious practices.

[00:19:24] There are some similarities to the Druze, another quote-unquote esoteric mountain sect that has kind of secretive practices.

[00:19:31] And the Alloyes, I mean, in general, Alloyes, there's not a lot of religiosity among their ranks.

[00:19:37] So it's kind of an interesting group.

[00:19:40] But when a lot of Sunni extremists look at them, they are absolute and complete infidels.

[00:19:46] Yeah.

[00:19:46] So you essentially have the Alloyes.

[00:19:49] There's a religious minority of which the Assad dynasty was part of, cemented control over the country for the last 50 years.

[00:19:58] Yes.

[00:19:59] So when Hafez al-Assad took over, I mean, it was interesting.

[00:20:03] A lot of the minority groups, because of the French mandate, and the French mandate was around right up until the end of World War II, they tried to empower for local administration minority groups.

[00:20:14] I mean, we saw this from a lot of different imperial powers.

[00:20:17] It's kind of like the Brits when they were in Iraq.

[00:20:19] They empowered Chaldeans and Assyrians and their levy and the levies, as they were called.

[00:20:25] There were Jews from Palestine that were – this is the British mandate of Palestine – who were drafted into the British army and had their own specialized units.

[00:20:35] You know, it was kind of an interesting way in terms of dealing with different local communities that a lot of the imperial powers had.

[00:20:42] I mean, look at the French, too.

[00:20:43] The French had a very close relationship with the Maronites in Lebanon and essentially had kind of the project for them that they supported.

[00:20:50] It was also a domestic project.

[00:20:51] And I want to say that, oh, well, the French came in and they created this whole thing.

[00:20:54] That's another nonsensical, you know.

[00:20:57] Yeah.

[00:20:57] They had willing co-conspirators.

[00:20:59] Yes.

[00:20:59] But anyway, the Alawis and the Druze and some of the Ismailis coming through this process of, well, how do we seek kind of upward movement in a society?

[00:21:10] Well, if you're shut out from, you know, where it's Sunni-dominated cities, let's say Aleppo or Damascus or Hama or Homs, it doesn't mean there aren't populations there that are from minority groups.

[00:21:21] However, it's very, very different in terms of kind of where the business interests lay and who had certain economic power that was there.

[00:21:29] A lot of these guys were up in the mountains and they were, you know, essentially living subsistence farming and not really, you know, all that aware of a lot of the external trading and kind of other connections with the region.

[00:21:40] They were, you know, happily in their mountain region as a kind of an isolated sect.

[00:21:45] So what did they do?

[00:21:46] A lot of them joined the Syrian military and that went for, you know, different branches.

[00:21:51] I mean, Hafez al-Assad came out of the Syrian Air Force and because he was able to dominate that, that's actually how he was able to launch his coup against Salah Jadid to kind of take over the country.

[00:22:01] So, I mean, it's interesting to kind of look at where their branches were and how they influenced here and how they influenced that.

[00:22:07] That doesn't, and again, I know this will sound kind of like the CYA from a think tanker.

[00:22:13] Not all Alois are, you know, Assadists.

[00:22:17] There's a lot of issues.

[00:22:20] It's not, you know, it's not a monolith.

[00:22:21] Hashtag not all Alois.

[00:22:24] Not all Alois.

[00:22:26] The thing about these guys was, I mean, there was a lot of internal issues as this war was going on.

[00:22:30] And given Bashar al-Assad and his cronies and kind of internal, you know, family members, a lot of them were living fat and happy.

[00:22:38] And you can see this from a lot of the pictures that have come out from the palaces that were raided and a ton of Lamborghinis and Ferraris and stuff.

[00:22:45] Yeah.

[00:22:45] What a big shock.

[00:22:46] I mean, Asma al-Assad, she was well known for buying, you know, silver candlesticks and then having them shipped into Syria and a bunch of leaked emails.

[00:22:55] Really interesting.

[00:22:55] It was like on Twitter.

[00:22:56] I saw this thing.

[00:22:57] Oh, what?

[00:22:57] Do you remember when all we found through the leaked emails from Bashar al-Assad was him sending love letters to his wife?

[00:23:03] I saw a post like that and it got a lot of traction.

[00:23:06] And I'm kind of thinking to myself that and how, you know, she was completely and totally corrupt and using this money that was extorted to buy candlesticks while they're brutally suppressing protests in the country.

[00:23:19] Okay.

[00:23:20] I think I remember just before the civil war started, this was 2011 or 2010 or something.

[00:23:25] And Vogue did this real kind of like glossy spread.

[00:23:29] Yes, that's it.

[00:23:30] I remember reading that in my dorm room and being like, okay, wow, this is quite the puff piece.

[00:23:34] But yeah, Vogue did this like real kind of glossy puff piece spread on Asma.

[00:23:40] And shortly thereafter was when the war started.

[00:23:45] Yeah.

[00:23:46] Yeah.

[00:23:46] Yeah.

[00:23:46] Classically.

[00:23:47] I mean, again, speaking of kind of the Alawi domination, this doesn't mean just to kind of describe the background of the regime itself.

[00:23:53] I think it's really easy to describe it merely in sectarian terms.

[00:23:57] And it did become very sectarian.

[00:23:59] They used sectarian tactics and strategies to recruit fighters and also kind of build up loyalty among very fearful minorities.

[00:24:06] I mean, minority groups in the Levant, it doesn't matter who you're talking to, even the Druze and Soida or you're talking to a Shia and Nobulti.

[00:24:16] There's one kind of constant thing, even with the Christians.

[00:24:19] They don't want to get drowned in the quote unquote Sunni Sea because the Sunnis make up the vast majority of the population out there.

[00:24:27] And these guys are clinging on to, you know, cliff sides and mountaintops.

[00:24:31] It's interesting how that political geography comes into it.

[00:24:34] And I think, you know, you kind of look at that and you think, oh, well, okay.

[00:24:37] Then they are just kind of this self-contained little thing and they all fight for each other.

[00:24:40] And that's just, you know, it's like hive mind.

[00:24:42] And they're just protecting themselves, you know, because hashtag minority, you know, something like that.

[00:24:46] Well, Asma is actually a Sunni.

[00:24:48] So, you know, and comes from a pretty prominent Sunni family.

[00:24:52] And there were a lot of very prominent Sunni merchant families that also backed up the regime for a variety of different reasons.

[00:24:58] Whether it was the maintenance of some form of stability in their minds or it was business interests or it was, you know, something else.

[00:25:05] It was not, it wasn't merely just that, you know, 9 to 13% of the population and saying, okay, we rule over all of you.

[00:25:13] It was a little bit more complicated than that.

[00:25:15] But again, I mean, I think, you know, we did see by the end of this war, even the Alawis were being, you know, subject to this endless corruption that was coming out of the Assad regime.

[00:25:28] And I think the same thing goes with, you know, you invite in a lot of outside actors, the Iranians, for instance, or you've got the Russians.

[00:25:36] The Russians, a little less so, but the Iranians most definitely.

[00:25:39] And what were the Iranians doing?

[00:25:40] The minute they got down there, it was, hey, have you guys thought of 12 or Shiism?

[00:25:43] Number one.

[00:25:44] Number two.

[00:25:45] I don't know if you've heard of the Islamic resistance, but you should think of joining it.

[00:25:48] By the way, listen to us, that Bashar guy.

[00:25:50] Yeah, we like him, but, you know, he's under us.

[00:25:52] Don't worry about that.

[00:25:53] So you have issues that were there, too.

[00:25:55] And I, again, you're going to see a lot of this pop up in the press because it's really easy to say, okay, a corrupt and completely hollow Syrian Arab army just collapsed under its own pressure because, well, it was a sinkhole anyway.

[00:26:08] No, not so fast.

[00:26:09] And again, I'm writing something on this as we speak.

[00:26:12] It was actually up last night when I was talking to a few Iraqi Shia militia guys and then also just working on this simultaneously.

[00:26:19] I think that there's a mythology that's forming that is essentially PR based from the Iranians that, oh, we knew that he was – and this is their argument.

[00:26:27] We knew he was corrupt and we warned him about that offensive and we knew he was no good and there was really nothing we could do.

[00:26:33] So I don't buy that as far as I can spit.

[00:26:37] They've invested billions with a B of dollars into the Assad regime.

[00:26:43] They may have had internal issues, but those internal issues were kind of baked into the plan.

[00:26:47] And those internal issues have been going on, you know, since day one.

[00:26:51] So if they really had that much of a terrible time with it and that much of a terrible time with the Russians, then you'd think that maybe some kind of modus vivendi would have been approached.

[00:27:01] You know, who knows?

[00:27:02] Did it ever?

[00:27:02] No, never.

[00:27:04] Only when it was at the weakest – at their weakest.

[00:27:07] And I think this should tell you everything about Assad's regime.

[00:27:10] Assad, no single advance, and I mean major offensive in that country, really and truly involved the Syrian Arab army in, one, a decision-making – in a decision-making place.

[00:27:23] And two, where they were not doing it in close concert or behind the fighting skill of any of the Shia militants, foreign fighters like Lebanese Hezbollah or the Iraqi Shia militias or the variety of different other IRGC groups that were being pushed through Syria.

[00:27:39] Not once.

[00:27:40] The entire advance that secured Damascus was because of Iraqi Shia militiamen and Lebanese Shia – meaning Lebanese Hezbollah.

[00:27:48] That was that entirety.

[00:27:49] Sorry. Aleppo. Aleppo would not have happened without Russian air support and Shia militiamen.

[00:27:55] That was kind of the truth in its entirety.

[00:27:58] And what you're seeing is – I mean, talk about the degradation of forces and just how Syrian Arab army wasn't really fighting.

[00:28:05] They don't even care. Whatever. We'll just throw the uniforms down and go home.

[00:28:08] You kind of see this where these guys were really bolstering anything that Assad was trying to do.

[00:28:14] And at that, I mean, there was a ton of videos that came out of Lebanese Hezbollah guys mocking Syrian fighters.

[00:28:21] Now, this didn't mean that they didn't have their own contingents that were Syrian.

[00:28:25] There's a lot of jockeying for power where there were different militia groups that were formed.

[00:28:29] Sometimes the Russians would try to influence them a bit more.

[00:28:32] Other times the Iranians would try to influence them a little bit more.

[00:28:35] You know, you pick whatever was going on.

[00:28:37] And also the Iranians themselves really tried to make the Syrian Shia – we're talking 12 or Shia.

[00:28:43] They're maybe 1 to 3 percent of the population.

[00:28:46] And 1 to 3 percent is like a huge – it would be a huge number if that actually were them – were the size.

[00:28:51] But they were trying to make these little fire brigades out of every one of these little Shia groups and just starting them.

[00:28:57] They were trying to convert different tribal groups to Shiaism and then, you know, roll them into a militia.

[00:29:01] And then they were even trying to take Palestinians and roll them into different groups.

[00:29:04] There was a concerted effort by the Iranians to get kind of local actors under their wing that they could control, give training to, and have them loyal to them to do the job.

[00:29:14] Because they found the Syrian Arab Army to be quite contemptible when it came to getting any of these jobs done.

[00:29:20] But that had been a running constant.

[00:29:22] A running constant for years.

[00:29:24] Years.

[00:29:25] I remember there was a story that had come out.

[00:29:27] This was in 2013.

[00:29:29] And it had like a dual-fold piece to it where the Lebanese Hezbollah guys sometimes were a bit worried because a lot of the Iraqi guys were hyper-sectarian.

[00:29:36] They were coming fresh out of the Iraq War.

[00:29:38] You know, a lot of sectarian fighting that was there.

[00:29:40] Lebanese Hezbollah guys kind of had to like tie them together.

[00:29:42] I'm not saying Lebanese Hezbollah wasn't sectarian, but they were behaving in a less sectarian way, quote-unquote, than the Iraqi Shia militia meant the Iranians were using.

[00:29:51] And then simultaneously, both groups had issues with the Syrians because they felt they didn't do anything.

[00:29:56] They sat around and they collected, you know, taxes that they were extorting from taxi drivers.

[00:30:00] So you kind of have this gradation of issues within those fighting forces.

