December 8, 2024 • 20 mins
On Sunday, Syrian rebel forces captured the capital Damascus and forced President Bashar al-Assad to flee the country to Moscow, ending more than 50 years of Assad family rule. What do these rapid and momentous developments mean for the future of Syria? And what are the ramifications for Iran, Israel, and Russia in the Middle East? In this episode, Jacob Heilbrunn speaks with Greg Priddy, a Senior Fellow for the Middle East at the Center for the National Interest. Priddy consults for corporate and financial clients on political risk in the region and previously served as Director for Global Oil at Eurasia Group.
Music by Aleksey Chistilin from Pixabay
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hi, I'm Jacob Heilbrunn, the editor of the National Interest.
(00:27):
My guest today is my colleague, Greg Priddy, a senior fellow at the Center for the National
Interest.
Our topic today is, of course, the startling, even momentous developments that are occurring
in the Middle East, specifically in Syria, where Bashar al-Assad has apparently fled
the country with the help of Russia.
(00:49):
Greg, can you first tell us who is the rebel movement that has stormed Damascus, almost
without opposition?
Well, the opposition to Assad is several different armed groups, but the group that has been
on the move this week is primarily Hayat al-Tahrir al-Sham.
(01:10):
HTS, we'll use that acronym, which is still on the US terrorist list, formally, and it
is kind of descended from al-Nusra Front, which was an al-Qaeda franchise in the area
of northwestern Syria back at the beginning of the civil war.
(01:30):
Though in recent years, it's been under new leadership and has kind of distanced itself
from that past.
While they've been on a roll this week, they've really been trying to distance themselves
from that and make clear to religious minorities in particular, who had supported Assad, that
they're going to be allowed to live in peace.
(01:50):
We'll see if that actually happens, but that's been their line.
Yeah, we know the Taliban made similar promises, but in this situation, do you have more confidence
that this will in fact not devolve into a radical Islamist state that replaces Assad?
I wouldn't say I have a high level of confidence, no.
I think they've been good with the rhetoric, but given the history, all of the awfulness
(02:15):
that has unfolded with regime supporters and what, there clearly is going to be a lot of
payback, and I think they're trying to soft pedal that.
But as we saw with the Taliban, this is somewhat analogous.
They took over very quickly, but then afterwards, they went and looked for people who'd been
associated with the old government.
(02:36):
I'm obviously not making an analogy between those two governments, but in terms of the
new regime, trying to look for them.
But it also is not unified, you've got HTS, then you've got the Syrian National Army,
which is another mostly Sunni Turkish backed group, and then you've got the US backed self-defense
(03:00):
force, which is mostly Kurdish but part Arab in the Northeast, and that has been backed
by the US special forces deployment there in recent years.
It's interesting that they were actually, the SDF reportedly were talking to the regime
about reconciling with the regime as the US has been thinking about getting out of Syria
(03:22):
eventually.
And so that is a big turn of events for them because they seem to think the regime was
solid as recently as a few weeks ago.
What are the implications of this for Assad's benefactors?
Let's start with Iran, which was funneling weapons through Syria to Lebanon, which wanted
(03:42):
to create a sort of Shiite crescent.
All of that seems to be in tatters now.
I'm in Doha at the Doha Forum, so I've had the opportunity to talk to some Iranians here
over the last two days.
And I think there is an acceptance even among regime supporters in Iran that they've had
(04:03):
a land bridge all the way out to the Mediterranean, to Hezbollah.
And since the US withdrawal from Iraq, they've had a highway that they could drive through
the Bukamal border crossing between Iraq and Syria all the way to Damascus and to Lebanon.
And that land bridge is cut now.
(04:23):
You've had some of the rebel forces that have moved into formerly regime areas around Bukamal
and have cut that highway.
And the SDF has been moving west from there into sparsely populated areas around there.
And some of the US...
There's another US-backed militia at Atanf, which is on the border with Jordan, that has
been moving to the northeast reportedly and toward that Bukamal border crossing.
(04:48):
But that land bridge is cut.
Hezbollah is battered.
Assad is out.
You have a Sunni-dominated group that is now in control of what we used to call useful
Syria.
It's cities in the west, not the desert part.
But with the exception of the area that the SDF, which is primarily Kurdish, controls
in the northeast, most of it is controlled by the HDS or Syrian National Army, which
(05:14):
are both Sunni-dominated.
