➡ The Syrian government, led by Bashar al-Assad, has fallen after ruling for nearly 50 years. This has led to uncertainty about who will take over, with the main contender being a group linked to al-Qaeda and ISIS, backed by the U.S. and Turkey. The fall of the government has also affected the balance of power in the Middle East, with Iran losing its influence in the region. The situation in Syria is complex, with various groups vying for control and the U.S. already involved with troops on the ground.
➡ The article discusses the political shifts in the Middle East, with Turkey and Israel emerging as winners due to recent changes. It suggests that Turkey may be trying to recreate the Ottoman Empire, while Israel has gained more territory. The U.S. is also seen as a winner, having backed the changes. However, the article warns that U.S.-led regime changes often lead to chaos, citing examples from Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and Ukraine. It also suggests that the Syrian army may have been bribed to not resist the changes.
➡ The situation in Syria is complex, with Turkey and the U.S. celebrating the removal of Assad, but the future is uncertain. Jihadists, who were once pawns, are now trying to control the government, which could lead to more chaos. Russia, despite some losses, still has influence and could cause trouble. In the short term, Israel has gained, but the long-term outcomes for all involved are unclear and potentially messy.

Good morning. It’s great to be with you. We always cover breaking news or important events in our newsletters and our streams such as this. But I have to say this week has seen even more surprises. We had a long list of surprises beginning last summer in terms of the political campaign. That’s over. But now we’re back looking at the international stage and what’s going on. And, of course, the number one news story right now is basically the fall of the Syrian government to be replaced with, we don’t quite know what. So we’ll be talking about that.

So what’s happened? I’m going to start with what I’ll call the headlines, the things that you may have heard about. We’ll flesh that a little bit. Then I’m going to give you the backstory of what’s really going on behind the scenes or what caused this. And then finally, we’ll talk about what happens next. Of course, we don’t know that with any certainty, but we can offer a few different scenarios. So the government of Bashar al-Assad has fallen. He was the president of Syria. He’s been in there almost 20 years. His father, Hafez al-Assad, ruled for 30 years, approximately.

So between the two of them, the father and the son, they ruled Syria for 50 years. This was the Baathis party. It’s a kind of religious nationalist type party, really pretty much unique to Syria and Iraq before the fall of Saddam Hussein. Let’s just be clear. These guys were bad actors. No tears are being shed over their fall. Actually, some celebrations breaking out. They were not only dictators. I mean, there were enough of those around the world, but they used imprisonment, torture, rape, even crematorium to dispose of the victims. One of the things that’s happened is the prisons, now that the rebels or the jihadists, really, I would say terrorists, have taken over, they’ve opened the prisons, and it’s worse than you can imagine.

Again, no sympathy for the al-Assad family, Bashar and Hafez. Syria has fought frequently with Israel. There were major wars in 1967. At that time, Israel gained the Golan Heights. I’ve actually been up on the Golan Heights with the Israeli military. There’s kind of no man’s land, fences, barbed wire, minefields. This is where parts of Syria, Israel 11 and Jordan, Iraq, all converge, so it’s a tough neighborhood. Very dry, very barren, but like I said, I was up there with some Israeli military. Israel took that in 1967. They almost lost it in the 1973 war, but they pushed back and they’ve held it ever since.

Syria has just come through. We’re really at the end. This is the final stage, if you will, or the end of a 13-year civil war. So on top of fighting with Israel and other countries in the area, they’ve had this long civil war. The main group, there are, I should be clear, you could take a map of Syria and just carve it up like a pie. There’s a section in the northwest sort of controlled by this one terrorist group, Hayat Tahir, al-Sham, HTS for short. HTS is the group that’s asserting leadership over Syria today. By the way, they’re an offshoot of al-Qaeda.

They were affiliated with ISIS, and they’re backed by the United States and Turkey, which is a NATO ally. So if you’re saying, hey, wait a second, al-Qaeda, ISIS, they sound like the bad guys. Why is the U.S. backing them? Well, that’s how things work in the Middle East. We backed them to get rid of Assad, which is now happening, but we might have some al-Qaeda sympathizers on our hands. We’ll see how that plays out. But again, there’s this pie analogy. The northwest part of Syria is controlled by Turkey, but they fight the Kurds. The Kurds are in that area.

