Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS
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Well, folks, the Assad regime in Syria is gone. We'll bring you all the details, how it happened, what it means. First, I have some major news to share with you today. Starting in January, Jeremy's Razors will become an official partner of UFC. That's right, the Daily Wire is stepping into the octagon with the world's premier mixed martial arts organization. More details coming up later in the show. Very cool stuff. All righty, so a tectonic shift in the Middle East just happened over the weekend. On Sunday morning, Syrian rebels...

finally took Damascus. They took Bashar al-Assad's palace. The Assad regime is no more. Assad has fled to Moscow where he is being granted some sort of asylum because the Russians, of course, backed the Assad regime. There's a lightning campaign that basically came from nowhere. I want to show you a couple of maps so you understand exactly what's going on because when we talk about what's happening in Syria, what we have to understand is that Syria is an artificial creation post-World War I by the West, by the French, by the British,

And because of that, like many other states in the Middle East, it is unworkable and has been unworkable for a very long time. You have a large number of groups of various religious belief systems, many of them unbelievably radical, many of them terrorists, all fighting one another. And the Assad regime was a secularist, Ba'athist regime, like Saddam Hussein, with a wild,

left-wing view of economics. Essentially, it was just a fascist dictatorship engaged in mass human rights abuses at scale. Over the course of the Assad regime, some 12 million Syrians were displaced. Many of them ended up in Turkey. Many of them ended up in Jordan. Many of them ended up in Europe. The Syrian refugee crisis had massive ramifications for European politics, and that was driven by the civil war that happened in Syria between 2011 and just ended in

over the weekend, 2024. Although, as we'll see, I think the civil war is likely to continue for a long time to come because this is an unworkable patchwork of various groups in various areas of the country. But we'll start with the actual region because in order to understand what's going on in Syria, you have to understand that there are a lot of hands in Syria, a lot of different countries, a lot of different interests who had their hands in Syria. So let's look at the regional map of the Middle East so you understand where Syria is placed on the map.

So the regional map of the Middle East, you will see that Syria is located alongside the Mediterranean Sea. It stretches all the way from Iraq in its east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. The sort of southwestern border of Syria is Israel, the very tip of

of the southwest part of Syria borders Israel. Because Syria had repeatedly invaded Israel in 1967, Israel won its war against Syria and ended up taking the Golan Heights. The Golan Heights have been annexed to Israel as recognized by the United States, specifically because they're being used as base

basically a vantage point from which to shoot into Israel. So that is one border of Syria. Another border of Syria is Lebanon. Syria has had a longstanding fraught relationship with Lebanon. Syria helped destroy Lebanon as a functioning Christian state in the Middle East. Back in the 1980s, Syria effectively just occupied Lebanon and stayed there all the way from the 1980s through 2005 and helped wreck the system in coordination with Hezbollah.

Syria, the Assad regime, has been working in conjunction with Iran. As you can see on the map, Syria to its east is bordered by Iraq and beyond that, Iran. And so Iran had a large influential swath of land, basically a Shia crescent of radicalism that stretched all the way from Iran across northern Iraq through Syria and to Lebanon.

This giant chain of Islamic terror pushed by the Shia regime to the south of Syria is Jordan. Jordan is a Sunni Arab state. It is governed by the Hashemite dynasty. It has always been a fragile state because, again, it is a is a monarchy in a region where its population does not share the same ethnicity as the actual kingdom.

And 60, 70 percent of the of the population of Jordan is Sunni Arab Palestinian and quite radicalized. And so, again, the entire Middle East is a basket case. And if you look to the north of Syria, what you see is Turkey, which has a major hand in what just happened over the weekend. Turkey, of course, is run by Erdogan, who is a neo-Ottoman dictator. He turned Turkey from a functioning democracy and a member of NATO into a sort of radicalized

Islamic state, not in the same mold as, say, the Taliban or in the mold of what's about to happen next in Syria, but in his own methodology, it is a militant Islamist state that supports Hamas,

And that was supportive of many of the rebel groups that just drove their way through Syria. Okay, so that is where Syria is placed on the map. And because you can see it's juxtaposition to all these places, you can also see there are a lot of interests involved. So for example, the Russians, very, very interested in Syria because they wanted to secure ports on the Mediterranean Sea in Syria, which they actually did with the acquiescence of the Assad regime. So among the foreign players who were involved in Syria, Iran, which was using it as a thoroughfare and propping up the Assad regime, Russia, which was using it

as a base and propping up the Assad regime. Turkey, which did not like the Assad regime and also was attempting to make its own incursions into Syria because a lot of people in Syria are Kurds.

And the Turks don't like the Kurds in the same way they don't like the Armenians. And so they've been attempting to kill the Kurds. In fact, in the middle of all of this chaos in Syria, they've been launching airstrikes on civilian areas in Kurdish areas of Syria and the border of Israel. Israel wants to defend itself and make sure that it is not the victim of yet another land incursion from Syria.