So that cuts them off and it really truncates their sphere of influence down to Iraq.
But I think the Iranians that I talk to here, including people of very pro-regime views,
they seem to accept it.
I don't think there is any likelihood that they think they can fight their way back in
at this point.
(05:35):
Do you think this ups the likelihood that Iran tries to proceed toward an actual nuclear
bomb or does it raise the chances that it would reach some kind of compromise with the
incoming Trump administration?
People have argued that both sides of that.
I think it probably makes it more dangerous because this plus the Israeli air raid that
(06:01):
showed how weak their air defenses were and showed how good the F-35 is as a platform
against those Russian air defenses, those two things combined demonstrate Iran's vulnerability.
Sure, Iran has the ability to throw missiles at things and it could eventually cause Israel
to deplete their missile defense, but that's really the only strength they have.
(06:22):
They're weak on every other front.
Now they've lost Hezbollah, which was their main non-nuclear deterrent against Israel.
That doesn't necessarily mean they're going to weaponize, but it's going to create a big
feeling of vulnerability on their part, I think, that probably pulls them in that direction.
To be honest, they are vulnerable now.
Let's talk briefly about another power that was enmeshed in Syria, Russia.
(06:48):
President Vladimir Putin made a big deal about expanding Russian global influence by taking
the side of Assad in the Civil War.
Now it appears that the Russian naval bases there are a thing of the past and it's a big
blow to Putin.
Do you think that this will make... President-elect Trump today sent out a Twitter message essentially
(07:14):
gloating over the Russian defeat in Syria and urging Putin to reach an accommodation
in Ukraine since the Syria venture has failed.
Do you think, and I'll pose the same question that I did to you about Iran, does this make
Putin more likely to compromise in Ukraine or having suffered one defeat, does he double
(07:36):
down now?
What's your take?
I will caveat this with the fact that you know more about the conflict in Ukraine than
I do.
That's not my regional specialty.
Russia has always seen the bases on the Mediterranean as an immense prestige item that makes them
a world power, even after the Soviet Union collapsed.
(07:57):
With those gone, that's a huge blow to their self-image.
They definitely, like Iran, they seem to be accepting it.
They're getting their major equipment out.
I saw videos earlier today of their S-400 missiles that they had at Khamim Air Base
that they were on trucks going down to be loaded onto ships.
(08:18):
They appear to be getting all their hardware and personnel out.
There clearly was no way that Russia was going to mount a big ground forces deployment in
to back up the regime.
There were Russians who were on the front lines in West of Aleppo who were killed in
(08:40):
the initial move, but they very quickly, they didn't reinforce that and they seem to have
accepted it pretty quickly because they can't really spare the manpower.
It's a huge loss for Russia, but I'm not sure, I'll kick that one back to you.
I'm not sure that that loss is primarily a loss of prestige as being a Mediterranean power,
(09:02):
a world power, having a warm water port, having an external base.
All of those things got rolled up, but I'm not sure that takes away the resources that
they're using in Ukraine.
Another power that is of course directly affected by this is Israel.
Does this redound to Israel benefit?
(09:22):
Until a week ago, Israel's attitude was that they like to see Assad weak and the fact that
the rebels were keeping the Syrian army tied down was good.
They've had a freedom of operation in Syria that has been almost absolute.
They can fly over, they can hit missile deliveries to Hezbollah.
(09:42):
That's been going on for a long time.
But now that they're faced with the possibility of a Sunni fundamentalist, jihadist, if you
will, group on their border, Israel has annexed the Golan Heights.
That is settled with Israeli population.
There has been some talk in Israel already that they ought to, a few MKs have already
(10:06):
come out and said that they need a security zone on the Syrian side of the border.
Perhaps they are also massing forces in the area in case they need to do something.
I don't think that's a sure thing that they go and do that security zone.
They could end up with pressure in that direction if there are incidents along the border.
(10:28):
But HTS apparently has been reassuring Israel that they have no such ambitions anytime soon.
They've been reassuring religious minorities, Israel, Iraq, everybody that their goal is
to take Damascus and take over Syria, not to compromise the sovereignty of anyone else.
(10:49):
And of course, pretty much all Syrians consider the Golan part of Syria.
So you are in Doha right now.
Just tell us, what's the mood?
I think this is on a different subject.