[00:30:06] But going back to this, you know, how is it the Assad military just collapsed instantaneously almost?

[00:30:12] Yeah.

[00:30:13] Is this just a direct result of Russian air power being bogged down in Ukraine and Lebanese Hezbollah and Iranian operations in the Levant being crippled since September?

[00:30:22] Yes.

[00:30:23] Yes.

[00:30:23] And my argument, my contention would be absolutely the Russian Air Force and the Russian military has taken such heavy casualties.

[00:30:31] And that really is an apparent issue that they could, you know, this was in terms of their foreign affairs for the Russians as a kind of crown jewel for them.

[00:30:41] And I was calling it this in an interview earlier.

[00:30:43] It really did function as a crown jewel to show that they could project outside of Eastern Europe or maybe outside of, you know, East Asia, but by, you know.

[00:30:53] 2015 was their first major deployment to the Middle East since the Soviets.

[00:31:00] Yeah.

[00:31:00] Yes.

[00:31:01] And I mean, again, what did they get for it?

[00:31:03] They got to demonstrate that, hey, we're still a fighting force and we can deploy anywhere and we're going to back up our guys.

[00:31:09] There was a whole mythology that developed around them and also around the Iranians that they never left an ally behind.

[00:31:17] They always were backing up and they're going to do it right to the end, which is priceless given what actually happened.

[00:31:22] I think it's clear and I will say this to your listeners.

[00:31:25] I don't buy, I really don't buy that there was not some kind of backroom deal that was occurring between HTS, Russia and the Iranians.

[00:31:34] And I say it for a variety of reasons from conversations that I've had, but also just watching how this was playing through.

[00:31:41] Because there's a lot of stuff coming out in Iranian media that was saying, oh, you know, and our Shia units that were in Syria, they fought the hardest.

[00:31:49] Cool.

[00:31:49] Can you show me some casualty numbers?

[00:31:51] Can you show me some martyrdom results?

[00:31:53] Why is it all the bases are completely captured?

[00:31:55] You know, and I heard somebody, somebody had said this to me when I was doing a phone call with a few other researchers on the region.

[00:32:03] And said, well, yeah, but when you see the Syrian Arab army, you know, just completely collapse and you're the only guys left, you know, how are you going to deal with that?

[00:32:11] Well, hold on a second.

[00:32:12] These guys were acting as the core force, not the Syrian Arab army.

[00:32:17] Syrian Arab army was maybe bringing up some armor, but there were a lot of other guys who knew what they were doing with that.

[00:32:22] There were also, you know, there's also this kind of fuzzy notion that Iraqi Shia jihadists, that the Iranians were bolstering these Iraqi Shia militias, that all of a sudden they were just waiting at the border between Iraq and Syria.

[00:32:36] There were a couple thousand of them still in Syria.

[00:32:39] Why were they not deployed?

[00:32:41] They had offices in Aleppo.

[00:32:42] There were like four groups of offices in Aleppo.

[00:32:45] I know, I've talked to them.

[00:32:46] And this there was a total disconnect in terms of how this was really, really being executed.

[00:32:52] But where it bothers me more.

[00:32:55] Again, I'm not going to say that the you know, they threw kind of everything out and said, oh, well, screw, screw aside.

[00:33:00] This isn't working out for us.

[00:33:01] I don't buy that line either.

[00:33:02] I think they just just so just so we're clear here.

[00:33:06] You're saying that from conversation that you've had and your other sort of understanding of the events of the last couple of weeks that the Iranians and and the Russians essentially sort of let the highway from Aleppo to Damascus sort of remain clear.

[00:33:20] Like, go ahead.

[00:33:21] I think that they were caught.

[00:33:23] So I think they were caught completely unaware and by surprise.

[00:33:25] I think they knew an offensive was lining up and they could not believe how effective the offensive was.

[00:33:32] I think they saw Aleppo fell.

[00:33:34] So what do you do?

[00:33:35] The natural proclivity that would happen would be, OK, who do we have on the back end that can start talking to these groups and what's the deal?

[00:33:42] And then they realized, wait, the advance is still coming.

[00:33:46] You know, what are we going to do?

[00:33:47] How are we going to reserve forces?

[00:33:49] How are we going to redeploy?

[00:33:50] I think a lot of people forget this when it comes to Aleppo and large chunks of Syria, that large chunks of Syria were under rebel and different Sunni jihadist groups.

[00:34:00] They were under their domination for quite a while until 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018.

[00:34:06] There was a whole period in there that it was these Shia jihadist militias that the Iranians back and the Russians with their air power and Syrian Arab army.

[00:34:17] And then the fifth core that the Russians grew for this for the Syrians, you know, more Russian influenced pro Assadist section.

[00:34:25] These guys had to fight all those years to kind of push back and then also eventually take Aleppo.

[00:34:30] Aleppo wasn't one in a day.

[00:34:32] That took a very long time to do.

[00:34:34] It was a serious battle.

[00:34:35] It was a very serious battle.

[00:34:37] And there were thousands of casualties.

[00:34:38] And even though a lot of the casualties from the even the Iraqi Shia side, you could tell they were not reported.

[00:34:44] I remember just because you could see the grave, the graves getting dug and Nudgef, the holiest and largest cemetery in all of Iraq.

[00:34:51] Actually, all the world's largest cemetery in the world where they were having backhoes going in so that they could have kind of double time funerals because there were so many people getting lost.

[00:35:00] That was that was not kind of like monkey business off to the side.

[00:35:04] But going forward off of that, back to 2013, just look back to 2013.

[00:35:08] You had Syrian rebel groups that were in East Ghouta.

[00:35:11] They were penetrating downtown Damascus.

[00:35:14] We were talking about how the Assad regime was going to fall from 2012 to 2013.

[00:35:19] And there were large swaths of the country.

[00:35:22] I remember Alemoun or Kalimoun with a Q.

[00:35:24] Alemoun if you're speaking like a Lebanese.

[00:35:27] But that section of Syria, which is north of Damascus, it's a mountain range that kind of abuts Lebanon and its kind of connective tissue going up through the coastal highway that eventually leads up to Latakia.

[00:35:41] But that section was dominated by different rebel groups and jihadist groups and different Islamist groups.

[00:35:48] A lot of them connected with different factions of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.

[00:35:52] And that took the Shia militia guys and Lebanese Hezbollah and the Syrian Arab army a couple of years to clear out.

[00:35:58] I mean, Jabhat al-Nusra, one of the most infamous things they did is when they went into Malula.

[00:36:03] Malula is one of the few.

[00:36:05] It's it's Troyo.

[00:36:07] It's Western Syriac Aramaic that's still spoken commonly in that in that town and that village.

[00:36:15] Now, these are these are Christians that live there.

[00:36:17] But that was like one of the most infamous times for, you know, in the Syrian in the Syrian war.

[00:36:23] I mean, at least from a Western perspective is going, oh, this, you know, this historical heritage, it's going all going to be lost.

[00:36:29] I mean, this is also, I think, you know, prior to and then also post a lot of the ISIS stuff, too.

[00:36:34] So it had a very, very different effect on people observing it.

[00:36:38] But again, that took years to do that.

[00:36:40] So you were essentially dealing with Assad in a rump state for a good majority of this wartime.

[00:36:46] You had the coastal highlands.

[00:36:48] They were still secured by him and, you know, generally the Alois sect and different minorities.

[00:36:52] I mean, places like Tartus were even like 50 percent Sunni, but they were not, for the most part, restive or uncontrollable for the regime.

[00:37:01] Damascus.

[00:37:02] I mean, there were chunks, large chunks of it that had been lost initially to rebel forces and to other opposition forces.

[00:37:08] But in general, you know, this is kind of how things were running.

[00:37:11] And my impression from a lot of this was, you know, the thing that they really want to do is run out the clock.

[00:37:17] You want to buy time for as long as humanly possible in order to kind of reestablish yourself.

[00:37:23] I kept looking at it as, you know, if Hama falls, oh, my dear God, I can't believe Hama fell.

[00:37:28] You know, I couldn't believe that when that happened.

[00:37:30] But Holmes was the key to this.

[00:37:32] Holmes, the minute that was lost, the minute that was given away by Lebanese Hezbollah, because that was a Lebanese Hezbollah adventure out by Couser, their first major operation that was public in the Syrian war.

[00:37:43] I mean, I looked at that.

[00:37:45] That was kind of when you knew, you know, you knew time was up and clearly a deal was cut.

[00:37:50] Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back with more.

[00:38:10] So you and I were speaking while this was happening.

[00:38:14] Damascus hadn't fallen yet, but it was clear that, you know, this was going much further just beyond Aleppo.

[00:38:21] And there was something really happening here.

[00:38:22] And you mentioned that, you know, you had spoken with some of the militia people on the ground and you're just like, yeah, the stuff I'm hearing is like absolutely insane.

[00:38:30] I think it's what you said to me.

[00:38:31] What were you hearing at that time?

[00:38:33] So, you know, I was asking them going, hey, you know, for some of them, if they were Iraqi, I'm going to ask them, where's the Hashtal Shalbi?

[00:38:41] You know, are you guys not going out?

[00:38:43] I mean, isn't this – I was talking to people who were veterans of the Syrian war.

[00:38:47] They were Shia militia veterans of the war.

[00:38:49] They had been deployed across the country, some of them in Palmyra, meaning Tadmor, some of them in Deir el-Zur, some of them right outside of Said of Zainab.

[00:38:58] They were fighting there in 2012.

[00:39:00] We had other people who were going down to Dara when Shia militias were leading that offensive to south of Syria.

[00:39:07] Others who were in Aleppo, others who were in Nibbul and Zahra, the two Shia villages that were encircled for many, many years that were near Aleppo.

[00:39:14] And I just kept reaching out.

[00:39:16] Also commanders of different groups going, oh, okay, guys, remember me.

[00:39:20] What's going on here?

[00:39:21] And I got – I'm going to put this in a piece that I'm writing, and I'm going to paraphrase what he said to me.

[00:39:27] He said to me, look, you already – and he said this a couple days before it actually happened.

[00:39:31] You can just read social media.

[00:39:33] You know who's going to win.

[00:39:35] Okay, who's going to win?

[00:39:37] Well, HTS.

[00:39:39] HTS is going to win.

[00:39:40] Aren't you bothered by that?

[00:39:41] Aren't they the Takfiriyin that you guys were –

[00:39:43] Isn't that literally Jabhat al-Nusra that you said was every Syrian rebel that was going to blow up site of Zainab?

[00:39:49] Because remember, they were mobilized to fight on behalf of defending the site of Zainab shrine in south Damascus.

[00:39:56] Aren't you nervous about that?

[00:39:58] Well, we didn't get the order to go in and fight.

[00:40:01] And I heard that from more than one of them.

[00:40:03] It was like this really kind of off response.

[00:40:07] And again, I'm paraphrasing for a couple of people, and I don't want to give too, too much away on some of them.

[00:40:12] But there were people that I knew who were in Lebanon at the time who were Iraqis who had deployed there initially who were –

[00:40:21] What is happening here?

[00:40:23] And when I asked a little bit further kind of what is happening, it's got to be because Hezbollah isn't around anymore.

[00:40:29] And again, no one was saying it directly.

[00:40:32] I mean I think there's this sense that you read a lot of stuff in Reuters AFP-AP, and they'll say,

[00:40:39] We talked to three sources, and the three sources told us this.

[00:40:41] There's a lot of coded language that happens when you're talking to a lot of these guys,

[00:40:45] especially if you're an American talking to them, and they kind of know your deal.

[00:40:50] And I noticed the kind of coding had dropped in many different respects.

[00:40:54] It was almost like they were just repeating the line for the sake of repeating the line but doing it with a heavy eye roll.

[00:40:59] You know what I'm getting at?

[00:41:00] It's just the kind of – and this is what happens.

[00:41:03] We're just going to repeat the line, and okay, I'm going to question repeating the line to the point where some of them just went silent.

[00:41:08] They just stopped responding because what are they going to say?

[00:41:11] You're getting responses back that did not feel organic at all, and they felt so inorganic that you couldn't really pull yourself away from saying,

[00:41:22] Surely you know what this sounds like, right?