So Syria, as you can see, geopolitically is just a mess. Okay, that is not even getting into the internal politics. That's just where it is in the Middle East. Okay, now we get to the situation in Syria today. So the map of Syria today shows that it is split into a bunch of different territories. So as you can see from this particular map, and this one comes courtesy of the New York Times, a fine map, this map shows a series of separate territories. So you have certain opposition groups,

that are in the south of Syria, bordering the Golan Heights and bordering Jordan. Some of those are radical Sunni Islamists. Some of those are Druze. Druze are a different group who are, again, Sunni, they're Sunni Muslims, but they tend to be significantly less radical than many of the other Sunni Muslims in the area. Meanwhile, you have the main rebel coalition, which is located in the northwest of Syria. That main rebel coalition is

is run by a person named al-Jolani. As we'll get to in a moment, al-Jolani is in fact a radical and probably an Al-Qaeda and ISIS affiliated terrorist. He certainly was in his past. He probably still is. That is the main rebel coalition. He was backed by the Turks because again, he is up in the North. He was backed by the Turks. Meanwhile, if you look to the Northeast,

You'll see that the Kurds are in control of a large swath of that area. That didn't used to be under the control of the Kurds. That used to be under the control of ISIS. ISIS was very much located in that area. There are prisons holding tens of thousands of ISIS prisoners in those Kurdish areas. So...

After the Assad regime fell, the United States has been launching airstrikes in these ISIS kind of hotbeds in the Kurdish area of Syria in order to prevent ISIS from reconstituting. As said, it's a complete mess. Turkey, as you can see from this map, also has taken over huge swaths of the north of Syria. So that is the map of Syria as it currently stands. So now I want to go through what has happened over time with these various forces.

Okay, so if you look at the governmental forces and their allies, for example, the governmental force and their allies in 2014, so the civil war broke out in 2011. I'm going to go through a brief timeline of the civil war in Syria and how it ended. And then we're going to talk about what happened with each of these various groups over the course of the war. So in 2011, a civil war broke out in Syria. That was one of the spillover effects of the so-called Arab Spring. By

Bashar Assad cracked down on the protesters. He labeled them all Sunni al-Qaeda affiliates. Some of them certainly were Sunni al-Qaeda affiliates, not all of them. He began using harsher and harsher tactics. The United States, the EU, the Arab League soon introduced sanctions targeting senior members of the Assad regime. Meanwhile, on the other side of that, Iran and Russia decided that they were going to continue to support and indeed increase their support

Bashar Assad, by September 2011, organized militias on the one side backed by the EU, the US, the Arab League are at total war with the Assad regime. And remember, there's a big debate in the United States at the time over what level of support to grant to these rebels, because, again, many of these rebels were al Qaeda affiliates and not all these groups are the same.

By 2012, Syrian rebels were gaining control of some segments of Syria, including the second biggest city in Syria after Damascus called Aleppo. You'll remember Aleppo talked a lot about in 2012. Assad was fighting back.

Now, again, Assad was the enemy of many in the West, but also of Turkey, of Saudi, of Qatar as well. Qatar played sort of a weird role here because Qatar was supporting many of the rebels, but at the same time, Qatar is sort of a cat's paw of Iran. As usual, Qatar is on all sides of every issue. In August of 2012, Barack Obama, then president of the United States, famously suggested that if Bashar Assad used chemical weapons on his own people, meaning Syrians, that would be a red line that would result in U.S. backing, heavier U.S. backing for the Syrian rebels.

Well, then in 2013, Syria did use chemical weapons. Assad used chemical weapons in the suburbs of Damascus, killing hundreds of people on August 21st, 2013. The West backed down, U.S., France and the U.K. That red line was totally false. And basically, Barack Obama ended up handing control of Syria to the Russians. The Russians said they would get rid of the chemical weapons there, which obviously didn't happen. Even this weekend, Israeli Air Force said,

operations were bombing chemical weapons factories in Syria to prevent them from falling into the hands of Al-Qaeda, ISIS, radical Sunni Islamist terrorists.

Well, by the end of 2013, Sunni terrorists are totally in lead of the opposition. So whatever sort of moderate elements there were to the anti-Assad rebellion were basically gone. This was the same year that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, founded ISIS, which was the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, right? So again, look at that map. What you will see is that Iraq and Syria are right next door to one another. So large swath of eastern Syria, part of western Iraq, ends up under the auspices of ISIS.

So after ISIS began beheading Americans, the United States and our allies launched an air campaign to limit ISIS's gains. But ISIS seemed to be a fairly durable presence in eastern Syria and also in western Iraq. Folks, we'll get to more of this timeline in a moment. But first, let's talk about something happening here in the United States, interest rates. Yes, the Fed has cut rates recently. If you're waiting for them to drop back down to like 3%, you might be leaving money on the table right now. Every month you wait is another month of

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Meanwhile, 2015, Russia starts becoming more and more active in Syria, launching strikes on behalf of the Assad regime. Russia and Assad essentially level Aleppo. You remember in 2015, terrible pictures from Aleppo. The entire city basically leveled. It was filled with civilians. It wasn't all terrorists. 2016, 2017, the combined effect of U.S. assaults on ISIS under Donald Trump by 2017, the

by Kurdish forces in the north of Syria and by Bashar Assad, start to have a severe impact on ISIS. So ISIS's ideological rivals, including one called the Nusra Front, decided to merge into a group called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which will henceforth be known as HTS. HTS becomes pretty important to the story. The leader of HTS is this al-Jolani character, who, as we say, was a member of both al-Qaeda and ISIS, and then broke off and formed HTS.

and started fighting ISIS. So they captured territory that was held by ISIS in the area of Idlib. Idlib is in sort of the northwest of the country. And when we fast forward, you'll see that that was the base from which these rebels then just took over the rest of the country, or at least the population centers of the country over the course of the last week. So 2017, 2018, the U.S. and our allies began actually striking Syrian government weapons depots after the use of chemical weapons. The rebels were pushed back into Idlib.