I think the one thing that I found most striking here is the issues around the image of the
US with what's going on in Gaza.
And I'm not surprised by that, but just talking to a lot of Arabs that, you know, I had someone
(11:15):
tell me earlier today that this kind of disabuses us of any notion that the average American
thinks we're human.
And that's a pretty harsh way to put it.
I'm not necessarily saying I agree with that.
There's definitely a lot of anger at the US about what's going on in Gaza.
When you think about that in terms of expanding the Abraham Accords, let's say under President
(11:37):
Trump, which he's going to want to do, you're already seeing that that's a constraint for
the Saudis, let's say, where they're saying very clearly that they need substance on the
Palestinian issue, not a fig leaf like the Emirates got when the original Abraham Accords
were signed.
So I think that probably is something that makes it harder, you know, to push normalization
(11:57):
to a wider group of countries, you know, under the new administration.
One thing that nags at me on the Syria runt is that the intelligence agencies, including
Israel's, were caught flat footed by the developments that have taken place in the past two weeks.
They were not anticipating that the rebel that the rebels would move at such lightning
(12:20):
speed.
Now, our intelligence agencies have been caught flat footed before in 1989.
It seems like Afghanistan.
Yes, I'm not calling for perfection, but more often than not, they seem to be operating
on the premise that what has occurred will continue to occur.
And there's a definite lack of imagination here.
(12:44):
What's your perception about this issue?
I think it is just inherently difficult to call tipping points like this, you know, when
the Shah's regime fell or, you know, the expectation that the Afghan government could last a year
or so.
You know, they didn't think it was going to last for a long period of time, but they thought
they would at least be able to last for a little while.
(13:05):
You know, I think what happened in Syria may have been, and this is very speculative, but
there were a lot of people who, Assad had a lot of soft support, people who thought
he was loathsome, but were worried about the Sunni fundamentalist jihadist background of
HTS and some of the other anti-Assad militias.
(13:26):
And so supported Assad by default because they didn't want, you know, even Sunnis in
Damascus, if you're an educated Urbane, you have some liquor in your liquor cabinet, you
don't want a bunch of country bumpkin fundamentalists coming in and running roughshod over you.
And so that also united Christians and some of the other religious minorities with the
(13:46):
Alawites in addition to the kind of Sunni middle class in the big cities.
And I think perhaps some of that soft support has ebbed as HTS has changed their image a
bit and as things have been so bad under the Assad regime in terms of the economy and people
who've been conscripted into the army and kept there for years and years and years.
(14:11):
Army morale is certainly something that's a variable there because there certainly were
a lot of young men who were angry about how long they had been kept as conscripts.
It wasn't something they went and did for two or three years, but it's hard to say.
I mean, I think that calling those tipping points is something that is very hard even
for people with the budgets and resources of those agencies.
(14:33):
Yeah, it does sort of make you wonder, well, how stable, say, is Saudi Arabia, Jordan or
Iran or even Egypt?
I mean, these are all...
I think you have to have a sense of humility about that because, you know, there were people
writing books back in the 1990s about how it was obvious that Mubarak was going to fall.
(14:53):
And even in 1991, when I was there as an undergrad, it was obvious that the majority of the people
wanted that to happen, patently obvious.
But you know, all the things that kept them in place kept them in place until they didn't.
And I think this is an...
I mean, what I suspect happened is that some of that soft support, the fear...
(15:16):
You reach the tipping point where the fear of having jihadists come in when you don't
want to be ruled by jihadists.
The frustration with Assad had built, there was no future or at least not a good future
for anyone living in the Assad-controlled areas.
And perhaps people were a bit less fearful of what HTS would do to them when HTS softened
(15:38):
their image and presented themselves as reformed.
I'll end with the classic Washington question, which is, what should the administration do
next?
If you were President Biden, what would you do?
And you have a war ravaged country, the Russians are exiting, the Iranians are leaving as well,
(15:59):
the place is in flux.
What policy steps would you advise or what would you adopt right now?
I'm going to do something that I don't do very often, which is give a little bit of
credit to incoming President Trump.
His tweet, while I don't agree with all of it, and some of it was disparaging of people
there, the US really does not have any levers with which we can shape this.
(16:21):
We have a small military presence there, which Trump had questioned back when he was in office,
but that doesn't really allow us to drive the political process between these groups.