Kurds are a nationalist group. They don’t have their own country. They have a kind of quasi-country called Kurdistan. That’s what they call it. It runs along the border between Syria and Turkey, out to Iraq, Al Jazeera, and then out actually into Iran, but includes parts of Turkey. President Erdogan of Turkey has been in a bitter fight with the Kurds. He worries that basically the separatist movement will spread to part of Turkish territory, so he’s moved across the border to crush them. By the way, the U.S. has 1,600 troops in this area protecting, well, not protecting, I guess, kind of seizing Syrian oil fields.

That was interesting. President-elect Trump came out the other day on his Truth Social. That’s kind of his social media company, similar to X or Twitter. He said, you know, the U.S. should keep out. This is not our fight. Sorry, Mr. President-elect. It is already there. The U.S. has 1,600 troops, mostly CIA, paramilitaries, and special forces that have been supporting the rebels and also protecting the oil fields so that oil could be diverted for the benefit of the Kurds, not the Syrians themselves. So Trump may not want to get involved, but so much to let him know we are involved and have been for going back to actually the war in Iraq.

So we’re there in northern Syria. The Kurds also have territory in eastern Syria, closer to Iraq. That’s a little further away from Turkey. They have a little more autonomy there. There are also rebel groups. I say rebels. They’re really jihadists at best, maybe terrorists. Some of them are terrorists coming in from Jordan. So you’ve got a rebel group coming from the south, a terrorist group coming from the north, U.S. troops in the northeast, Iraq in the east. So, you know, and then the Alawites, that’s the ones who support the Baptist Party, the Al-Assad family. They’re along the Mediterranean coast.

You’re kind of rubbing shoulders with Lebanon. They’ve got the Druze. Again, you don’t have to be expert on all these religious subgroups and national subgroups, but it really is a mess. Syria is barely a country, but now it actually has fallen. In any situation like this, you get winners and losers. So let’s just go down some of them quickly. And as I say, I’ll come back to what’s really going on behind the scenes, because this is more than meets the eye. The biggest loser is clearly Iran. Iran is a Shiite country, if you know that much about the political Islam.

There are Shiites and Sunnis. The Sunnis are predominantly the Arabs. Not all the Arabs, by any means, but a lot of the Arabs, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, those are all Sunni countries. The Shia are mostly in Iran, but they’re also somewhat in Iraq, and there are some in Syria as well. Just to make it more confusing, Hamas in the south of Israel, in the Gaza Strip, are Sunnis. But they sympathize with the Shiites because they get backing from Iran, and Hezbollah in the north and Lebanon are Shiites. Iran constructed what they call a Shiite crescent of influence.

It runs from Iran to Iraq to Syria into Lebanon, and particularly Hezbollah, where they supplied all the weapons, they supplied all the support, and gave them influence far from their own borders and enabled them to create turmoil in the Middle East. I should add, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, which is the southern tip of Saudi Arabia or the Arabian Peninsula adjacent to the Red Sea, are also part of the Shiite crescent. Anyway, it’s all gone, pretty much gone. Israel attacked Hezbollah, destroyed a lot of their missiles, moved into Lebanon, killed their leaders. New leaders arose.

Israel killed them. You just really decimated the Hezbollah leadership. You’ve probably heard about the fact that Israel created a manufacturing company that made pagers and walkie-talkies under false pretenses, put bombs in them, sold them to Hezbollah, and then detonated them all and killed and wounded hundreds, or if not more, of Hezbollah operatives. So it’s been complete turmoil there. Anyway, that’s all gone. And it’s not a coincidence that Israel attacked Hezbollah. Then just a few days ago, about a week ago actually, we used to cease-fire with Hezbollah, and then here come the rebels or the jihadists coming in from Turkey and northern Syria to make their way to Damascus.