Russia and Turkey established a buffer zone between the Idlib rebels and the Assad forces, but that rebel territory ended up being controlled by the Turkey-backed HTS. So HTS, again, is this offshoot, this breakaway group from ISIS and from al-Qaeda, and they end up being backed by Turkey. They are Sunni Muslim terrorists.

They are radical. All the pretend that you're hearing in the media today that the people who just took over Syria, actually, they might be moderate. Actually, they might be. No, no, no. OK, so again, in the welcome to the Middle East, where there are no good solutions, there are only problems. It's a rough region of the world. And there are a lot of bad people fighting a lot of other bad people as a general rule.

Now, after that comes to a bit of a close, Assad is then ushered back into the Arab League. Assad is seen as somewhat legitimate again. And things seem to sort of shift into low-grade civil war mode. And here is where we can take a look at the maps again. So if you look at the government forces just before all of this happened, what you'll see is in 2014, the government forces controlled large swaths of eastern Syria,

including places like Aleppo and Hama and Homs and Damascus. 2017, they controlled very similar area. 2019, they controlled even more area. And by 2024, they controlled an enormous amount of area, like more area than they had controlled back in 2014, including incursions into Idlib, which was, again, a heavily Sunni terror, Al-Qaeda offshoot, ISIS, Turkey-backed group.

Okay, so Syria seemed to be, the Assad regime seemed to be in pretty good position at the beginning of 2024. Okay, now take a look at the opposition forces. Okay, so you can see is the opposition forces here.

Their territory had been shrinking in 2014. They controlled Idlib. They controlled parts of Aleppo. They controlled outskirts of Damascus. 2017 shrinks. 2020 really, really shrinks. They're basically stuck in Idlib. And that was the case all the way up till 2024. Its opposition forces have shrunk all the way down to Idlib. And now take a look at ISIS. So ISIS, as we say, was in eastern Syria.

And then it was basically shrunk over the course of the American-led war against ISIS. But there was also Kurdish work with the Americans in that. And the Assad regime was also pushing against ISIS.

So ISIS once held up to a third of Syria. In 2015, they held large swaths of the north. These areas are now held by Kurdish forces and the Turks who came into Syria and created their own very, very large buffer zone that they now occupy because, again, they hate the Kurds. So 2015, 2016, 2017, you see ISIS shrinking, shrinking, shrinking. By 2018, they basically have like a couple of areas they hold in eastern Syria. So ISIS shrinks down.

And then finally, you have Kurdish forces and Turkish forces. So look at Kurdish forces. Here's a map of the Kurdish forces. What you see is that the Kurds controlled some border areas near Turkey in 2014. That grows in 2017, grows in 2019. By 2024, a large swath of northeastern Syria is controlled by the Kurds, who, again, are friendlier to the West, friendlier to the United States, friendlier to Israel.

So the Kurds, if there are good guys in Syria, the Kurds are the closest thing to the good guys in Syria and maybe some of the Druze in the south of Syria. And finally, Turkish forces who have had a major outsized impact. So the Turks controlled a relatively small area. Actually, it's not that small, an area of sort of northwestern Syria.

Syria in 2017. They increased that to large swaths of the border by 2020. Those are controlled by Turkish military operations. Okay, so what exactly happened? What exactly changed? Okay, fast forward to 2024. So the Assad regime basically has no money. Okay, the Assad regime, because again, it is a Ba'athist dictatorship,

with nothing to trade and has been engaged in a civil war for 13 years, their currency is effectively worthless. Like right now, if you take a look at the actual currency of Syria versus the American dollar, right now, $1 goes for 16,000 Syrian pounds or 16,000 Syrian lira, as the case may be. And it's been dropping fast because, again, nothing gets produced over there. So massive inflation rates.

The Assad regime is paying all of its troops with this. And so Assad is basically being propped up by outside forces. Remember, again, back to that map. Remember the map of the Middle East. So remember, who has an interest in Assad being upheld? Not Turkey, right? Turkey doesn't like Assad very much. Turkey would prefer that its own ambitions extend into Syria. Israel is sort of indifferent about Assad because Israel sees that Assad is still upholding mostly kind of the buffer area.

in the Golan Heights, which extends to Mount Hermon, which again goes into Syria. It's kind of the high point regionally in terms of geography. You can see from the top of Mount Hermon down into Damascus. So Israel is sort of divided on Assad. On the one hand, they don't like Assad because he is used as a tool and a proxy by Iran. On the other hand, they understand that if Assad goes, a Sunni Muslim dictatorship is likely to follow, like a terrorist dictatorship. So...