So you're alluding to the tweet in which Trump said, stay out, let it evolve itself internally.
We don't have a dog in this place.
I think there are not really policy levers where we could change our aid program or give
(16:46):
aid, or short of a broader military intervention, there's not a whole lot we can do.
The one policy question right now for the next few months is whether we proceed with
withdrawing, which it looked like even the Biden administration, if Harris had won, they
were leaning in the direction of doing that within a year or so.
(17:06):
And so I think that's the big question.
And also, that's going to depend to some extent on the negotiations between HTS, the Turks,
and the SDF.
Can they reach a modus vivendi between the HTS and SDF, where the SDF thought they were
going to reach a modus vivendi with Assad that would keep them from getting attacked
(17:29):
when the US left?
And the question of the SDF, HTS, and other Sunni groups, the Syrian National Army has
also got a substantial number of fighters, even though they're not the ones that went
into Damascus and went down the highway.
But I'm not sure we have a lot of tools of influence of that other than maintaining our
presence in the East.
(17:50):
And it's a small-
Final, final, final question, which I can't resist asking.
I think it's an important one.
Iran is cornered now.
Do you think that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now has a much stronger hand with
which to go to Trump and say, we need to take out these nuclear facilities in Iran, we need
(18:11):
to bomb them now before they cross the nuclear threshold?
They're at their maximum point of vulnerability.
We'll never have this chance again like we do now.
I tend to agree with that, although I don't think- I would still put that as something
that's below 50% probability when you look at it over the next two months, because that
(18:32):
might result in oil price impacts and that might be hard to contain.
It might make sense for Trump to want to get that done before his inauguration.
So that's all on Biden's watch and blame can be avoided there.
That's certainly a political motivation.
But I think there's also going to be a lot more worry.
(18:52):
With Iran as a threshold nuclear state, if they decided to break out, there probably
would be indications of it that Israeli intelligence and Western intelligence agencies would see,
but they wouldn't have much time.
And they're so close right now that I think there will be definitely a discussion in Israel
about whether there is a window here that could close and whether they should assume
(19:17):
that Iran is eventually going to weaponize now that they are- now that the argument within
Iran about staying at a threshold state versus weaponizing has- there's definitely more
of an argument from the Iranian side that they need to weaponize.
They don't have much of a choice.
And you've had Iranian politicians who've been openly talking about that, which is not
(19:38):
something they've done for a long time.
Thank you for your insights on this Sunday.
It's great to talk to you about these startling developments, and I'm sure we will be doing
it again soon.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hi, I'm Jacob Heilbrunn, the editor of the National Interest.
(00:27):
My guest today is my colleague, Greg Priddy, a senior fellow at the Center for the National
Interest.
Our topic today is, of course, the startling, even momentous developments that are occurring
in the Middle East, specifically in Syria, where Bashar al-Assad has apparently fled
the country with the help of Russia.
(00:49):
Greg, can you first tell us who is the rebel movement that has stormed Damascus, almost
without opposition?
Well, the opposition to Assad is several different armed groups, but the group that has been
on the move this week is primarily Hayat al-Tahrir al-Sham.
(01:10):
HTS, we'll use that acronym, which is still on the US terrorist list, formally, and it
is kind of descended from al-Nusra Front, which was an al-Qaeda franchise in the area
of northwestern Syria back at the beginning of the civil war.
(01:30):
Though in recent years, it's been under new leadership and has kind of distanced itself
from that past.
While they've been on a roll this week, they've really been trying to distance themselves
from that and make clear to religious minorities in particular, who had supported Assad, that
they're going to be allowed to live in peace.
(01:50):
We'll see if that actually happens, but that's been their line.
Yeah, we know the Taliban made similar promises, but in this situation, do you have more confidence
that this will in fact not devolve into a radical Islamist state that replaces Assad?
I wouldn't say I have a high level of confidence, no.
I think they've been good with the rhetoric, but given the history, all of the awfulness
(02:15):
that has unfolded with regime supporters and what, there clearly is going to be a lot of
payback, and I think they're trying to soft pedal that.
But as we saw with the Taliban, this is somewhat analogous.
They took over very quickly, but then afterwards, they went and looked for people who'd been
associated with the old government.
(02:36):
I'm obviously not making an analogy between those two governments, but in terms of the
new regime, trying to look for them.