[00:41:25] And I'm saying things along these lines.

[00:41:27] I'm trying to remember enough little colloquial Iraqi expressions.

[00:41:31] I'm terrible with Iraqi Arabic.

[00:41:33] Please don't get me started on that.

[00:41:35] But here I am using – okay, let's use some weird Lebanese colloquialisms to kind of describe the sense that I'm having because they'll definitely understand that.

[00:41:43] And I couldn't – I think half of them were in shock.

[00:41:46] I think another set of the group had just kind of resigned themselves to this happening.

[00:41:51] I do think that some more radical people who were there who really sacrificed quite a bit – and this is the other thing.

[00:41:56] A lot of people who had sacrificed quite a bit, and they were in units that sacrificed quite a bit, they were angry, but they still stuck to message.

[00:42:04] And that was really fascinating to me.

[00:42:07] But in general, it was just – it looked like a – you know, people were in a lot of shock not knowing where to go first or how to do it.

[00:42:14] And then how do you respond, you know, to an American writer, you know, who you probably talked to for a while, but now is asking these kind of key questions as to what's happening.

[00:42:24] I think once Aleppo was captured at the end of November, I remember seeing a few things pop up online of Syrians that were in the city that also – that almost had this kind of like fatalistic outlook.

[00:42:37] Like, okay, yeah, the rebels took Aleppo again and that's great, but the regime and the Russians are going to come up here and they're going to flatten the city again, right?

[00:42:45] There was this kind of – yeah, this fatalism that they just like expected that, you know, that the empire strikes back was coming, you know?

[00:42:56] But I think once that happened and, okay, the Russian commander in country, the IRGC commanders in the country, the ones that are left, right, once they start, okay, what do we do?

[00:43:08] I think the only reason they wouldn't go and flatten the Aleppo is because they lack the forces to do so.

[00:43:17] Correct.

[00:43:17] It's not just lacking the forces.

[00:43:19] It's lacking the command and control.

[00:43:21] They are lacking C2.

[00:43:23] They do not have it.

[00:43:24] It was wiped out by the Israelis.

[00:43:26] There is no doubting that.

[00:43:27] The Russians have a lack of equipment, a lack of trained professionals who are there.

[00:43:32] It's so clear.

[00:43:34] It's so transparent that it's almost shocking when you kind of look at it.

[00:43:37] You're literally dealing with a house of cards wrapped in a paper tiger.

[00:43:41] You know, it's like you cannot make it up.

[00:43:44] When I say that there were issues with Lebanese Hezbollah, Lebanese Hezbollah, just so everybody knows, was running Western Syria.

[00:43:52] That was their job that was given to them by the Iranians.

[00:43:56] It was acquiesced to by Bashar al-Assad for the most part.

[00:43:59] I'm not saying entirely, but for the most part.

[00:44:01] The Russians also allowed them to kind of do their own thing on that.

[00:44:05] But that was their field.

[00:44:07] And I think, you know, again, this is where it's really important.

[00:44:09] You know, we're thinking, well, they're just going to dump 10,000 guys into Syria and that's how they won.

[00:44:14] No.

[00:44:15] I mean, you have to think about this.

[00:44:16] They were very big on core forces.

[00:44:18] That's where Lebanese Hezbollah's strong suit really comes from.

[00:44:21] They know how to do essentially like what the Green Berets will do, where, you know, they go behind the lines.

[00:44:26] They will train up a certain group that's there, build them in their image, and then have them kind of radiate out and project.

[00:44:32] Foreign internal defense.

[00:44:33] Yes.

[00:44:34] When you lose a number of not just senior commanders.

[00:44:37] And also, let's put this one out of the way.

[00:44:40] Said Hassan Nasrola was killed.

[00:44:43] Safiy al-Din was killed.

[00:44:45] The entirety of the leadership network and the military leadership network, and I'm talking at the uppermost levels of Lebanese Hezbollah, were wiped out.

[00:44:54] Then a level beneath.

[00:44:55] Then a level beneath.

[00:44:57] Then a level beneath.

[00:44:58] Then they had pagers and ham radios go off that for combatants who had any veteran skill, who had some kind of organizational skill, even on a smaller level,

[00:45:08] they now can't operate the recoilless rifle that they have hidden somewhere in the forest line.

[00:45:14] So when the militia members that you spoke to, when they say, you know, okay, why aren't you – when you ask them, like, why aren't you mobilizing?

[00:45:23] And they say, well, we haven't gotten the order.

[00:45:24] It's because the person who would have sent the order, his hand was blown off in September when his pager blew up.

[00:45:31] Sort of.

[00:45:32] Sort of.

[00:45:32] It's the – if I'm an Iraqi Shia militiaman, I'm not saying that they don't have good commanders.

[00:45:37] They do often have a number of experienced and pretty okay commanders.

[00:45:40] Are they to the same level as Lebanese Hezbollah?

[00:45:43] No, they are not.

[00:45:44] Is there a lot of coordination that has to happen?

[00:45:46] Yes.

[00:45:47] Do Lebanese Hezbollah guys have a better grasp of the geography and other kind of territorial issues?

[00:45:53] I mean, you have people who are Lebanese Syrian Shia who lived in the Qusayr area who would traverse the Baka Valley back into Hulm's area.

[00:46:02] They knew it like the back of their hands.

[00:46:03] There's a reason why Lebanese Hezbollah sacrificed so much for that zone alone.

[00:46:07] And you need people like that who have experience on the ground.

[00:46:11] They know how to talk to the Syrians.

[00:46:13] They know how to talk to the other actors on the ground and also have experience kind of leading.

[00:46:17] You'll notice – you'll see this quite a bit where with new Syrian Shia militias – I say new Syrian Shia militias.

[00:46:24] There are none now.

[00:46:25] But when you had newer ones popping up that were designed by the Iranians and built by Lebanese Hezbollah, often if a Lebanese Hezbollah commander – it might be some like mid-level commander.

[00:46:34] He's like, yeah, Shahid al-Qaid.

[00:46:36] He's, you know, a martyr leader.

[00:46:39] But what exactly does that mean?

[00:46:40] Well, maybe he was like the rank of a second lieutenant.

[00:46:42] But he still had influence over this group of, you know, 30 guys who were making up, you know, whatever, you know, out in Cosaire.

[00:46:50] It had an impact.

[00:46:51] It had an impact on kind of the rank and file.

[00:46:54] And it was an ability to kind of have that core force and show different skills.

[00:46:59] Always have that as kind of that core leading element that, you know, if the fighting gets really heavy, they're not going to run away.

[00:47:06] They're not going to just retreat for another day and chill out and kind of do the things that they would criticize the Syrian Arab army for.

[00:47:11] They would actually go out and fight harder and sometimes take casualties.

[00:47:15] But this time around, all of those guys had been killed, wounded, or they were busy in South Lebanon, or they were busy doing something else.

[00:47:23] It was very, very hard to get a lot of them to deploy back out.

[00:47:26] And I think when you run into that, it's just the lack of numbers, the lack of material to kind of keep that going.

[00:47:31] Then you have this added problem.

[00:47:33] Let's say I need close air support and I need it from the Russians.

[00:47:37] Well, we kind of have an issue here.

[00:47:39] Yeah, we might have a few shiny SU-34s on the ground, but how many of them fly?

[00:47:43] So you're dealing with that.

[00:47:45] You're dealing with – both the Russians and the Iranians love to project a lot of kind of shiny visages to people who are watching.

[00:47:53] There is a lot of BS that's out there because they want to project strength.

[00:47:58] They want to project that they are an equivalent military setup to, say, the Americans or the Brits or the French.

[00:48:04] They are not in any way.

[00:48:06] And a lot of it is – it's kind of like the line from my – what was the movie called?

[00:48:10] Good Shepherd.

[00:48:11] It's painted over rust.

[00:48:13] A lot of this is painted over rust, whether we wish to admit that or not, but it is.

[00:48:19] And it doesn't mean that Lebanese Hezbollah doesn't have very, very strong capabilities.

[00:48:24] It doesn't mean that they still don't have some of those capabilities now, even post-Israeli offensive against their leadership apparatus.

[00:48:32] But what I would say is when you lose so many commanders, not only are you demoralized, but then you have – your commander has his hands blown off or his eyes blown off.

[00:48:41] Oh, that's bad.

[00:48:43] And Said Hassan Nasrallah, the guy leading this group who was pretty much the chosen one who could really pass everything through, he's dead.

[00:48:50] His chosen successor was killed.

[00:48:53] Everyone around him was killed.

[00:48:55] I just – I cannot say how much of an impact that has on a military fighting force, no matter what anyone says.

[00:49:03] I mean it's laughable if you're looking at how – Nayim Qasim, the guy who never really – he was the – he liked being the number two.

[00:49:11] He liked being the Veep.

[00:49:13] He didn't really want to ascend to number one, and no one ever thought he would.

[00:49:17] That's the thing.

[00:49:17] That's like the even crazier thing.

[00:49:19] He's not very charismatic.

[00:49:20] He kind of – it's like having an official in like a state government come to a car dealership opening.

[00:49:28] You know what I mean?

[00:49:28] That's kind of what he would do for Lebanese Hezbollah.

[00:49:30] Now, this is the guy who's leading the entire show.

[00:49:35] I mean so that – you then have that on top of it.

[00:49:37] And what does he call this campaign against the Israelis?

[00:49:40] Victory from God.

[00:49:42] If that's victory from God, I don't want to see what defeat looks like.

[00:49:45] You know, it's – you got to imagine that.

[00:49:47] So, you know, I think that was a serious, serious issue where if Lebanese Hezbollah and these other groups wanted to stand up, well, then how do they keep fighting?

[00:49:57] How are they going to do that?

[00:49:58] Now you're getting issues from the Israelis.

[00:50:00] If you do that, you might invite a further attack by the Israelis to wipe the rest of you out, which the Israelis were doing.

[00:50:05] They were nailing Lebanese Hezbollah guys who were trying to cross over from Syria into Lebanon.

[00:50:10] Then at the – right at the last minute, they were also killing coordination elements that belonged to Lebanese Hezbollah that were coordinators between Lebanese Hezbollah and the Syrian Arab army.

[00:50:21] I mean that is – that tells you everything.

[00:50:24] Like now I have nobody who is in the mid-ranks.

[00:50:27] I have nobody who's in upper echelon management of the organization.

[00:50:31] What do I do?

[00:50:32] Yes, we have 2,000 guys here.

[00:50:34] What can they possibly pull off?

[00:50:35] What do we know about Turkey's role in this offensive?

[00:50:38] Did HTS get a nudge from Ankara?

[00:50:42] Do they have any say in this?

[00:50:43] I think there's a lot of arguments about this right now and you'll see it.

[00:50:47] So there was one piece that was released by Hassan Hassan and Michael Weiss, which makes the argument that they're – obviously the Turks knew something was going on.

[00:50:57] Then you have kind of another argument, the Charles Lister argument.

[00:51:00] And it's interesting, all three of these people I have worked with in terms of writing something or like written for a publication that they were at or know them.

[00:51:09] And they're all very talented and very intelligent people, very intelligent researchers.

[00:51:14] Lister's argument is that no, HTS actually had some level of autonomy and the Turks actually were trying to hold them back.

[00:51:22] I don't know if I – I actually – I would say two things can be true at the same time again where there can be some level of HTS autonomy going forward into Syria and the offensives and the type of operations that they're picking.

[00:51:38] But to say that the Turks didn't know about that given HTS is right on their border and has been dealing with them and they have to – the Turks have to deal with Idlib.

[00:51:47] The Turks also have their own proxy forces that are more directly managed.

[00:51:51] I don't know if I fully buy that.

[00:51:53] I mean Charles Lister's explanation for it was, well, you know, the Turks tried to hold them back in October.

[00:51:59] Well, if that's the case, then how are they able just to go in November?

[00:52:02] It's just – I try to look at the logic of some of this.

[00:52:06] But again, I don't think that that means that only one side of this is right.

[00:52:11] I think both sides are correct.

[00:52:12] I think the Turks obviously have a vested interest in what happens in northern Syria and Syria as a whole.

[00:52:18] It's a bordering country.