This was all orchestrated. I’ll come back to that in a little more detail. Another big loser is Iraq. Iraq really kind of a pawn of Iran at this point, so to the extent that Iran loses, Iraq loses as well. Hezbollah has just about finished. Their pipeline of weapons from Iran will be cut off because those weapons come through Syria to southern Lebanon, which is where Hezbollah is. So Hezbollah has not only been attacked and decimated by the Israelis, but now their pipeline to Iran is cut off because Syria has fallen. Lebanon stands to be a loser.

Lebanon is a mess on a good day. I happen to know a lot about Lebanon. I don’t want to spend all of our time on that. But they’ve got the Shiite in the south, closest to Israel, which is Hezbollah, and we talked about that. But they’ve also got a large Christian element. This goes all the way back to the Crusades and the French protectorate after World War I. And they have their own army called the Falange, and then you’ve got the Druze up in the mountains. They have their own army. So the Falange is not going to sit still for any kind of resurgence of Hezbollah.

And if the jihadists in Syria try to make a move on Lebanon, which is possible, try to fill in that void where Hezbollah is now gone. Bearing in mind that jihadists in Syria are Sunnis, there’s no love lost between them and the Shiites. So if they attack Hezbollah in Lebanon, look for the Lebanon Christian Falange to fight back. So we had civil wars on and off in Lebanon for 30 years. That could be coming back. So that’s your set of losers. The winners are very clear. Turkey is the biggest winner. Erdogan has this kind of fantasy vision.

I don’t know what. Reconstructing the old Ottoman Empire. This goes back to the launch of Arabia and the fall of the empire in 1922. But Turkey at one time, it wasn’t Turkey, it was called the Ottoman Empire, controlled all the areas we’re talking about right now. So Syria, Lebanon, parts of the presence of Israel, which is Palestine, all the way down to Egypt and Saudi Arabia. That was all part of the Ottoman Empire, actually Iraq as well. It all fell in stages after World War I, stretching out to 1922. Turkey emerged as a country under Ataturk.

It was secular for a while, but now the religious element is getting dominance again. So the question is, does Erdogan have visions of reconstructing the Ottoman Empire? Well, he might. And this was a big move in that direction. Israel is a big winner. They’ve already moved on the Golan Heights. I said they took that in the 1967 war, defended it in the 1973 war they did. But now they’ve moved even closer because the Syrian army just vanished, just melted, took off the uniforms, put on civilian clothes, kind of headed for the hills. We’ll see what happens next.

But they abandoned posts that were Syrian, kind of in the no-man’s line between Syria and Israel, Israeli parts of the Golan Heights. Israel has now moved its tanks forward. The rebels, the jihadists couldn’t put up much of a fight. So Israel has taken more of the Golan Heights. The U.S. is a big winner. Look, the U.S. was one of the backers. The biggest backer was Turkey, but the U.S. encountered the CIA to be involved in this. They wanted to give Russia a black eye. Obama was talking about the Al-Assad’s back in 2012, 2013. Well, it was a while ago, but now the Assad’s are gone.

The U.S. can give itself a pat on the back. And again, it gives Russia a black eye because Russia was the main backer, along with Iran, of Syria and the Al-Assad’s. There are some parties I would say are losers and winners. The Kurds, for example, in the West, the parts of adjacent to Turkey, they’re a loser because Turkey actually trained and backed this jihadist army that came in. And so to the extent that Turkey has strengthened its hand in Western Syria, the Kurds are losers. But in Eastern Syria, closer to Iraq, the Kurds might actually have great autonomy because Erdogan of Turkey’s got his hands full now with what happened.

Russia is, again, I would say a loser and a winner. They’ve lost Syria. They’ve lost their main client, which is Al-Assad. They have a major air base in Syria. They have a major naval base on the Mediterranean Sea. And TARDIS, this is very important to Russia. You just have to look at a map of Russia. About 80 percent or 90 percent of the coastline is frozen. It’s not far from the Arctic Circle or in the Bering Sea. And so they don’t have warm water ports year round. They do in the Black Sea, but the Black Sea has a choke point, which is the Bosporus, which is controlled by Turkey.