But it also is not unified, you've got HTS, then you've got the Syrian National Army,
which is another mostly Sunni Turkish backed group, and then you've got the US backed self-defense
(03:00):
force, which is mostly Kurdish but part Arab in the Northeast, and that has been backed
by the US special forces deployment there in recent years.
It's interesting that they were actually, the SDF reportedly were talking to the regime
about reconciling with the regime as the US has been thinking about getting out of Syria
(03:22):
eventually.
And so that is a big turn of events for them because they seem to think the regime was
solid as recently as a few weeks ago.
What are the implications of this for Assad's benefactors?
Let's start with Iran, which was funneling weapons through Syria to Lebanon, which wanted
(03:42):
to create a sort of Shiite crescent.
All of that seems to be in tatters now.
I'm in Doha at the Doha Forum, so I've had the opportunity to talk to some Iranians here
over the last two days.
And I think there is an acceptance even among regime supporters in Iran that they've had
(04:03):
a land bridge all the way out to the Mediterranean, to Hezbollah.
And since the US withdrawal from Iraq, they've had a highway that they could drive through
the Bukamal border crossing between Iraq and Syria all the way to Damascus and to Lebanon.
And that land bridge is cut now.
(04:23):
You've had some of the rebel forces that have moved into formerly regime areas around Bukamal
and have cut that highway.
And the SDF has been moving west from there into sparsely populated areas around there.
And some of the US...
There's another US-backed militia at Atanf, which is on the border with Jordan, that has
been moving to the northeast reportedly and toward that Bukamal border crossing.
(04:48):
But that land bridge is cut.
Hezbollah is battered.
Assad is out.
You have a Sunni-dominated group that is now in control of what we used to call useful
Syria.
It's cities in the west, not the desert part.
But with the exception of the area that the SDF, which is primarily Kurdish, controls
in the northeast, most of it is controlled by the HDS or Syrian National Army, which
(05:14):
are both Sunni-dominated.
So that cuts them off and it really truncates their sphere of influence down to Iraq.
But I think the Iranians that I talk to here, including people of very pro-regime views,
they seem to accept it.
I don't think there is any likelihood that they think they can fight their way back in
at this point.
(05:35):
Do you think this ups the likelihood that Iran tries to proceed toward an actual nuclear
bomb or does it raise the chances that it would reach some kind of compromise with the
incoming Trump administration?
People have argued that both sides of that.
I think it probably makes it more dangerous because this plus the Israeli air raid that
(06:01):
showed how weak their air defenses were and showed how good the F-35 is as a platform
against those Russian air defenses, those two things combined demonstrate Iran's vulnerability.
Sure, Iran has the ability to throw missiles at things and it could eventually cause Israel
to deplete their missile defense, but that's really the only strength they have.
(06:22):
They're weak on every other front.
Now they've lost Hezbollah, which was their main non-nuclear deterrent against Israel.
That doesn't necessarily mean they're going to weaponize, but it's going to create a big
feeling of vulnerability on their part, I think, that probably pulls them in that direction.
To be honest, they are vulnerable now.
Let's talk briefly about another power that was enmeshed in Syria, Russia.
(06:48):
President Vladimir Putin made a big deal about expanding Russian global influence by taking
the side of Assad in the Civil War.
Now it appears that the Russian naval bases there are a thing of the past and it's a big
blow to Putin.
Do you think that this will make... President-elect Trump today sent out a Twitter message essentially
(07:14):
gloating over the Russian defeat in Syria and urging Putin to reach an accommodation
in Ukraine since the Syria venture has failed.
Do you think, and I'll pose the same question that I did to you about Iran, does this make
Putin more likely to compromise in Ukraine or having suffered one defeat, does he double
(07:36):
down now?
What's your take?
I will caveat this with the fact that you know more about the conflict in Ukraine than
I do.
That's not my regional specialty.
Russia has always seen the bases on the Mediterranean as an immense prestige item that makes them
a world power, even after the Soviet Union collapsed.
(07:57):
With those gone, that's a huge blow to their self-image.
They definitely, like Iran, they seem to be accepting it.
They're getting their major equipment out.
I saw videos earlier today of their S-400 missiles that they had at Khamim Air Base
that they were on trucks going down to be loaded onto ships.
(08:18):
They appear to be getting all their hardware and personnel out.
There clearly was no way that Russia was going to mount a big ground forces deployment in
to back up the regime.