[00:52:20] Obviously, they're going to have to have their hands on something.

[00:52:22] I mean I think you kind of come into the argument where it's the – well, if you buy that about the Turks, then it almost means that almost certainly you'd buy it about the Iranians with Hamas, PIJ, and a variety of other Palestinian factions that they were all backing up and encouraging right up until October 7th.

[00:52:39] So I don't – again, it's how much influence, when was it executed, you know, how much was known to, let's say, you know, Turkish general staff, how much was HTS holding to itself.

[00:52:52] And again, just based on kind of the behaviors of the Russians, the Turks, and the Iranians, I think very clearly at some point the discussions were opened up to kind of what's going to happen?

[00:53:03] When do we kind of call a ceasefire?

[00:53:05] When is this going to happen?

[00:53:06] When is that going to happen?

[00:53:07] I don't know how comprehensive that may have been, but based on where the Shia militia guys were going and how they were not really fighting, I mean I get this impression that, you know, the Iranians may have thrown in the towel more so because they simply could not stand up and they couldn't really get the backing from Russian air power that they had once required.

[00:53:26] It just was not going to materialize.

[00:53:28] The vibe you're describing really reminds me of that famous scene from Downfall where Hitler's in the bunker with all his generals and he's looking at the map of these like army groups that just don't actually exist in reality.

[00:53:42] And they're trying to mount the defense of Berlin and he's like, it's fine, Steiner's counteroffensive is going to begin.

[00:53:47] And the guys are like, yeah, that's not actually happening.

[00:53:50] And like you just don't – like you have – maybe have these forces on paper, but operational readiness, their, you know, willingness, ability to fight even if they wanted to, it's just not there.

[00:54:01] That sort of seems, I mean, very much what this was like.

[00:54:04] I think there are a lot of other issues that were kind of combined in with this as well.

[00:54:08] You know, again, the saving grace that was going to happen for a few commentators and analysts was, well, you know, if the Iraqi Shia militiamen get in, then that'll supply a good amount of numbers and they'll organize in Damascus and da-da-da-da-da.

[00:54:22] Interestingly, Abu Kamal and Deir al-Zur, because we haven't even brought up eastern Syria yet.

[00:54:27] We're just talking about the western sections and, you know, Damascus and Hama and Homs and Aleppo.

[00:54:32] Those areas also collapsed and they rolled right back into Iraq, which, again, is far more telling because what did the Iranians do with their Shia militia forces once they started to break out?

[00:54:43] They headed straight towards eastern Syria, almost in competition with the Assadist forces and the Russians to get there first.

[00:54:51] It didn't mean they didn't cooperate.

[00:54:52] It didn't mean they didn't work together.

[00:54:53] It didn't mean they didn't give crap to Americans and to American allies in the area, like the SDF, when the time arose and when they wanted to.

[00:55:02] But, you know, I kind of look at that and I go, wow, has the degradation been that incredibly bad?

[00:55:10] You know, what would actually cause that?

[00:55:11] What would cause a rollback like that?

[00:55:13] Why are they not defending that first leg for the so-called land bridge to Lebanon?

[00:55:19] You know, the rest of it was already destroyed anyway.

[00:55:22] But, you know, the Iranians actually know how to use smuggling networks and whatnot.

[00:55:25] So do Lebanese Hezbollah.

[00:55:27] And I'm pretty sure they might try to cut a back deal with whatever new salvation government and, you know, smugglers and criminal elements or whoever they need to.

[00:55:35] Why would you not keep that as a projection point?

[00:55:38] I'm still baffled by that.

[00:55:39] I'm still baffled by it.

[00:55:40] And what it does tell me is, oh, well, we're going to run into another problem where if the Iraqis are now thrown in after we've already thrown them in partially to this conflict in Gaza.

[00:55:51] And we've had a bunch of little things like fake recruitment drives and whatnot for it.

[00:55:55] And they did that.

[00:55:55] They had fake recruitment drives for post-October 7th.

[00:55:59] I know this.

[00:55:59] I was talking to one of the recruiters.

[00:56:01] And he's like, yeah, no, no.

[00:56:01] We were just doing this to show that, you know, we had a lot of, you know, we could do force if we wanted to.

[00:56:06] You know, we could do that.

[00:56:07] Which brings me to another point.

[00:56:10] New York Times, but before the New York Times said this, there were Israeli papers that had been saying this.

[00:56:14] A few little reports here and there.

[00:56:16] When I saw it, I went, ah, the jig's up.

[00:56:18] There were two Iranian aircraft that went flying into Damascus Airport, Damascus International Airport.

[00:56:24] And the Israeli Air Force apparently intercepted them and sent a warning to the Iranians that if you start flying planes into Damascus, we're going to shoot them down.

[00:56:33] I actually think, and I remember last time we talked, I actually wrote a whole thing out about, you know, what could actually save or, you know, what is there going to be a recruitment of Iraqis that are going to go to Lebanon?

[00:56:45] And one of my things was, I don't think the Israeli Air Force is going to allow that, you know, into Damascus anymore.

[00:56:51] This is not 2013 through 2018.

[00:56:53] Well, the Israelis, even before this offensive started, the Israelis were really focused on preventing Hezbollah, Lebanese Hezbollah from being resupplied.

[00:57:01] And that was part of it.

[00:57:01] Correct.

[00:57:02] Like, if you come into Syrian airspace, we're just going to shoot you down.

[00:57:04] Correct.

[00:57:05] Correct.

[00:57:05] And I think in part, you have to realize the Iranians are very, very tense when it comes to aircraft potentially getting shot down.

[00:57:15] And I'll give you a great example of this.

[00:57:16] But they don't have many of them.

[00:57:17] Well, not only do they not have many of them, I think that it scares them because once that resource is gone, that's also gone.

[00:57:26] It also shows a real distinct weakness that you can't defend those planes coming in.

[00:57:31] There's like a whole bunch of things.

[00:57:32] But it reminds me of back in 2013, I want to say it was 2012, 2013, definitely 2013.

[00:57:37] There was an Iranian 747 that was landing at Damascus International.

[00:57:41] And it probably had some arms on it, probably had some other militiamen that were on it.

[00:57:45] But Syrian rebels took this video of themselves shooting at the plane with Kalashnikovs and chanting and then shooting at it.

[00:57:52] And that video went out and it became viral for about five minutes.

[00:57:56] Afterwards, the Iranians stopped flying to Damascus.

[00:57:58] And I don't remember the exact timing, but it was a couple of weeks that they just did not fly into the airport because they were so nervous that their plane's landing would get shot down.

[00:58:06] It actually encouraged one of the larger offensives for Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iraqi Shia militiamen because they were around Damascus Airport.

[00:58:13] And that was to clear out that zone around there so you wouldn't have that problem.

[00:58:17] It's another reason why they had the East Ghouta offensive, which eventually resulted in the area getting gassed.

[00:58:22] So, I mean, you have to think about that for two seconds.

[00:58:25] But with the Israelis saying, hey, we're going to shoot these things down, you're done.

[00:58:29] You're done.

[00:58:29] I mean, I think a lot of people think it's really easy just to drive from, you know, Derozor or to take the land bridge.

[00:58:37] But it's really not if you're setting up ambushes, if you have other issues.

[00:58:41] The Syrian rebels had already demonstrated this in 2012.

[00:58:44] They had at one point grabbed a bus that was loaded with a bunch of IRGC advisors.

[00:58:49] They were all, you know, older men with the right beard and, you know, and oh, we're just here for religious tourism.

[00:58:55] Sure you are.

[00:58:56] What are the Kalashnikovs doing in the bottom of the bus?

[00:58:58] So, I mean, you had issues like this before, you know, and if those convoys are just running along the road, you want to talk about interdiction from Israeli aircraft?

[00:59:08] I mean, it goes from an airport of death to a highway of death real quickly.

[00:59:13] You come out miles of highway through the open desert.

[00:59:17] Like there's not really, you're kind of sitting ducks out there.

[00:59:20] Yeah.

[00:59:20] Especially in eastern Syria.

[00:59:21] Especially in eastern Syria.

[00:59:22] I mean, even if you do the drive, this is, I'm talking many, many years ago now.

[00:59:27] I mean, I've done the drive out to Palmyra, you know, out to, you know, where the Roman temple is and everything else.

[00:59:32] You're doing that drive.

[00:59:34] It's a lot of wasteland.

[00:59:35] Yeah.

[00:59:36] It's just a lot of empty territory.

[00:59:37] Yeah, it's paved road and everything's fine, but not a lot of help is coming your way.

[00:59:43] There's a reason why Islamic State was able to metastasize so quickly out in those zones.

[00:59:47] It's just middle of nowhere.

[00:59:49] But, you know, I look at that and I kind of think, yeah, easier said than done.

[00:59:53] And I think it looks great on your risk board, but it's not, you know, reality's over here and, you know, you're over here.

[01:00:00] So, again, I mean, I think that also was a final nail.

[01:00:03] I mean, I look at this and I think what the Israelis did was put the Iranians in such a squeeze that they were completely incapable of doing any of the things that they promised, had shown that they could possibly do in the past.

[01:00:16] And, I mean, for them, you know, I think the game was up.

[01:00:22] There was only so much that they could do and they kind of accepted that they had lost the game.

[01:00:28] They had lost too much and they didn't know what to do next.

[01:00:31] I mean, I think a lot of it was also represented by a lot of shock.

[01:00:34] It's really easy to also make the argument that, oh, well, you know, these rational Persian successors to the Persian Empire in this theocratic form, they're going to be very calculating and playing chess.

[01:00:46] I think when you've lost a lot of your command and control and you've lost your crown jewel proxy, the only surviving, really surviving elements are these Iraqi Shia militiamen of varying loyalties who are also having squabbles with you that you deliberately splintered and splintered and splintered.

[01:01:01] And now you have to micromanage that.

[01:01:02] Oh, P.S.

[01:01:03] Since 2020, you've been losing one senior commander after another after another, whether to American strikes or to Israeli strikes.

[01:01:09] How do you repopulate those ranks?

[01:01:11] How do you get any of that done?

[01:01:12] And I think that just reality hit him in the face.

[01:01:16] HTS is still a designated terrorist organization by the U.S. government because they are, of course, descended from Jabhat al-Nusra.

[01:01:23] So they have the Al-Qaeda connection.

[01:01:25] The group's leader is a Saudi-born Syrian who fought in the insurgency in Iraq and was held prisoner by U.S. forces for a while before being released.

[01:01:40] The group's leader has said things in recent days that indicate he has reformed to some degree, I believe, in areas that HTS has controlled in the Northwest.

[01:01:53] They've allowed Christian populations to, you know, worship as they see fit, perhaps.

[01:01:59] What do you think the, you know, new Syrian government, what kind of form does it take?

[01:02:04] Is it sort of Islamist light or how does, how's that going to look?

[01:02:08] You know what?

[01:02:09] This will sound kind of crazy, but I actually think it's a good way to look at things.

[01:02:12] Lebanese Hezbollah for a while was considered the most radical of the radicals in the 1980s.

[01:02:18] And by the early 1990s, there was this whole line that happened in academia where Hezbollah's moderating.

[01:02:26] Their pragmatism means they're moderate.

[01:02:28] Why?

[01:02:28] Because they're entering Lebanese elections.

[01:02:31] Okay.

[01:02:32] Did it actually moderate them in any real way?

[01:02:35] I mean, I've had colleagues at the University of Maryland, we actually did a study there where we kind of showed that they would usually launch attacks when it wouldn't negatively impact them during the elections.

[01:02:46] Now, does that mean they're moderating?

[01:02:47] Well, I would make the argument not really.

[01:02:49] It just means they're more pragmatic to serve end radical goals and to continue other forms of radicalism.

[01:02:55] And I think that's kind of what you're going to see from HTS, where HTS, they're still focused on being the most powerful element there.

[01:03:02] They may have had issues with the Islamic State.

[01:03:06] I mean, I would say in terms of wiping out Islamic State guys, they got pretty efficient at it.

[01:03:10] There's no denying that.

[01:03:12] They killed a lot of them.

[01:03:13] They also killed a lot of other Al-Qaeda guys that were not really alongside with them.