Israel is kind of, you know, on both. They don't know what to do about Syria, particularly. It's the one quiet front in the latest war. Iran, meanwhile, is using Assad as their cutout. So they're smuggling weapons via Hezbollah, who is a force on behalf of Assad in Syria. And they're doing that all the way into Lebanon.

So that is that's Iran. And Russia has an interest in upholding Assad because Assad has a deal with them where Russia gives them weaponry. Russia gives them forces. Russia gives them all sorts of resources. And in return, they have access to some coastal bases in Syria.

So what happened in 2023? You'll remember at the very end of 2023, something kind of big happened. October 7th, Iran decided to activate all of its terror groups at once. So it activated Hamas. Yahya Sinwar launches October 7th. 1,200 Jews are killed in Israel. 250 are pulled into Gaza and are still being held in the terror tunnels. And then Hezbollah in Israel's north, Lebanon,

They start firing thousands of missiles over the course of a year into northern Israel, 8,000 to 10,000 rockets and missiles into northern Israel, clearing out Israel's north. So over the course of the subsequent year, Israel proceeds to take out Yahya Sinwar and virtually all of Hamas's military resources.

Beginning in October of this year, Israel totally devastates Hezbollah, totally devastates it. They launched the beeper attacks, followed by the radio attacks, followed by a full-scale air campaign against all of Hezbollah's weaponry, followed by a ground invasion of Lebanon in order to push Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon. They kill the leadership of Hezbollah, including Hassan Nasrallah, who is the chief leader, not only a charismatic figure, but a leader in operations. And they're also doing operations in Syria to prevent Syria from being used as a thoroughfare for Hezbollah resources.

OK, so Iran is getting absolutely shellacked, absolutely shellacked. Meanwhile, Russia is being absolutely shellacked. Russia is bogged down in this war that it declared in Ukraine in February 2022. They're losing hundreds of thousands of people over there. There's an enormous amount of material. They simply don't have the money or the capacity to uphold the Assad regime.

So as a byproduct of both the Ukraine war, so Russia can't come to Assad's aid, but mostly as a result of Israel chopping off the arms of the Iranian octopus in places like Syria, in places like Lebanon, in places like Hamasistan, because of that, Iran cannot uphold the Assad regime. And so,

After Israel's October offensive against Hezbollah, which again was a governing party in Lebanon and has now been pretty much devastated and was also a force on behalf of Assad, Assad had no allies to call upon. The legs of the stool upon which his regime was standing got kicked out from underneath him. And as a result, the stool fell. Well, it turned out that Assad is some sort of a

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Just go to helixsleep.com slash Ben for 20% off. That's helixsleep.com slash Ben with Helix. Better sleep starts right now. So this was not that the Sunni Muslim terrorist groups suddenly became good at war. Again, remember those maps. They were at a low ebb at the beginning of 2024. That's not what happened here. What happened here is that Assad was basically an eggshell skull. They tapped him, he fell. There was no one to come to his support. Russia couldn't come with its historic levels of support because they were weakened in Ukraine.

Iran has been totally hamstrung. Iran's air defenses are gone. Iran is totally vulnerable. Its own regime is tottering. And so the rebels took advantage and they toppled the regime. That's effectively the story here. So any story about how it's like the innate charisma of the HTS leaders, Abu Muhammad al-Jalani, that's not true. That's not what happened here.

What happened here is that Turkey, backing HTS, backing many of these Sunni Muslim terrorist groups, hating the Assad regime and wishing to expand its own sphere of influence into Syria, backed HTS in taking advantage of the chaos caused by Iran's withdrawal and Russia's withdrawal. And HTS then took over large swaths of Syria. Okay, so who are sort of the big winners and who are sort of the big losers here?

Well, it depends on what emerges. The biggest losers, pretty obviously, Russia is a big loser. Russia loses a lot of impact because, again, Russia had backed the Assad regime. Now, Russia is attempting to broker something with regards to the new regime because they always do. But Russia is a big loser. The biggest loser by far is Iran. Iran has lost its entire crescent of Islamic Shia terror. Like it's gone. It just doesn't exist anymore.

Hamas, gone. Hezbollah, gone. Assad, gone. These are all massive blows to the Iranian regime, all caused by Iran. Iran started it. It's one of the ultimate F around and find out in human history. Iran launches a seven front war on Israel, and they end with three of their proxies off the map completely. Hamas, Hezbollah, and Assad, gone. That's what happens when you F around with a first world country.

If you F around with the United States on September 11th, we destroy your forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Regardless of what comes after, that's what happens. And if Iran decides they're going to launch a multi-front terror war against Israel, Israel will hit back and hit back hard. And the Iranian regime is in serious trouble right now. They've failed on every possible front. And with the Trump administration coming in,

and presumably increasing sanctions on the Iranian regime, the Iranian regime is going to have one of two choices. Either they're going to have to cut some sort of deal with the West in which they abandon their nuclear efforts and presumably move towards some form of non-tyranny, or they're going to be forced to collapse. Because I can promise you that the state of Israel is not going to sit around waiting to see what Iran does next with its nuclear weapons, not after Israel already took out their air defenses. So who's the big winner in Syria? The big winner in Syria is Turkey, mostly. Turkey...

took an enormous amount of territory. HTS, obviously a very big winner in all of this. The Kurds, it's unclear what happens. The Kurds had basically cleared an enormous amount of territory in, again, northeastern Syria. Well, now they're going to be at war directly with the Turks. The Turks are going to be pouring forces into that region and resources into that region. So the Kurds could get really hurt. As for the Israelis, the Israelis, again,

They can be happy that the Iranian regime has lost power to use Syria as its tool, but the people replacing that regime are Al-Qaeda jihadists and ISIS jihadists. In fact, here is some video of some of the rebel fighters talking about what comes next. They're saying that they're thanking Allah by his exalted power, the one who has helped us, neither by our strength. Here is the home of Islam. Here is the Levant.