I doubt Turkey would close it, but Turkey can certainly threaten that. But Russia had gained a warm water year round port in Syria for their navy. They still have it, but that’s now in jeopardy. They’re going to have to see if they can do a deal with Turkey to maintain that, but it’s not clear. So Russia is a big loser in Syria, although they may be able to preserve some of their military presence. But they’re a winner in Ukraine. One of the reasons Syria didn’t ride to the rescue of Assad was because they’ve obviously got their hands full in Ukraine.

They’re winning decisively in Ukraine. I don’t want to spend too much time on the Ukrainian war, but to the extent that Russia no longer has to deal with Syria, even though that’s a loss, it probably strengthens their hand in Ukraine. I would add to all of this, everything I just described, and I took you through the winners and losers, what I call the cautionary tale. This was regime change. The U.S. was involved, mainly led by Turkey, but the U.S. was definitely involved. The history of U.S. regime change is horrible. It just really ends badly.

We’re good at it. We do it. Gaddafi got killed in Libya. Saddam Hussein was hanged in Iraq. We occupied Afghanistan for 20 years. We backed up Ukraine. Well, what’s happened in all those places? Iraq is now under the thumb of Iran. Libya is in chaos. The Taliban are back in charge in Afghanistan, and the Ukrainians are losing badly to Russia. So as I said, the U.S. and Ukraine, we did the regime change in 2014 with that Maidan, so-called cholera revolution, but backed by the CIA and MI6. So we’re good at regime change, but we’re not good at the outcome.

And I would say sometimes I wonder if the U.S. just wants chaos, meaning it’s not that we have a policy substituting one rule for another. We just want to stir the pot and make sure things fall apart. If the U.S. wants chaos, to paraphrase H.L. Mencken, we may soon get it good and hard. So I just want to update. So that’s an overview. Some of that may be new to you, a little more detail than you’re hearing from the legacy media. But I just want to extend that. There’s literally news breaking as we speak on a daily basis, so I just have a few notes on that, which I’ll go through.

Number one, this was definitely a regime change operation. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s a popular uprising. People are cheering in the streets. Yeah, maybe a few people waving flags here and there. This was regime change. It was orchestrated. It’s been planned for months, by the way. Again, this army was training inside Turkey. It was not a coincidence that Israel took out Hezbollah, Bashar al-Assad, the leader. Where was his, you know, speech to the people? What did he do to rally his generals? What did he do to say we’re going to fight back, we’re going to fight to the last man, to defend Damascus? He didn’t do any of that.

He and his entire family, they’re now in Moscow. They got out of them. He’s going to have to adjust from warm weather to cold weather, but they’re in Moscow. But in the run-up to this, in the months ahead, and he took his family to Moscow some months ago and left them there. He went back to Libya, sorry, to Syria for a while. But the fact that he left his family in Moscow almost seems like he knew what was coming. And he didn’t do anything to rally the troops, so to speak. And by the way, why did the Syrian army just—they literally took off the uniforms, put on civilian clothes, and, you know, just melted.

There was no fighting. There was no resistance. You can win or lose in a war, but they didn’t even fight. What’s up with that? Well, highly likely that the Syrian generals were in on it. They got bribes. They were paid, probably by Turkey, maybe by the U.S. And they said, hey, when this starts, don’t fight. It’s just your leader’s gone. He’s on his way to Moscow. Israel controls the south. Israel may move up to the Litany River in Lebanon, by the way. I said Israel took territory in the Golan Heights, which they did. They may be taking a little slice of Lebanon while they’re at it, up to the Litany River, which is kind of a natural border, some distance into Lebanon from the current Israeli border.

So it looks like the generals might have been bribed. A lot of people saw this coming. I’m sure the U.S., U.K., France were all in on it. But there’s no question that Turkey was the leader of this. By the way, how does the ragtag group of about 15,000 jihadists overrun the entire Syrian army? Bear in mind, the Syria has been fighting Israel for 30 years. Well, they did it with Turkish drones, in part. So between the drones coming and the money and the bribes and the pre-production, this was a regime change operation. Again, not anything to do with a popular uprising.