[01:03:17] I think Jolani has done a lot to kind of build a strong and cohesive organization, done a lot to build strong institutions to demonstrate that this slow roll will work.

[01:03:28] And I kind of look at it from one who tends to enjoy studying the Shia militia groups and Shia jihadist groups a little bit more.

[01:03:36] It kind of reminds me of Lebanese Hezbollah and a lot of the other Iraqi groups when they enter into politics, yet they're still incredibly radical, still have a militia, still have a this, still have a that, and still have some form of a parallel state too that's attached to it.

[01:03:50] I think that there is a level of pragmatism that one understands that long-term planning is markedly more intelligent than doing kind of quick shihad and sawing heads off and lighting people on fire in cages.

[01:04:04] Also, in terms of broadcasting a lot of this stuff, you're not going to hear about how HDS was gunning down some guy in the street because he opposed some ruling that they wanted.

[01:04:14] I think Jolani knows when to put on his blue blazer and do his rounds.

[01:04:20] Again, that's a measure, though, and you can't fault a very intelligent form to get what you want.

[01:04:26] Yes, it is pragmatic.

[01:04:28] Pragmatic does not necessitate moderate.

[01:04:30] The other thing is, given some of the blame comes back to the United States and comes back to our regional allies, but I would say primarily the United States on this, if there was possibly – and again, this is a possibility.

[01:04:41] If there was maybe more of a proactive American push in Syria early on, if maybe there wasn't a red line that was drawn and there was inaction that came from that, there was a possibility that maybe groups like that would not have kind of gone to the top and done so well and been the only guys left.

[01:04:59] Because remember, the groups that the West was backing and the groups that were considered moderate – I put that in quotes because, again, different gradations of that here and there – but those organizations were under pressure from pretty much every radical side.

[01:05:12] You had the Iranians who were gunning for these guys first, the Russians who were gunning for those guys first, the Islamic State that were gunning for them first, Jabhat al-Nusra who was gunning for them, other Syrian rebel groups.

[01:05:22] Oh, not to mention Bashar al-Assad and his intelligence apparatus.

[01:05:24] So they had a ton of pressure thrown on them and there was not very much that could really be done as a response or kind of done to grow from there.

[01:05:35] And so what did that do?

[01:05:36] That opened the door for a lot of extremist growth to happen.

[01:05:41] And when I say that too, Bashar al-Assad isn't without blame too.

[01:05:44] And I find the utmost irony – it's like this line from South Park where they say, if irony were made of strawberries, we'd sure be drinking a lot of smoothies.

[01:05:52] And I think the irony here is there's a lot of talk about Sidney prison where there was just monumental amounts of torture and just terrible things that were going on from the Assad regime where they were torturing people.

[01:06:04] People were living in the cells for years.

[01:06:06] People were grabbed in Lebanon, were there for 40 years and completely forgot their names.

[01:06:11] Lots of executions.

[01:06:12] Lots of just horrible things.

[01:06:14] But also what happened to that prison was, well, a quote-unquote break of certain Sunni jihadists who when they came through certain Syrian rebel and opposition ranks, not only did they radicalize things quite quickly,

[01:06:26] but first they started dealing with, well, people who would technically be on their side to wipe them out first and take control over what would be eventually the opposition.

[01:06:35] You have on the opposite end with the Iranians and with the Syrians, meaning Syrians under Bashar al-Assad, who are saying, oh, the opposition's all Jabhat al-Nusra.

[01:06:42] They're all ISIS.

[01:06:43] They're all Sunni jihadis.

[01:06:45] This is their deal.

[01:06:46] So it's interesting.

[01:06:47] You have this self-fulfilling prophecy just because of the rotation of people playing games with who is out and what they're doing.

[01:06:56] I think you've now seen the summation of all of this stuff.

[01:07:01] What is it amalgamated and created?

[01:07:03] I mean, again, there's another end to this.

[01:07:05] I'm giving you a negative side here, which, I mean, again, I'm firmly in the belief that I don't trust a lot of the Islamist or jihadi groups when they claim reformation in any way because, well, we haven't seen enough.

[01:07:18] Show us.

[01:07:19] I don't want to sound like a bean counter.

[01:07:21] It's like, well, we need to collect the data.

[01:07:23] But no, you do need to collect data and you need to look and see what's doing it.

[01:07:25] And actions speak louder than words.

[01:07:27] And yes, just because actions are happening initially, you have to kind of wait and see.

[01:07:32] You know, and again, I don't want to say there isn't a potential for something like that, but I also don't want to overstate it.

[01:07:38] I don't.

[01:07:39] I really dislike it when there's this kind of academic look at it.

[01:07:42] And, you know, that could really happen.

[01:07:44] And we're seeing moves here.

[01:07:46] I'm seeing chatter here.

[01:07:47] Don't you think that X, Y, and Z could happen?

[01:07:49] No, I don't because we haven't seen it historically.

[01:07:52] No, I don't because we haven't seen it really in a contemporary sense.

[01:07:55] We are very early in the game.

[01:07:57] We are very, very early on what's happening.

[01:07:59] We are seeing certain things that might send signals to what's going on.

[01:08:02] Again, I don't want this to detract from the fact that how many options were Syrians really given?

[01:08:09] And again, I don't want to kind of play, you know, complete victim status for everybody here when they didn't get their own way.

[01:08:15] But, you know, they were not given a lot of options going forward when it came to fighting Bashar al-Assad.

[01:08:21] I think that the world had washed their hands of them, didn't care if they were kind of, you know, refugees or whatever.

[01:08:27] Yeah, well, you know, let a bunch into Germany or whatever.

[01:08:29] Who cares?

[01:08:29] Yeah, that's fine.

[01:08:30] That's all good.

[01:08:31] Okay.

[01:08:32] Okay.

[01:08:33] You know, I had a conversation with a colleague who's now working in U.S. government and, you know, his line to me, he doesn't work in Middle East stuff anymore.

[01:08:43] But it was just, you know, you imagine how many military-aged males were not being trained to hold a rifle who were relatively normal, relatively secular, and just wanted to go home.

[01:08:53] Yeah.

[01:08:54] How much of that agency falls upon them and then how much of that falls upon other groups that kind of want to, you know, or other nations that really want to get that ball rolling?

[01:09:02] You know, where do you draw that line?

[01:09:04] And I think there's kind of an issue there.

[01:09:06] But I also think, you know, the world had also washed its hands of caring about what Bashar al-Assad was and what he really was bringing to the table.

[01:09:14] To your point there, the Arabs, the Gulf Arabs especially, were sort of in the last couple years really kind of bringing him back into the fold a bit.

[01:09:23] You know, he was sort of more – his company was a bit more acceptable than it had been in recent years.

[01:09:29] I guess he's here.

[01:09:30] I guess we got to deal with that.

[01:09:31] Okay.

[01:09:32] Yeah.

[01:09:33] There was – and there was also a lot of that.

[01:09:35] There was a lot of that from a lot of different parties.

[01:09:38] There was a lot of chatter about kind of normalization.

[01:09:41] You know, I kind of look at it and it was as if everyone was digging themselves three holes.

[01:09:46] You know what I mean?

[01:09:47] Yeah.

[01:09:47] Well, if you don't like this hole, here's a better hole.

[01:09:49] It's deeper.

[01:09:50] So it didn't leave a lot of options.

[01:09:52] And, I mean, I think from a humanitarian angle, it's a whole other different story that you could talk about.

[01:10:00] But I think just from, you know, the political end and kind of what solutions were there, I think too many people picked the, well, there is no solution.

[01:10:08] It's the same every day who cares kind of approach to things.

[01:10:12] And for them, that was a realistic and pragmatic approach.

[01:10:15] And it's interesting how that's pragmatic right up until the regime collapses.

[01:10:20] You know, and oh, well, we had no idea this was happening.

[01:10:22] Well, you could have just been following it.

[01:10:23] I mean, I could have told you an offensive for HDS was going to happen.

[01:10:26] I don't think I would be able to tell you they'd take Aleppo.

[01:10:29] And even after Aleppo, I was being, and I'll admit this, I was very skeptical that, I mean, they might be able to take Hama.

[01:10:37] But I think it has to end there because if Homs falls, oh my God, are we in a completely different scenario?

[01:10:42] But, you know, I was looking at it kind of somewhat skeptically from the position of the 2013 Assad, where it doesn't mean he's going to bounce back immediately.

[01:10:50] He's not going to retake Aleppo in 48 hours.

[01:10:54] You know, he's dealing with markedly more highly trained foes this time around.

[01:10:59] And they've got a lot of different equipment and they've industrialized a lot of weapons capabilities.

[01:11:03] And they're getting some other support here and there.

[01:11:05] But, you know, I didn't see it as a complete and total collapse.

[01:11:09] The kind of, it collapsed so quickly.

[01:11:13] I think a lot of people even in Syria were in shock.

[01:11:16] I can't tell you how many Syrians messaged me as if, you know, I said, I'm like, I'm in D.C.

[01:11:21] There's only so much I can see here.

[01:11:23] Yeah, but, you know, don't you have a connection that maybe you could talk to?

[01:11:26] I remember one of them saying this to me.

[01:11:27] I'm like, no, I don't think we even know what the hell is going on.

[01:11:30] We're a little distracted in our own right.

[01:11:31] Right now, we kind of don't have our own shit together.

[01:11:33] But, you know, so I mean, I think a lot of people are just sitting there for like two

[01:11:39] seconds going, do I take a breath or do I light a cigarette?

[01:11:42] I don't know.

[01:11:42] I don't know which one.

[01:11:59] Two more subjects that are at the top of mind here right now.

[01:12:03] First one, the chemical weapons.

[01:12:05] What's up with them?

[01:12:06] Where are they?

[01:12:07] Who has them right now?

[01:12:09] Who's who's controlling them?

[01:12:10] Are the Israelis going to allow a designated Islamist terrorist organization on their border

[01:12:16] to possess a chemical weapons stockpile?

[01:12:18] I think the answer to your last question to answer that first is no.

[01:12:22] I mean, you know, it's interesting.

[01:12:23] I've seen a lot of different arguments in a few different places about this.

[01:12:27] The Israelis now seeing that the Assad regime has collapsed is attempting, at least reportedly,

[01:12:33] attempting to hit these chemical weapons storehouses and supplies.

[01:12:37] And if that's the case...

[01:12:38] It's tricky.

[01:12:38] Yes, it's very tricky.

[01:12:40] It would not shock me either if, you know, American special operators and Israelis and

[01:12:45] a few other different countries were out there trying to make sure that certain things didn't

[01:12:49] just fall into the wrong hands.

[01:12:51] I think the Israelis have done a very interesting job in terms of eliminating any strategic or

[01:12:58] larger tactical threats that could emanate from Syria in kind of the new scheme.

[01:13:03] But, you know, one of the arguments I had been seeing, this was particularly online, was,

[01:13:08] well, if the Israelis just hit this stuff before, would it not have ended, you know,

[01:13:12] would it not have ended this war?

[01:13:14] And I keep thinking about that.

[01:13:16] I try to think of it from kind of an American position here.

[01:13:19] Oh, okay.

[01:13:20] You know, if that's the case, well, the Israelis did take out all of the Hezbollah leadership

[01:13:23] and that's exactly why this offensive was so successful.

[01:13:26] That's one.

[01:13:27] But two, if they did do that, they hit all of that stuff.

[01:13:30] Well, you know, I kind of think about it in terms of realpolitik.

[01:13:34] If they're still going to be dealing with a Sunni jihadist group that is going to be

[01:13:38] menacing them on the borders, you know, who actually says thank you?

[01:13:41] You know, is there actually going to be any positive kind of thing that happens in the

[01:13:45] future from that?

[01:13:46] I don't know.

[01:13:47] I mean, again, I'm only judging this from an American side, but it is an interesting

[01:13:51] take to kind of see for, you know, how this is being handled.

[01:13:55] I think the Israelis, though, are looking at this and saying, you know, they're going

[01:13:58] to try to eliminate as many strategic threats as humanly possible.

[01:14:02] They will do it from a unilateral effort if they have to.

[01:14:06] I think that they've mapped out a lot of this stuff.