Here is Omar ibn Abdulaziz. Here is the land of Islam. Here is Damascus. Here is the land of Muslims. From here, O Jerusalem. From here, O Jerusalem, they will come. Be patient, O people of Gaza. Be patient. Again, the people who just took over in Syria are allies of Hamas. The Iranians had created an alliance with Hamas, but many of the people who just invaded Damascus are big fans of Hamas. They also have talked about toppling the Saudi regime.

Because again, they're Al Qaeda affiliates. They're ISIS affiliates. Now, the leader of this particular terrorist group is a person, as I've mentioned, whose name is al-Jolani. And again, many things can be true at once. Assad was an absolute butcher. Assad is responsible for the death of probably half a million Syrians on the other side, including huge scores of civilians. He actually set up in one of his jails.

an actual crematorium, apparently. I mean, like truly a brutal dictator, truly a brutal person. Also, not a lot of good solutions as it turns out in the Middle East. Because, for example, the Assad regime, much friendlier to Christians in Syria than presumably this new Sunni Islamic terror group will be.

It's possible that the Druze will be sort of a repository of pro-Christian feeling in the south of Syria, about 10% of the population of Syria is Christian. It's possible the Kurds, the Kurds are kind of widely known as the most pro-Christian faction in Syria, but they're being attacked by the Turks. So it's a complete mess over there. So who exactly is Al-Jolani? So his name is Abu Muhammad Al-Jolani.

And he apparently boarded a bus in Damascus in March 2003, heading across the desert to Baghdad with fellow volunteers eager to repel the looming American invasion of Iraq. This is according to the Wall Street Journal. When he returned home in 2011 after a five-year stint in an American-run prison camp in Iraq, it was as an emissary of ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He arrived in Syria with bags full of cash and a mission to take the extremist movement global.

Last week, 42-year-old Jelani triumphantly entered Aleppo, Syria's second largest city, as the leading commander of the Turkish-backed rebel force dominated by his group, HTS. Unexpected and swift, his victory marks one of the most dramatic moments in the Middle East that had no shortage of drama.

So he is currently doing things to try and appear moderate. He's issued edicts to his men ordering the protection of Christians and Shias demanding that his men not exact retribution. He said in the future, Syria, we believe diversity is our strength, not a weakness. He's obviously playing for American aid and for the EU audience. Guys, don't give money to people who are members of Al Qaeda and ISIS. It's a bad idea. The Taliban said the exact same things when they took over in Afghanistan. And now it's back to being a Taliban hellhole.

So a Christian woman in Aleppo said, quote, the day they took over Aleppo before seeing them, I felt like the Titanic was sinking.

But then she said everyone was shocked because they were treating us nicely. They look scary. They look exactly the way you imagine when someone says a terrorist. Long beards and crazy hair, but they're nice. We'll find out for how long. They are nice, obviously. So this guy was born Ahmed Hussein Al-Sharra. He adopted the Namda Ger Jalani, a reference to his family's roots in the Golan Heights. He says that his family was from the Golan Heights. And then in 67, when Syria attacked Israel and they lost the Golan Heights, then his family lost what land they had in the Golan Heights.

One of the big questions for Israel is going to be whether Jelani tries to, again, direct these rebel fighters against Israel. If that happens, Israel will unleash its military power on those rebel fighters. One of the things that's been happening here is that the gap that's been left by the Iranian power in the region is now being filled by the Turkish power in the region. And again, Turkey is allied with Hamas. Turkey, again, it's unbelievable they're a NATO member. And there should be significant ramifications for Turkey's abject siding with terrorists across the region. Turkey is an nefarious power in the region now.

And they are very heavily militarized. They have an excellent military. In any case, Al-Jalani broke with ISIS in 2012, and then he broke with al-Qaeda in 2016. And this guy's got a hell of a CV. He's got a hell of a resume. And then he's fought both organizations. And according to the Wall Street Journal, he steered the HTS away from the transnational jihadist movement that is more interested in waging war on America and the West and sees national borders in the Muslim world as an artificial construct imposed by infidel colonialists.

Aaron Zelen, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. So we'll see, you know, not a great credential. He says him and his group's break with Islamic State and Al Qaeda is very genuine. They haven't been part of these entities longer than they were with them. It's now been essentially eight and a half years. They've forsworn global jihad. Instead, they're focusing in squarely on Syria. But even according to The Wall Street Journal,

They are a blend of Islamism and nationalism that is closer to the Afghanistan's Taliban and Palestinian Hamas, which sounds kind of bad. And so as it turns out, there are no good answers in the Middle East. So what exactly is going to come next year? Well, if the Biden administration is idiotic, then they certainly won't do what they are talking about. So the Biden administration apparently is now discussing the possibility of taking HTS off the terror list. There's a $10 million bounty, by the way, on HTS.