There were Russians who were on the front lines in West of Aleppo who were killed in
(08:40):
the initial move, but they very quickly, they didn't reinforce that and they seem to have
accepted it pretty quickly because they can't really spare the manpower.
It's a huge loss for Russia, but I'm not sure, I'll kick that one back to you.
I'm not sure that that loss is primarily a loss of prestige as being a Mediterranean power,
(09:02):
a world power, having a warm water port, having an external base.
All of those things got rolled up, but I'm not sure that takes away the resources that
they're using in Ukraine.
Another power that is of course directly affected by this is Israel.
Does this redound to Israel benefit?
(09:22):
Until a week ago, Israel's attitude was that they like to see Assad weak and the fact that
the rebels were keeping the Syrian army tied down was good.
They've had a freedom of operation in Syria that has been almost absolute.
They can fly over, they can hit missile deliveries to Hezbollah.
(09:42):
That's been going on for a long time.
But now that they're faced with the possibility of a Sunni fundamentalist, jihadist, if you
will, group on their border, Israel has annexed the Golan Heights.
That is settled with Israeli population.
There has been some talk in Israel already that they ought to, a few MKs have already
(10:06):
come out and said that they need a security zone on the Syrian side of the border.
Perhaps they are also massing forces in the area in case they need to do something.
I don't think that's a sure thing that they go and do that security zone.
They could end up with pressure in that direction if there are incidents along the border.
(10:28):
But HTS apparently has been reassuring Israel that they have no such ambitions anytime soon.
They've been reassuring religious minorities, Israel, Iraq, everybody that their goal is
to take Damascus and take over Syria, not to compromise the sovereignty of anyone else.
(10:49):
And of course, pretty much all Syrians consider the Golan part of Syria.
So you are in Doha right now.
Just tell us, what's the mood?
I think this is on a different subject.
I think the one thing that I found most striking here is the issues around the image of the
US with what's going on in Gaza.
And I'm not surprised by that, but just talking to a lot of Arabs that, you know, I had someone
(11:15):
tell me earlier today that this kind of disabuses us of any notion that the average American
thinks we're human.
And that's a pretty harsh way to put it.
I'm not necessarily saying I agree with that.
There's definitely a lot of anger at the US about what's going on in Gaza.
When you think about that in terms of expanding the Abraham Accords, let's say under President
(11:37):
Trump, which he's going to want to do, you're already seeing that that's a constraint for
the Saudis, let's say, where they're saying very clearly that they need substance on the
Palestinian issue, not a fig leaf like the Emirates got when the original Abraham Accords
were signed.
So I think that probably is something that makes it harder, you know, to push normalization
(11:57):
to a wider group of countries, you know, under the new administration.
One thing that nags at me on the Syria runt is that the intelligence agencies, including
Israel's, were caught flat footed by the developments that have taken place in the past two weeks.
They were not anticipating that the rebel that the rebels would move at such lightning
(12:20):
speed.
Now, our intelligence agencies have been caught flat footed before in 1989.
It seems like Afghanistan.
Yes, I'm not calling for perfection, but more often than not, they seem to be operating
on the premise that what has occurred will continue to occur.
And there's a definite lack of imagination here.
(12:44):
What's your perception about this issue?
I think it is just inherently difficult to call tipping points like this, you know, when
the Shah's regime fell or, you know, the expectation that the Afghan government could last a year
or so.
You know, they didn't think it was going to last for a long period of time, but they thought
they would at least be able to last for a little while.
(13:05):
You know, I think what happened in Syria may have been, and this is very speculative, but
there were a lot of people who, Assad had a lot of soft support, people who thought
he was loathsome, but were worried about the Sunni fundamentalist jihadist background of
HTS and some of the other anti-Assad militias.
(13:26):
And so supported Assad by default because they didn't want, you know, even Sunnis in
Damascus, if you're an educated Urbane, you have some liquor in your liquor cabinet, you
don't want a bunch of country bumpkin fundamentalists coming in and running roughshod over you.
And so that also united Christians and some of the other religious minorities with the
(13:46):
Alawites in addition to the kind of Sunni middle class in the big cities.
And I think perhaps some of that soft support has ebbed as HTS has changed their image a
bit and as things have been so bad under the Assad regime in terms of the economy and people
who've been conscripted into the army and kept there for years and years and years.