[01:14:08] But I do think that it's interesting how just under the surface, the whole issue with

[01:14:12] chemical weapons, Assad's chemical weapons supplies, which were used repeatedly during

[01:14:17] the war, but where that's going.

[01:14:18] And what's even more intriguing here is, you know, you had, you know, Iranian built or at

[01:14:25] least through their proxies, rocket systems that were used at times to deploy these weapon

[01:14:29] systems, which then begs the question, you know, well, did the Iranians have a hand?

[01:14:34] Were they touching some of this stuff?

[01:14:35] Did some of that float over to them?

[01:14:37] Were there other groups that maybe gained access to some of these facilities?

[01:14:41] I mean, there was one of the Syrian Institutes for Science that was hit by the Israelis.

[01:14:46] I can't remember.

[01:14:47] I was reading somewhere they hit something like 300 different targets.

[01:14:51] So I think they're trying to just kind of do this, not in a piecemeal fashion, but just

[01:14:56] hit it all and hit it all as effectively as possible.

[01:14:59] I mean, just look at what happened to the remnants of the Syrian Navy.

[01:15:02] You know, Syrian Navy was a couple of missile boats, you know, old ones from the 1970s.

[01:15:07] They're not really going to be that all that effective, but I can kind of see why they

[01:15:10] were hit too.

[01:15:11] But it's quite clear from the Israeli point of view that they're just not going to take

[01:15:14] any chances on it.

[01:15:16] And, you know, so that's it.

[01:15:18] This is how it's going to go.

[01:15:20] Same thing goes with their offensive that's kind of going into different demilitarized zones,

[01:15:25] taking all of the Haman.

[01:15:27] Yeah.

[01:15:28] That's another example of this.

[01:15:29] I mean, it's interesting to see where these pushes are coming from.

[01:15:32] There's a lot of talk about that.

[01:15:33] But also, a lot of it is not as...

[01:15:35] I mean, I think a lot of it is to gain some level of strategic depth so that they can watch

[01:15:40] and see what's going on.

[01:15:41] Right.

[01:15:41] The Israelis said as far as their little push into Mount Hermon and some of the areas

[01:15:46] around the Golan and everything, that they did that because the Syrian forces that were

[01:15:50] sort of watching the other side of that line, that deconfliction zone, abandoned their post.

[01:15:55] So they went in to sort of take up those positions.

[01:15:57] And it's a temporary thing.

[01:15:58] And, you know, once they work out what comes next, okay, those Israeli forces will come

[01:16:02] back.

[01:16:03] Well, their line was the ceasefire that had been around.

[01:16:06] Right.

[01:16:06] No longer was in effect because the people they signed it with are no longer there.

[01:16:11] The UN forces would be ineffective when it comes to a bunch of different things.

[01:16:15] Again, I mean, I kind of understand it, you know, in terms of what's the new security

[01:16:20] position that they need to attain.

[01:16:21] Because I think even the Israelis were caught off guard with how quickly the HTS advance

[01:16:26] happened and how quickly the Syrian Arab army collapsed and how quickly even the Iranians

[01:16:30] and the Russians collapsed in and on themselves.

[01:16:32] Right.

[01:16:33] Well, I guess, you know, to their Pentagon and the Israelis' credits, you know, I mean,

[01:16:38] we have, we know absolutely or have a very good idea of where those chemical weapons are

[01:16:43] stored and probably have eyes on them 24-7 to a number of different assets.

[01:16:48] Taking out those weapons responsibly, it's difficult.

[01:16:52] It requires a lot of specialist equipment and personnel, but we do have them.

[01:16:57] JSOC has people in Iraq and Eastern Syria and Cyprus, I believe, in the last year or so.

[01:17:02] So it can be done.

[01:17:05] I would imagine, though, if there was a serious concern about those weapons falling into the

[01:17:10] wrong hands that you would see a very quick push to take them off the board.

[01:17:15] I guess I was just surprised that like once you saw, say, like Homs fall, you know, that

[01:17:21] that wouldn't be the tripwire, that the Israelis at least were like, yeah, okay, we're just

[01:17:25] getting rid of this stuff.

[01:17:25] Well, I think, I mean, again, if you didn't see that, and I was saying this, I was saying

[01:17:29] this repeatedly, and I was saying it all day and all night.

[01:17:31] If Homs and Cosser fall, Damascus is done.

[01:17:35] Assad is done.

[01:17:35] Because that's the final cut.

[01:17:37] You know, you essentially have to be flying a helicopter just to get to that coastal

[01:17:41] highland, to the readout.

[01:17:43] The way I was describing it to some people was, you know, that was kind of the planned

[01:17:47] Himmler-style Bavaria for where the variables would be kind of thing.

[01:17:51] You know, well, I'm in my sectarian highlands and we'll protect ourselves.

[01:17:55] And it was always a tough slog for a lot of the Sunni groups and a lot of the rebel groups

[01:17:59] whenever they were trying to advance into those areas.

[01:18:02] Well, okay, you know, Damascus.

[01:18:03] Yeah, we've lost Berlin.

[01:18:04] But, you know, we can hide in this readout here.

[01:18:07] And so, you know, just looking at it from that, you know, the plan B for the Assad regime

[01:18:11] was to kind of retreat back there.

[01:18:13] So to see them just collapse in on themselves and then everything else collapse, boy, does

[01:18:17] that say a lot about kind of the state of the regime and also the state of their allies

[01:18:22] too.

[01:18:23] But Homs was key, and I want to spell this out.

[01:18:26] Homs was key because, one, you had a major Hezbollah offensive there.

[01:18:31] It was in Cosser, 2013.

[01:18:33] They lost a ton of guys, very experienced mid-level and higher-level commanders too in the fight.

[01:18:39] It's where Said Hassan Nasrallah, the former head, the now dead head of Lebanese Hezbollah,

[01:18:44] gave his speech about why Lebanese Hezbollah was involved in Syria.

[01:18:49] And they were in Syria for well over a year.

[01:18:51] They even lost a bunch of guys when they were there.

[01:18:53] They just weren't really directly admitting it.

[01:18:54] They'd say they died during their jihadist duty.

[01:18:58] This time around, though, you know, there was just – I wrote a post when I was still

[01:19:02] writing Hezbollah cavalcade on jihadology called the Cosser meat grinder because it just was

[01:19:08] one casualty after another, after another, after another.

[01:19:10] And you hadn't seen numbers like this or casualties like this ever from Lebanese Hezbollah even

[01:19:16] since 2006, just the way it was getting announced.

[01:19:19] And so they were really putting core contingents there.

[01:19:22] So that's part one.

[01:19:23] Part two, there were those Syrian-Lebanese Shia villages where there were more kind of

[01:19:29] tribal people who were going back and forth between the border.

[01:19:33] But, you know, they were a core pro-Hezbollah contingent.

[01:19:37] There was no kind of moving them from that.

[01:19:39] So you already had a demographic section that was there that was hardcore pro-Lebanese Hezbollah.

[01:19:44] Then you have Homs itself.

[01:19:46] Homs, you know, the city had, you know, a Sunni majority for a while.

[01:19:50] Well, what happened?

[01:19:50] There was a huge ethnic cleansing that happened there.

[01:19:52] You had Alois that were moved in.

[01:19:54] You had Shia that were moved in.

[01:19:56] You had different neighborhoods that were essentially staked out.

[01:19:59] And like, this is going to be this sectarian area.

[01:20:01] There was actually quite an infamous video that I think it was either HTS guys or other

[01:20:06] Syrian rebels mocked later on.

[01:20:08] But there was a guy who came out and said, no, Sunni is ever going to come into my neighborhood.

[01:20:12] You're never allowed.

[01:20:13] And he said this a couple months before the offensive happened.

[01:20:16] And then you had these other, you know, either HTS guys or the Syrian rebels who were like

[01:20:19] rolling through going, you know, you're never going to get us out of this area.

[01:20:22] You know, we're here to stay.

[01:20:24] So you had kind of that element.

[01:20:25] You have a geostrategic element here, too.

[01:20:27] That is the gateway to the Bakah Valley, at least to northern kind of Hamel and that zone

[01:20:32] in the Bakah, like northern Bakah.

[01:20:34] In Lebanon.

[01:20:35] In Lebanon, yes.

[01:20:36] And that's kind of a heartland zone for Lebanese Hezbollah.

[01:20:39] It's also oddly a heartland zone for some Lebanese Sunnis that are in that area.

[01:20:44] You have Al-Qaw that's also in the area, which is a Christian town.

[01:20:47] But that was, you know, a place where there was Jabhat al-Nusra and also for some periods,

[01:20:53] Islamic State, maybe Islamic State, penetrations into Lebanon.

[01:20:57] This was happening in 2013, 14, and 15.

[01:21:01] There were a lot of fears that there would be a major issue there.

[01:21:04] There was spillover from Syria.

[01:21:06] And so imagine this.

[01:21:07] That was one of those border zones that Lebanese Hezbollah, they used this as part of their

[01:21:11] argument for why they were intervening.

[01:21:12] Well, we're actually protecting Lebanon by doing this.

[01:21:15] Well, OK.

[01:21:16] Well, now you've lost that strategic depth that you fought so hard for and were trying

[01:21:20] to incorporate it into a little mini Hezbollah stand and into a kind of a security cordon,

[01:21:25] almost like an Israeli-style security zone like they had in the south.

[01:21:28] They were kind of maintaining it there.

[01:21:30] That was maintaining the traffic going up on the M5 highway, going up to Aleppo, to Halab,

[01:21:36] and also then off to the coastal zone.

[01:21:38] Very, very important strategic area.

[01:21:40] And it really is that final stop, that final city before you hit Damascus, before you hit

[01:21:45] Alemun, and then you hit Damascus.

[01:21:47] From the north, that is a straight shot into Damascus unless you hold them somewhere in

[01:21:52] the mountains or in the hilly zone that's there.

[01:21:54] So massively important, massively important.

[01:21:57] And for Lebanese Hezbollah to give that up, I was sitting in total shock because it was

[01:22:04] unbelievable and it happened so quickly.

[01:22:05] It was, oh, and they pulled out.

[01:22:07] They even pulled some of the Houthi guys with them.

[01:22:08] They pulled some of the Iraqis with them.

[01:22:10] What?

[01:22:11] I'm sorry, what?

[01:22:12] It was, I'll give another example of this.

[01:22:15] I mentioned Nobil and Zahra.

[01:22:16] Nobil and Zahra, they were near Aleppo, these two Syrian Shia towns.

[01:22:21] And I'm sorry I keep jumping off into these little things, but they're kind of important

[01:22:25] to understand kind of the geography of it and also kind of understand the strategy that's

[01:22:29] here.

[01:22:30] Iran and its proxies defended those two towns when they were surrounded for years.

[01:22:35] They built a number of Syrian Hezbollahs in the two towns.

[01:22:39] They did everything that they could to prevent any kind of rebel or Sunni jihadist advance.

[01:22:44] They even almost launched into a little mini shadow war against the Turks and the Qataris

[01:22:48] for a little bit.

[01:22:49] And this was actually, you might remember, some of the listeners might actually remember

[01:22:53] this if they're really nutso like I am when it comes to fun, Shia militia activities.

[01:22:57] There was a group that called itself Firak al-Maut.

[01:23:00] And I have to say it like that because it literally means death squad.

[01:23:03] And these are probably a bunch of Qatar Hezbollah guys from Iraq that kidnapped a bunch of Turkish

[01:23:08] construction workers.

[01:23:09] And if you read their statements, it had a direct connection.

[01:23:13] Why were they kidnapped?

[01:23:14] Well, it was connection to Nobil and Zahra because a lot of those rebel groups that were surrounding

[01:23:18] Nobil and Zahra were getting support from the Turks and getting support from the Qataris.

[01:23:23] And then you had Qatri royals that were kidnapped around the same time in Iraq by Qatar Hezbollah.

[01:23:27] So you think about that.

[01:23:29] There is a regional jive to this whole thing that's going on.