And Assad almost certainly saw it coming. So at this point, Turkey’s in charge, but they’ve got their hands full. It’s one thing to set up a jihadist army, go in and overthrow Assad, although, as I say, he might have seen it coming. He’s gone. They’re in Damascus. They’re taking over the government, et cetera. But Turkey’s sitting there saying, okay, we can pull all the strings. As I said, we’ve got a big chunk of Syria now. It’s good old Ottoman Empire days. I wouldn’t be so sure of that if I were Erdogan. I said that a lot of times the U.S.

regime change operations, and this is one of them, and badly. This may end very badly for Turkey. So what are the possible outcomes here? Well, one is this is kind of Joe Biden. I have to constantly remind people that he’s still the president. Trump’s the one running around the world shaking hands with world leaders in Paris and seeming to run the show. That just shows you how weak. There’s basically nobody home at the White House. I’d say pull the 25th Amendment and get rid of Biden, but then you’d be stuck with Harrison and you’d be worse off.

So we have no leadership in the U.S. right now, but to the extent that Biden has said anything, he said, well, why don’t we have the United Nations come in and set up a model constitution and all the parties, the Alawites and the Shiites and the Sunnis and the Christians will all be represented? Fine. That’s right out of a textbook. It’s a nice fantasy, but it’s not going to happen. There’s too much hatred. The jihadists are too firm. They’re going to go after the Shiites in the short run, but they’ll probably come for the Christians sooner or later, so I wouldn’t count on any of that.

Another scenario is that Turkey actually takes a chunk of Syria and tries to put in a puppet ruler and run the show. I don’t think that’s going to happen either. They may try. They may think that’s what they’re going to do, but the jihadists were pawns on the push to Damascus, but now that they’re there, they’re not going to act like pawns. They are in the process of trying to run this government. By the way, I said Russia got a black eye and took some losses. They did, but they have a lot of influence and a lot of patience there, so don’t underestimate the ability of Russia just to cause trouble.

I’m not saying Russia’s going to come in and take over Syria or bring back Assad. That’s not going to happen, but I wouldn’t underestimate Russia’s ability to stir the pot inside Syria, which will keep the U.S. and Turkey, two NATO allies, busy. I said, again, everyone in the White House is high-fiving, saying, yeah, we got rid of Assad, and we took over, and we gave the Russians a black eye. True enough, in the short run, but in the long run, this may get really, really messy. Everything in the Middle East does.

Other than Israel, show me a stable government in the Middle East, in that part of the world. And then, as I said, we may see civil wars break out in Lebanon. Jordan has had a role in this. Jordan’s in the South, but they sent a rebel army in as well. Israel is the one clear party that has gained, at least in the short run, just taking more territory. That’s sort of what Israel does best. So what we have is a regime change operation. It worked. Assad is gone. The U.S. had their hand in it.

The main mover was Turkey. Turkey’s feeling pretty strong right now, like they’re going to, in effect, pull the strings in Syria. I wouldn’t be so sure. So saying it’s a mess is an understatement. But my expectation is that these jihadists who took Damascus may actually, they were pawns so far, but they, as I said, they may not act like pawns right now. They do have ties to Al-Qaeda and ISIS. ISIS is coming back a little bit, and so this may get a lot worse before it gets better. And as I say, you have to keep your eye on the whole map.

Russia’s loss in Syria may actually help them in Ukraine because they can now devote all the resources to mopping up the dumbass and everything in Ukraine east of the Nipah River. So it’s definitely a breaking news category. We’ll be following it closely. We’ll be covering it in future presentations like this and in our newsletters. It’ll affect everything from the price of oil to stability in the Middle East, defense contractors. There’ll be a lot coming out of this. But in the very short run, at least, Israel’s a winner. Iran’s a loser. Russia, a little bit of a mixed bag.

And Turkey and the U.S., high-fiving because they got rid of Assad. Well, that’ll last about a week, and then we’ll see what happens. But it probably won’t be good. So we’ll leave it at that. Thanks for joining us, and we’ll look forward to seeing you the next time. [tr:trw].

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