Al Jalani's head from the U.S. State Department because he is a terrorist. And it turns out releasing terrorists from Gitmo, he was actually in Gitmo, turns out to bad strategy as a general rule. A senior administration official said, quote, It's kind of a broad kaleidoscope of groups. I think we have to be smart and also very mindful and pragmatic about the realities on the ground. He said HTS is saying the right things. So far, they're doing the right thing. They're not the only group. There's a series of opposition groups that came to reach Damascus from the south, and they are very different. Some of those are Druze, for example.

So, as always, it is a giant cluster F. Again, welcome to the Middle East where there are no good answers. And it's worth pointing out that, again, the fate of a lot of people in Syria remains very much in doubt. And there are a bunch of different groups that are now competing for leadership in Syria. They range from, for example, the Syrian interim government and Syrian National Army, who are essentially Turkish interests in Syria, controlled by the Turkish armed forces,

To the Syrian Salvation Government and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, who are the radical Islamists who just took control of Damascus. The Syrian Free Army, which is an American-backed force that originally operated on the Syrian-Jordanian border. They don't hold a ton of territory at this point. There's also the Kurds, right? That would be the Rojava SDF. That's the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria.

And they are by far the most pro-Western group in the region. And finally, the Southern Operations Room, who again is a coalition of Sunni and Druze groups in South Syria, they too are sort of pro-Western. So it's a giant mess. In a moment, we'll get into what comes next.

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excellence in kickassery. This partnership isn't just a business deal. It's the next big step in our fight. I promise you it's only the beginning. Celebrate with us today. Head on over to jeremysrazors.com right now and get your Jeremy's Razors. All righty. So what comes next over here? Well, again, the people in the Middle East who have absolutely demonstrated their strength over the course of last year, the Israeli government, obviously the IDF and the Turks,

Right now, again, when it comes to Israel, Israel only wants to guard its border. And so they've extended that border outward to the other side of the Hermon Mountain, which was sort of the Syrian side of the border zone. And they're doing that in order to prevent Syrian rebels, these radical Sunni Islamist groups who are allied with Hamas, from moving up on the Israeli border. Meanwhile, the Turks are encroaching heavily into the territory of Syria. So those are sort of the big developments.

On its part, Benjamin Netanyahu put out a statement suggesting correctly that it was Israel that kicked out one leg of the support for the Assad regime by taking out the Iranian proxies throughout the region. This is a historic day for the Middle East. The collapse of the Assad regime, the tyranny in Damascus offers great opportunity, but also is fraught with significant dangers. This collapse is

is a direct result of our forceful action against Hezbollah and Iran, Assad's main supporters. It set off a chain reaction of all those who want to free themselves from this tyranny and its suppression. But it also means we have to take action against possible threats. One of them is the collapse of the separation of forces agreement from 1974 between Israel and Syria. This agreement held for 50 years. Last night it collapsed. The Syrian army abandoned its positions.

We gave the Israeli army the order to take over these positions to ensure that no hostile force embeds itself right next to the border of Israel. This is a temporary defensive position until a suitable arrangement is found. Equally, we send a hand of peace to all those beyond our border in Syria, to the Jews, to the Kurds, to the Christians, and to the Muslims who want to live in peace with Israel.

We're going to follow events very carefully. If we can establish neighborly relations and a peaceful relations with the new forces emerging in Syria, that's our desire. But if we do not, we'll do whatever it takes to defend the state of Israel and the border of Israel.

Now, again, it is worth noting this is a very small piece of territory that Israel is currently moving into in order to defend its own border, as opposed to, say, the Turkish territory, which constitutes an 8,835 square kilometer buffer zone in the north of Syria. Again, the Turks are the ones who are really benefiting from all of this. Also, because they're attempting to provide a strategic Islamic counterweight to the Saudis. The

because whenever you have a radical Sunni Muslim group that rises in the Middle East, the threat is to try and radicalize the Saudi population.

So the Saudis have said that they don't want outside interference here. They put out a statement saying the kingdom affirms its support for the brotherly Syrian people and their choice, but also appealed for concerted efforts to preserve the unity of Syria and the cohesion of its people so as to prevent it from falling into chaos and division. Jordan, for its part, again, is threatened because Jordan has a very long border with Syria as they close their border crossing into Syria as well. A Syrian army source told Reuters armed groups have been firing at Syria's Nassib border crossing into Jordan. So Jordan is worried about this as well.