[01:23:33] And when those two villages were just kind of like thrown to the wolves, if you will,

[01:23:38] thrown to the evil Takfiriyin and the Jabhat al-Nusra HTS people, again, that was one of

[01:23:45] those things that says what deal was cut, who cut it and when, and how is Lebanese Hezbollah

[01:23:51] after everything they've done, how do they keep getting away with this?

[01:23:55] You know, it's, it's almost kind of like that, but then it's also like, well, what

[01:23:58] would happen if HTS chased them into Lebanon?

[01:24:01] What would have happened then?

[01:24:02] Yeah.

[01:24:03] What would have happened if this was more of a free for all?

[01:24:05] You know, this is a very, very kind of clean wrap up and whenever something's a little

[01:24:09] too clean, it feels a little interesting.

[01:24:11] To that point, the group's name in Arabic, as I think I said at the top of the show, means

[01:24:15] the Levant Liberation Committee.

[01:24:17] And the Levant is more than just Syria.

[01:24:19] It also includes Lebanon.

[01:24:22] Do they're, I mean, they kind of have said, yeah, they're just, they're, they're good.

[01:24:26] They see this as done.

[01:24:27] Do you, do you believe that?

[01:24:29] Well, Al-Sham, you know, this is another weird thing.

[01:24:31] I mean, I've, I've actually written about this where there were Shia militias that were

[01:24:35] saying, you know, we're, we're also, we're Iraq, well, the sham.

[01:24:40] Well, is that the entire Levant?

[01:24:42] Do you just mean that as a short term for Syria as the nation state that we know it?

[01:24:46] It's kind of like asking the Syrian social nationalist party, what is Syria?

[01:24:50] And they'll draw a map out that has chunks of Turkey right down to the Sinai, all, all

[01:24:55] of Israel, any of the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Iraq and Kuwait and a chunk of Iran.

[01:25:01] And that is Syria for them.

[01:25:02] You know, the Ba'ath party used to produce maps.

[01:25:05] I actually, I have to find this somewhere.

[01:25:07] It's like gotten lost in a move, but I, I took one of the maps from the Ba'ath party

[01:25:11] that they actually had up on a wall and I grabbed it in Damascus many, many years ago.

[01:25:15] And it showed what's now Hatay.

[01:25:18] It's Iskandrun, that, that area, Alexandretta in Turkey.

[01:25:22] And they still counted it as part of Syria.

[01:25:24] And then there was a weird kind of dotted line where Lebanon was like, oh, it's this kind

[01:25:28] of like renegade province, you know, like Taiwan, you know, that kind of

[01:25:32] kind of thinking.

[01:25:33] So, I mean, it depends on who you're talking to.

[01:25:36] And again, I mean, when we look at the Islamic state, you know, what, what was their full name?

[01:25:41] You know, it was Iraq and Al-Sham.

[01:25:42] It wasn't, you know, it wasn't just, you know, Suriyeh.

[01:25:45] So, you know, there's a potential there.

[01:25:48] I think that they, for right now, they're using it as shorthand for the polity that

[01:25:52] we know as Syria.

[01:25:53] But again, it's interesting in an Islamic context, you know, it means something very,

[01:25:59] it's like saying, well, we're the Islamic state, Hhorasan.

[01:26:02] Okay.

[01:26:02] Well, what does that embody?

[01:26:04] Right.

[01:26:05] On those, the, the, the borders that we have on the map right now, those were drawn by French

[01:26:10] and British diplomats in the, you know, after, after World War I, those are not Islamic borders,

[01:26:17] which is always, I mean, kind of the root of all the problems that we've had there in

[01:26:21] the last, you know, century or so.

[01:26:23] Last topic here, and we should definitely do a part two in the new year once things form

[01:26:30] up a bit to really focus maybe just on this question exclusively.

[01:26:34] Actually, we should definitely do that.

[01:26:36] But Iran's axis of resistance has been kind of like the cornerstone of their national security

[01:26:41] strategy for 20 years, right?

[01:26:43] What do they do now?

[01:26:44] I don't think they're really going to change behavior.

[01:26:46] And I think it's farcical to think that they're not going to keep attempting to rebuild what

[01:26:52] they had tried to build before.

[01:26:54] I think that, you know, I was asked this on those Twitter live things, you know, that you

[01:26:59] participate.

[01:26:59] It's like, it's not a podcast.

[01:27:00] What's it called?

[01:27:01] I always forget what it's called because my brain is mush right now.

[01:27:03] Twitter spaces, I think.

[01:27:04] Yeah.

[01:27:04] Twitter spaces is what it is.

[01:27:05] Yeah.

[01:27:06] But I was on there and, and I was actually asked about this, you know, the, the only way

[01:27:12] the axis of resistance would go away.

[01:27:13] This is my answer is if the, the regime that promotes absolute willayat al-faki under Khamenei

[01:27:19] and whoever else is his successor magically disappeared one day in its entirety because

[01:27:24] it is such a quintessential ideological and also just kind of basic security policy.

[01:27:29] It's a religious edict.

[01:27:30] Yes.

[01:27:31] It's that they want that.

[01:27:33] Yeah.

[01:27:33] But then how do they rebuild it?

[01:27:35] Well, we have to look at where the success stories are.

[01:27:37] And I would say the one success story out of October 7th was with the Yemeni group of Ansar

[01:27:43] Allah or the Houthis.

[01:27:45] That creates a lot of other problems because they are very far away.

[01:27:48] You can interdict a lot of shipments to them.

[01:27:50] They are limited in terms of where they can really expand to.

[01:27:54] I'm not saying they can't pop off a few ballistic missiles and drones and they can't threaten

[01:27:58] the Red Sea or the Arabian Sea.

[01:28:00] No, they'll continue to do that.

[01:28:01] That's actually a major, major thing that they're able to bring under their mode of control

[01:28:06] here.

[01:28:06] But, you know, in terms of can they can the Iranians take some fighters of theirs and

[01:28:11] kind of like pop them somewhere here and there?

[01:28:12] Very small numbers.

[01:28:14] But what I do see is you're seeing an expansion of Ansar Allah's both influence and kind of

[01:28:19] connections across the region in kind of these axis of resistance.

[01:28:23] I put that in quotes zones.

[01:28:25] So in Lebanon, they used to they actually still have this.

[01:28:28] It's in Shia in the section of Beirut.

[01:28:31] They have an office that's down there that would coordinate with Lebanese Hezbollah and

[01:28:34] they do some press announcements and stuff.

[01:28:36] But the one that's had the most presence recently is in Baghdad, where Ansar Allah has opened

[01:28:41] up a little office there and they are showing up with different tribal groups and they are

[01:28:44] showing up with different other organizations, Shia militias.

[01:28:48] They are trying to show support for this.

[01:28:50] You had airstrikes that involved American forces and possibly the Israelis where certain Ansar

[01:28:56] Allah people who were announced as killed in action were cooperating with groups like

[01:29:00] Qatab Hezbollah, Qatab Sayyid al-Shuhadda and Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujabah and drone technology

[01:29:06] and a lot of other fun stuff that is a little bit more secretive.

[01:29:09] So I see kind of a connection going on there.

[01:29:11] The other thing is it's the absorption of remnant groups.

[01:29:17] You know, and we think about this, you know, with the collapse of Bashar al-Assad's regime,

[01:29:20] well, what happens to all these other groups that he was kind of backing?

[01:29:23] And obviously, the Iranians were pouring a lot of money into those organizations too.

[01:29:26] Well, some of those groups still have pretty strong networks in Lebanon, which, and I've

[01:29:32] written about this for West Point, CTC West Point, where back in the day, if you had an

[01:29:37] office and you were a Palestinian group and it was in Damascus, bar none, the, you know,

[01:29:42] the Assad regime would have some finger on the trigger when it came to dealing with you

[01:29:46] and controlling what you could do.

[01:29:48] Well, now the case is if you don't really have a kind of nest for yourself in Syria that

[01:29:53] kind of gave you some autonomy from the Iranians, well, you could kind of nest yourself with

[01:29:58] the Assad people and kind of play that game and maybe even take some more Iranian funding

[01:30:03] because clearly they want to get some influence.

[01:30:04] Well, now you're kind of fully invested with the Iranians, you know, whether you like it

[01:30:08] or not.

[01:30:09] And a lot of these groups, you know, it's, you kind of look at it like the PFLPGC.

[01:30:13] In 2013, summer 2013, I was like, this group is on the way out.

[01:30:16] You know, they have been crushed too many times.

[01:30:18] They have internal splinters, da, da, da, da.

[01:30:20] Well, the group had resurrected with a lot of new Iranian funding and a lot of, you know,

[01:30:24] Bashar al-Assad's guys were using them to kind of control Palestinians and control other issues

[01:30:28] that were there.

[01:30:29] But what happens to them now?

[01:30:31] I mean, it's not like they're running Palestinian camps anymore.

[01:30:33] They can't.

[01:30:34] They're as pro, you know, pro Assad as they came.

[01:30:37] They didn't even actually mention what happened in Syria in their official publications.

[01:30:41] So you look at stuff like that, you know, where are they going to go?

[01:30:44] And I keep looking at it as, well, if anything, the only place they have to look is either

[01:30:48] they counter Hezbollah and they say, we are not with that anymore.

[01:30:51] And what will probably happen is these guys grow old, the group fades into history, and

[01:30:56] they're just kind of a relic.

[01:30:57] Yeah, the popular Front of Liberation of Palestine General Command.

[01:30:59] I remember them when, you know, in 1875.

[01:31:02] So that's a potential.

[01:31:03] Do I think it'll happen?

[01:31:04] No, I actually think because a lot of these guys still need to get paid, need to kind

[01:31:09] of continue operating.

[01:31:10] And, you know, it's just, this has turned into the career now.

[01:31:13] Now they're going to probably have to be reliant on the Iranians, which actually also

[01:31:17] puts the Iranians in an interesting position where they can exert further control.

[01:31:21] It might be on a smaller kind of rump group, but it's still something.

[01:31:25] And knowing how the Iranians operate, they tend to kind of focus on that.

[01:31:28] And it's like, okay, we take anything that we want.

[01:31:30] We don't care how negatively they're viewed by other Palestinians.

[01:31:34] We just need that.

[01:31:34] We need that.

[01:31:35] We'll rebrand it.

[01:31:35] Don't worry.

[01:31:36] It's Islamic resistance now.

[01:31:37] Okay, that's this, that's this, that's this.

[01:31:39] And they just keep grabbing and sucking in.

[01:31:41] So that wouldn't shock me with that.

[01:31:42] I mean, I do see a lot of groups increasingly coming under more Iranian influence, but I don't

[01:31:48] really think that that is, at the end of the day, the only possibility that can happen.

[01:31:53] I mean, because we're already seeing other splits within Lebanese Christian camps in terms

[01:31:57] of what the response is to how Hezbollah has been acting since they really got their asses

[01:32:02] handed to them by the Israelis.

[01:32:03] I mean, you even see this from the Allness, the Free Patriotic Movement, where I'm not saying

[01:32:09] that they've kind of lost their pro Hezbollah feelings, but my God, are they out there in

[01:32:13] public, you know, saying things like, we disagree with this.

[01:32:16] We don't like this.

[01:32:16] We don't like this.

[01:32:17] We don't like this.

[01:32:17] We might have to end the alliance.

[01:32:18] Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da.

[01:32:19] So there might be a little bit more of that.

[01:32:21] But you don't, for the record here, because this has been making the, making the rounds

[01:32:25] on social media that you don't see the Iranians.

[01:32:29] If I understand you correctly, you don't see the Iranians closing the file on the militia

[01:32:33] project and going in a radically different direction and like putting all their cards

[01:32:37] on building a nuclear weapon per se.

[01:32:39] I don't think this, again, two things can be true at the same time.

[01:32:43] You know, I would say there's parallels here.

[01:32:45] I think that they have never really stopped in terms of pursuing a nuclear weapon.

[01:32:48] They want the option.

[01:32:50] Well, I think they like having options and I think their level of having options at times

[01:32:55] it fluctuates.

[01:32:56] I think now there's more of an interest for them, even more of an interest, not saying

[01:33:00] that it ever really died down and having a nuclear weapon.