(14:11):
Army morale is certainly something that's a variable there because there certainly were
a lot of young men who were angry about how long they had been kept as conscripts.
It wasn't something they went and did for two or three years, but it's hard to say.
I mean, I think that calling those tipping points is something that is very hard even
for people with the budgets and resources of those agencies.
(14:33):
Yeah, it does sort of make you wonder, well, how stable, say, is Saudi Arabia, Jordan or
Iran or even Egypt?
I mean, these are all...
I think you have to have a sense of humility about that because, you know, there were people
writing books back in the 1990s about how it was obvious that Mubarak was going to fall.
(14:53):
And even in 1991, when I was there as an undergrad, it was obvious that the majority of the people
wanted that to happen, patently obvious.
But you know, all the things that kept them in place kept them in place until they didn't.
And I think this is an...
I mean, what I suspect happened is that some of that soft support, the fear...
(15:16):
You reach the tipping point where the fear of having jihadists come in when you don't
want to be ruled by jihadists.
The frustration with Assad had built, there was no future or at least not a good future
for anyone living in the Assad-controlled areas.
And perhaps people were a bit less fearful of what HTS would do to them when HTS softened
(15:38):
their image and presented themselves as reformed.
I'll end with the classic Washington question, which is, what should the administration do
next?
If you were President Biden, what would you do?
And you have a war ravaged country, the Russians are exiting, the Iranians are leaving as well,
(15:59):
the place is in flux.
What policy steps would you advise or what would you adopt right now?
I'm going to do something that I don't do very often, which is give a little bit of
credit to incoming President Trump.
His tweet, while I don't agree with all of it, and some of it was disparaging of people
there, the US really does not have any levers with which we can shape this.
(16:21):
We have a small military presence there, which Trump had questioned back when he was in office,
but that doesn't really allow us to drive the political process between these groups.
So you're alluding to the tweet in which Trump said, stay out, let it evolve itself internally.
We don't have a dog in this place.
I think there are not really policy levers where we could change our aid program or give
(16:46):
aid, or short of a broader military intervention, there's not a whole lot we can do.
The one policy question right now for the next few months is whether we proceed with
withdrawing, which it looked like even the Biden administration, if Harris had won, they
were leaning in the direction of doing that within a year or so.
(17:06):
And so I think that's the big question.
And also, that's going to depend to some extent on the negotiations between HTS, the Turks,
and the SDF.
Can they reach a modus vivendi between the HTS and SDF, where the SDF thought they were
going to reach a modus vivendi with Assad that would keep them from getting attacked
(17:29):
when the US left?
And the question of the SDF, HTS, and other Sunni groups, the Syrian National Army has
also got a substantial number of fighters, even though they're not the ones that went
into Damascus and went down the highway.
But I'm not sure we have a lot of tools of influence of that other than maintaining our
presence in the East.
(17:50):
And it's a small-
Final, final, final question, which I can't resist asking.
I think it's an important one.
Iran is cornered now.
Do you think that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now has a much stronger hand with
which to go to Trump and say, we need to take out these nuclear facilities in Iran, we need
(18:11):
to bomb them now before they cross the nuclear threshold?
They're at their maximum point of vulnerability.
We'll never have this chance again like we do now.
I tend to agree with that, although I don't think- I would still put that as something
that's below 50% probability when you look at it over the next two months, because that
(18:32):
might result in oil price impacts and that might be hard to contain.
It might make sense for Trump to want to get that done before his inauguration.
So that's all on Biden's watch and blame can be avoided there.
That's certainly a political motivation.
But I think there's also going to be a lot more worry.
(18:52):
With Iran as a threshold nuclear state, if they decided to break out, there probably
would be indications of it that Israeli intelligence and Western intelligence agencies would see,
but they wouldn't have much time.
And they're so close right now that I think there will be definitely a discussion in Israel
about whether there is a window here that could close and whether they should assume
(19:17):
that Iran is eventually going to weaponize now that they are- now that the argument within
Iran about staying at a threshold state versus weaponizing has- there's definitely more
of an argument from the Iranian side that they need to weaponize.
They don't have much of a choice.
And you've had Iranian politicians who've been openly talking about that, which is not
(19:38):
something they've done for a long time.
Thank you for your insights on this Sunday.
It's great to talk to you about these startling developments, and I'm sure we will be doing
it again soon.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!