So what is likely to happen next? The answer, as usual in the Middle East, is probable chaos. So Simon Sebag Montefiore, who's a historian of the region, writing at the Free Press, he says,

which had been promised to share of the Ottoman Near East, had fallen under Bolshevik rule. They left Britain and France under the ambitious liberal imperial pioneers David Lloyd George and George Clemenceau, who called their new provinces mandates as confirmed by the League of Nations. Britain was given a new entity called Iraq and another named Palestine. Today, that would be Israel, the Palestinian Authority Territories, and the Kingdom of Jordan. France received greater Syria. That would be Syria and Lebanon. Initially, Paris planned to divide its mandate into smaller states for

For the Maronite Christians, that would become Lebanon, the Druze, the Alawites, and the Sunnis in Damascus. The Kurds were promised their own state that was prevented by Turkey in 1922-23. In the end, the French decided against creating several smaller states and instead created Lebanon to be ruled by their Maronite Christian allies in partnership with Sunnis and Druze and also Syria. And both these states are completely unworkable. In fact, the only states that were created by the British and French mandates that still exist as actual states are Israel,

and the Kingdom of Jordan. And the Kingdom of Jordan is basically being held up by allies at this point. It turns out that all of the various ethnic groups, all of the various rivalries between them have torn apart virtually every other state that was artificial lines drawn in the sand by the British and the French in the aftermath of World War I.

As Montefiore says, the failure of all these states, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, are just part of a wider instability created by the failure of many of the post-imperial, post-colonial states formed by the great powers after 1945 in the Middle East and Africa in the 1960s. Many of the latter will either degrade into chaotic war lands and exurgencies ruled not by states but by militias become protectorates of new colonial powers like China or survive as federalized states made up of autonomous entities.

It's already true in Africa. It might be true for the Middle East. He says Syria may emerge as a single state tolerant of its many ethnic minorities, but that is very unlikely. Or it may be further federalized into autonomous entities ruled by the Kurds, the Alawites and a central sector under Sunni rule, hopefully not of repressive Islamists. Each will be protected by or dominated by outside powers. This may just be the start of another round of civil war. Turkey already has its army and its Turkish occupied zone, plus its own Syrian proxy militia in Syria.

And of course, it's friendly with HDS. Israel may develop its own relationship with the Kurds and the Druze. Russia will probably depart, but it will probably try and retain its enclave along the Mediterranean coast. Al-Jalani will either try to remake himself as a Syrian leader for all sects or stay true to the diehard Islamism of his career with disastrous results for all Syrians. As far as the United States, and it's very far away from the United States,

The United States' interests are generally going to be relegated to very small interests. Like, for example, preventing the rise of ISIS again, which would mean, as the United States has been doing, bombing ISIS bases or preventing jailbreaks from ISIS jails in the Kurdish areas of Syria. The United States does not have large-scale interests at stake in Syria. It means arming up allies to make sure that there's not another full-scale invasion of Israel, for example, via the Golan Heights. The Trump administration is already going to do that. The Trump administration does not want to get involved.

And I think that President Trump is totally right not to want to get heavily involved there because it's an absolute, as we say, cluster F.

President Trump put out a statement saying Assad is gone. He has fled his country. His protector, Russia, Russia, Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer. There was no reason for Russia to be there in the first place. They lost all interest in Syria because of Ukraine, where close to 600,000 Russian soldiers lay wounded or dead in a war that should never have started and could go on forever. Russia and Iran are in a weakened state right now, one because of Ukraine and a bad economy, the other because of Israel and its fighting success. Likewise, Zelensky and Ukraine would like to make a deal and stop the madness.

They've ridiculously lost 400,000 soldiers and many more civilians. There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin. Too many lives are being so needlessly wasted. Too many families destroyed. If it keeps going, it can turn into something much bigger and far worse. I know Vladimir well. This is time to act. China can help. The world is waiting. As far as Trump's suggestion via Truth Social that the United States does not have large-scale interests in getting involved with Syria, that is true. The United States has small-scale interests that I think are going to be extremely limited and should be extremely limited.

To, for example, making sure that there is an incursion over Israel's borders or that Jordan doesn't fall, which would be quite bad, or that the Kurds don't get overwhelmed by the Turks. And a lot of the pressure on Turkey, which I think is going to be the main job of the Trump administration in the region because Turkey is getting incredibly aggressive. A lot of that is going to be done diplomatically and economically. So when President Trump says stay out, I think he means it and I think he should mean it.

He put out a second statement, by the way, along these lines. This is a little bit earlier, saying, quote, opposition fighters in Syria in an unprecedented move have totally taken over numerous cities in a highly coordinated offensive and are now on the outskirts of Damascus, obviously this is before,

Russia, because they're so tied up in Ukraine with the loss of their 600,000 soldiers, seems incapable of stopping this literal march through Syria, a country they've protected for years. This is where former President Obama refused to honor his commitment of protecting the red line in the sand and all hell broke out with Russia stepping in. Now they are, like possibly Assad himself being forced out, it may actually be the best thing that can happen to them. There was never much of a benefit in Syria for Russia other than to make Obama look really stupid. In any event, Syria is a mess, but it's not our friend. The United States should have nothing to do with it. This is not our fight. Let it play out. Do not get involved.

And again, generally speaking, that is true. And you can see the left-wing press already encouraging like heavy involvement over there. With whom? To whom? What the hell are you talking about? Like seriously, what level of involvement are you talking? Like Washington Post has a piece up today titled, Why the U.S. Needs to Help Build a New Syria. Um, no. I mean, no. The answer is no. We should identify who our closest allies are in the region, say the Kurds and the Druze. We should provide them with arms to defend themselves.