[01:33:03] I also don't think that just ideologically speaking and also how they know how the game

[01:33:07] is played, that you want to give up proxies or not have them rebuilt or not have them so

[01:33:13] that they provide leverage or another asset that you can utilize.

[01:33:17] I don't think they want to lose that.

[01:33:18] And I know I look at this and it's kind of like how they've maintained them before.

[01:33:22] Again, wrote an entire thing in CTC West Point about this, about how they use sticks and carrots

[01:33:27] to control, how they'll splinter things, how they will kind of create, have like cellular

[01:33:31] replication of different groups, sometimes for no other purpose than to just kind of create

[01:33:36] this notion of two groups competing against one another, even though the two don't care.

[01:33:40] So it wouldn't shock me if they continued doing that.

[01:33:43] Do I think it's a very effective strategy for them?

[01:33:45] Not anymore, based on demonstration by what the Israelis could pull off.

[01:33:49] I mean, I think, you know, if that's your best plan going forward, what's the reinvention

[01:33:54] that you can do?

[01:33:55] You know, it's not just invent, you know, investing in more drones or something else.

[01:33:59] I mean, I think that they're kind of saddled with this, whether they like it or not.

[01:34:02] I don't think that funding is going to just be magically cut from a group like Lebanese

[01:34:06] Hezbollah.

[01:34:07] But I do think that, you know, you look at kind of what Khamenei said today, I said earlier

[01:34:11] in the day, he came out and said, you know, the axis of resistance, it's not like a material

[01:34:17] object.

[01:34:17] You can't just break it.

[01:34:19] You know, that it's constantly growing.

[01:34:20] It's actually something more amorphous.

[01:34:22] It's like a spiritual idea of the Islamic resistance.

[01:34:25] That's all well and good.

[01:34:26] But I do think that that kind of ability to kind of morph and change and kind of utilize

[01:34:31] different proxies and utilize them in very, very different ways sometimes and grow different

[01:34:36] ones.

[01:34:37] I don't think that's going anywhere.

[01:34:38] I think they've invested so much that you can't, you know, you can't kind of not go

[01:34:43] forward using it.

[01:34:44] But I do think that in terms of their effectiveness, that will kind of go way down, at least for

[01:34:48] the next 10 years.

[01:34:49] I think the presence that they have in the Middle East right now has hit a such an ebb, kind

[01:34:56] of an ebbing position that it makes it look like it's, it's like they're almost back to

[01:35:01] the beginning in terms of where they are.

[01:35:03] They've lost now three to four generations of leadership just in Lebanese Hezbollah, and

[01:35:08] that was their key note.

[01:35:09] What does that say about the Iraqis?

[01:35:10] What does it say about further splinters or pushback to the Iranians?

[01:35:14] I think the Iranians have been able to handle that stuff pretty well in the past.

[01:35:17] But I do think this is kind of one of those breaking moments in terms of, okay, well,

[01:35:22] we've got this problem.

[01:35:24] How do we micromanage this?

[01:35:25] How do we recraft a narrative?

[01:35:27] How do we kind of change it around so it looks like it's not so bad?

[01:35:30] How do we blame someone else?

[01:35:31] It's like Darvo, but for policy people.

[01:35:34] Do the Iranians have any say in the new Syria?

[01:35:38] I think that remains to be seen, but you never know.

[01:35:41] You never know.

[01:35:41] I mean, again, HTS is still a listed terrorist organization.

[01:35:44] I think we have to look at kind of the pragmatism of other groups like the Taliban.

[01:35:49] The Taliban, which hosted a lot of Uyghur fighters.

[01:35:51] I remember somebody put this up as a post and it was, you know, with all these Uyghur

[01:35:54] fighters that are in Syria for like over a decade, there's going to be a lot of issues

[01:35:58] with China and I said, you know, I quote tweeted it and I put it up.

[01:36:01] You know, just ask the Taliban about that.

[01:36:03] The reference being the Taliban who occasionally would put up stuff about, you know, we can't

[01:36:08] believe our Muslim compatriots or co-religionists are being oppressed by godless Chinese.

[01:36:14] You know, we're going through this and we will recruit them and they'll also fight

[01:36:18] the Americans.

[01:36:19] And then you had a bunch of Uyghurs that went off to Syria.

[01:36:21] I think it's really easy to jettison these populations if somebody comes in with a lot

[01:36:25] of money and a lot of influence and says, hey, yes, sure, we'll support your government,

[01:36:29] your project doesn't really matter.

[01:36:31] We'll even build you a dam.

[01:36:32] Just work with us and we'll give you what you need.

[01:36:34] And we'll also give you official recognition from a very powerful country.

[01:36:37] We already know you guys don't really like the Americans.

[01:36:40] So I kind of look at it from that perspective.

[01:36:42] I mean, it's the same thing with the Russians.

[01:36:43] The Russians who always play this game of, you know, we're the real guys fighting the

[01:36:48] jihadists.

[01:36:48] We're the real ones fighting the Islamists.

[01:36:50] We're really doing all this stuff.

[01:36:51] This is like the running public message.

[01:36:53] And we're also helping protect Christians in the Middle East.

[01:36:56] Interestingly, they opened up connections with the Taliban almost immediately.

[01:36:59] Same guys who, you know, were like, well, I thought they fought the Mujahideen.

[01:37:03] And, you know, I don't understand.

[01:37:04] How could that possibly happen?

[01:37:05] Well, I do because they're being realistic on it in terms of, well, this is still anti-American.

[01:37:11] We can thumb our noses at the Americans.

[01:37:13] And we can see what can happen.

[01:37:15] Again, it's markedly harder in Syria given what the Russians and what the Iranians have

[01:37:19] done to the Syrian people.

[01:37:21] But I do think that if you have different structures that are in there that kind of

[01:37:25] want to play this game, it's not necessarily out of the realm of possibility that something

[01:37:30] like that happens.

[01:37:30] And again, I'm saying this very, very early on.

[01:37:32] It sounds utterly ludicrous right now.

[01:37:34] But I do think the way the Iranians have played before, they've had a lot of connections

[01:37:39] with Al-Qaeda-associated groups.

[01:37:40] They've had a lot of connections with a lot of iffy characters.

[01:37:43] Same thing with the Russians.

[01:37:44] Posted one of bin Laden's kids for a long time.

[01:37:47] Yeah.

[01:37:48] But you'll notice how the narrative also changes with that, too.

[01:37:50] Well, the Iranians are actually holding them hostage to control Al-Qaeda.

[01:37:53] Yeah, that's true.

[01:37:54] Okay.

[01:37:55] But also, they went there because they knew they'd be safe.

[01:37:59] And also, they were using Iran as a conduit for a lot of different nasty stuff, which means

[01:38:04] the Iranians are also facilitating a lot of this because, you know, enemy of my enemy

[01:38:07] is my friend.

[01:38:08] Yeah.

[01:38:08] So, you know, I look at that and kind of go, well, there's a lot of other possibilities

[01:38:11] here.

[01:38:12] And it's fascinating what can change overnight.

[01:38:14] And again, we can see this from just the last 10 days, what has changed overnight.

[01:38:19] Two weeks ago, the conversation we just had would have been absolutely unfeasible.

[01:38:23] Yes.

[01:38:24] You would have asked me, like, are you mixing the Captagon with crack if I were talking

[01:38:28] about this?

[01:38:29] Seriously.

[01:38:29] Yeah, well, let's cap it here for now.

[01:38:32] But we'll definitely pick it up in the new year after maybe we have a better sense of what

[01:38:37] the government in Damascus looks like, how the Iranians and Russians are responding to

[01:38:41] everything, how the incoming administration here is kind of what their stance towards all

[01:38:46] this is going to be.

[01:38:48] We'll see.

[01:38:49] Any other closing thoughts that you have for us?

[01:38:53] I think there is a vested interest for Iran and for Lebanese Hezbollah not to look weak,

[01:39:00] despite the fact that anything, just looking at them directly, you see weakness.

[01:39:05] And I think that will come down to, we're going to start seeing more instances and more reports

[01:39:11] of other attacks in southern Lebanon where there's kind of, I see it as kind of a distraction

[01:39:16] that they're trying to do.

[01:39:17] What thing in Syria?

[01:39:18] I didn't see anything happen in Syria.

[01:39:20] You can just see it from their press announcements that they're just like, it's bizarro world.

[01:39:24] Hey, how come no one's complaining about the Zionist bombing of Syria?

[01:39:28] We care about that.

[01:39:29] That shouldn't happen.

[01:39:30] Like I was reading a statement going, do you have no shame?

[01:39:33] No, you don't.

[01:39:34] But I mean, I see that in, there's kind of a compendium of issues that they're doing here

[01:39:40] where those attacks in the south, you're going to start seeing groups that are more aligned

[01:39:44] with Lebanese Hezbollah starting to do things.

[01:39:47] Lebanese Hezbollah will continue to do stuff.

[01:39:49] And it will be almost as if, that didn't happen.

[01:39:52] That didn't happen.

[01:39:53] We were just focused on this the whole time.

[01:39:54] No, Syria's fine.

[01:39:55] No, we totally support whatever.

[01:39:56] You know, they elected them, I think.

[01:39:58] I see more and more and more of that.

[01:40:00] And I think as the Israelis try to solidify certain positions, both in Lebanon and Syria,

[01:40:05] and there's kind of a new status quo that's developed, they are going to try to reinvent

[01:40:09] the whole, you know, Mukulma, you know, Mukulma Slemi kind of branding and say, you know, we

[01:40:15] just kept fighting and we were defending Lebanon because they think that this narrative is going

[01:40:19] to somehow fly after everything that's happened.

[01:40:22] I think that they're kind of out of ideas.

[01:40:24] But just because one is out of ideas doesn't mean that it won't actually, you know, you

[01:40:28] keep throwing shit against the wall and something sticks.

[01:40:31] Yeah, it won't stay that way forever.

[01:40:32] So, I mean, I just, I kind of see that and I see it developing and I saw it developing by

[01:40:36] very early December and just watching kind of the death trends and watching some of the

[01:40:41] operational trends and going, yeah, this is different than the past couple months.

[01:40:47] And I see what they're doing here and I see how they're marketing it.

[01:40:50] Okay, we're just going to pretend Syria never happened and we'll just keep talking like it

[01:40:54] never happened.

[01:40:55] It's all good.

[01:40:55] It's the stages of grief, right?

[01:40:57] Yeah.

[01:40:58] But they'll come around to all of them.

[01:41:00] Yeah, we accepted this the whole time.

[01:41:02] It's fine.

[01:41:03] Yeah.

[01:41:03] Yeah.

[01:41:04] All right.

[01:41:04] Well, thank you as always for your wisdom and your mastery of the region and all the players

[01:41:11] there within.

[01:41:12] We'll pick this up in a couple months.

[01:41:15] Thank you for having me.

[01:41:16] I'm still amazed that every single time, 2024, 2023 through 2024, I can't say this enough.

[01:41:24] This is a singular, singular moment in Middle Eastern history.

[01:41:29] This is, I genuinely, as somebody who's been following this for decades now, I cannot believe

[01:41:35] that I'm both living through it, able to write about it and able to witness it.

[01:41:38] And I can't say that enough about what happened and what transpired over the past couple of

[01:41:44] months, just the past couple of months, the last five months, actually, no, four months,

[01:41:48] I would say has been so monumental that you can't summarize it.

[01:41:54] No.

[01:41:54] Yeah.

[01:41:55] And whatever, whatever comes next, it's going to be very different from what came before,

[01:42:00] whether that's better or for worse.

[01:42:02] I don't know.

[01:42:02] We don't, we don't know yet, but it's, it's going to be, it's going to be very different.

[01:42:06] Um, the Middle East that existed before October 7th, 2023 is, is, is gone.

[01:42:12] Oh yeah.

[01:42:13] A hundred percent.

[01:42:14] This is, this is like three six day wars wrapped into one.

[01:42:17] Great comparison there.

[01:42:19] Uh, really, really kind of sums it up.

[01:42:21] Uh, we will, we will leave you there for now.

[01:42:23] Thank you.

[01:42:23] We'll, we'll talk again.

[01:42:24] Thank you.

[01:42:50] Thanks for listening.

[01:42:52] This is Secrets and Spies.