We should allow Israel the ability to defend its own border. We should prevent the Turks from killing the Kurds by arming the Kurds, not by getting directly involved in any of this stuff and by putting economic pressure on Turkey. And that's kind of it. That's kind of it. And we should instead allow the Iranian regime to live with the consequences of its own terrible decisions. The Washington Post says, quote, it might be tempting to assume anything is better than Mr. Assad. That would be a mistake. HTS is an al Qaeda offshoot that once had links to ISIS.

Mr. Jelani has been trying to project a more moderate image and convince Syrians all ethnic groups would be welcome in a post-Assad Syria. In the Idlib region of northwestern Syria, HDS has provided protections for women and religious minorities, but has also been accused of human rights abuses and authoritarian rule. And the suggestion by the Washington Post,

It's quote, the Middle East badly needs a success story. A pluralistic democratic Arab country committed to upholding human rights. Yeah, good luck. Good luck with that. The answer is no, we should not be. No, democracy creation in Syria is not on the slate for the Trump administration, nor should it be. That is not a reality. It never was a reality. It's stupid. It was stupid in Iraq. It's stupid here. It's really dumb. There are places in the Middle East where theoretically democracy could flourish. Actually, one of those, ironically, is Iran, where the Persian population flourished.

And the population of Iran more generally is much more Western friendly and much more friendly to the ideas of democracy. That ain't true in Syria. That ain't true. Let the Kurds protect the Kurds. Let the Druze protect the Druze. Let the Jews protect the Jews and let the Turks stay out of all of it. I mean, that should basically be via soft mechanisms of power and simply allowing countries to do what they need to do. The American role here.

But again, the addiction to getting involved in every hand and every pie, the left addictions, they get involved and they don't stay involved long enough to actually see the thing through. It's always the worst available sort of answer to all of these problems. Joe Biden stumbled out to a podium and barely was able to read off a teleprompter. Here's his statement on the Assad regime falling. What happened in the Middle East after 13 years of civil war in Syria?

More than half a century of brutal authoritarian rule by Bashar Assad and his father before him. Rebel forces have forced Assad to resign his office and flee the country. We're not sure where he is, but there's word that he's in Moscow. At long last, the Assad regime has fallen.

hilariously, this schmuck then got up and suggested that that was because of his action in Ukraine and allowing Israel to fight its terrorist enemies. He's been slow walking aid in both places, in both places while attempting to negotiate with the Iranians. Like the utter gall of Joe Biden and the Obama foreign policy team. Remember, it was in mid 2023, like just before October 7th, that Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor, declared that Joe Biden had created a peaceful Middle East.

Yeah, it's been great, Bob. Well done, everybody. So here is the bottom line. As always, it's a mixed bag. Assad, one of the most evil dictators in modern times, not only deserves to go, he deserves to die. I mean, for the amount of human suffering and carnage he has created, one of the worst people on earth, Bashar Assad. Also, the people replacing him suck and are probably Sunni Islamist terrorists, affiliates with Al-Qaeda and ISIS. And anybody who's counting on them to become moderate democratic liberals or something, you're high on your own supply. Stop it.

So it is likely that civil war will continue. It is likely the Turks will begin flexing their muscle. Erdogan is proving himself to be a formidably Machiavellian player in the Middle East. But the sort of big takeaway for next steps is actually outside of Syria. It's actually in Iran. The big untold story here has very little to do with Syria. It has to do with as Iranian power wanes, as Iran is driven out of Lebanon, as they're driven out of Syria, as they're driven out of Yemen, which they will be, as they are driven out of wide swaths of Iraq, as this happens,

The Iranian regime is in serious trouble, and they're either going to have to figure out a way to move forward that does not involve the development of nuclear weapons, or they're going to find themselves on their last legs as well. And as far as Russia, Russia was proved weak here. Russia had a heavy stake in Syria. Russia was invested in Syria. Russia was providing weaponry to Syria. One further note.

The forward deployment of Israeli forces in Syria to destroy, for example, chemical weapons depots. That's a good thing. You don't want chemical weapons falling into the hands of Al Qaeda and ISIS affiliates. Back in 2007, when George W. Bush was president, the Israeli military blew up a nuclear facility created by the North Koreans in Damascus or created by Damascus in Syria. Would it have been better if there were nuclear weapons there? Right now, nuclear proliferation in this area of the world tends to be a really, really bad thing.

So that is the story from Syria. We'll see how it plays out. Don't let wishes be the father of stupidity in the Middle East. Should be sort of the moral of the story. Strong defense, strong allies.

By the way, as far as the Abraham Accords, which is one of the chief foreign policy priorities for the Trump administration, this very much favors the Abraham Accords because the Saudis are very much afraid of this new Sunni Islamist terrorist regime that is likely arising in Syria. And so they're very likely to side with the Israelis, with Jordanians, with the Egyptians in trying to prevent the rise of a rival terror backing power in the Middle East.

In just one second, we'll get to President Trump, who traveled over to France to take part in the reopening of Notre Dame, which was reconstructed after a giant fire. If you're not a member and become a member, use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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