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The Chris Hedges Report
The Fall of Assad & What it Means for The Mid East (w/ Alastair Crooke) | The Chris Hedges Report
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Alistair Crook
Foreign.
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Chris Hedges
The fall of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, ending a 53 year dynasty begun by his father, dramatically shifts the pieces on the chessboard of the Middle East. The rebel group Hayat Tahrir al Sham, or HTS, led by Abu Muhammad Al Jelani, is armed and backed by Turkey and was once allied with Al Qaeda. It is sanctioned as a terrorist group. Turkey's primary goal is to prevent an independent Kurdish state in northern Syria where Kurds have formed an autonomous enclave. But it may not only be Turkey that is behind the overthrow of Assad, it may also be Israel. Israel has long sought to topple the Syrian regime which is the transit point for weapons and aid sent from Iran to the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah. The Syrian regime was backed by Russia and Iran. Indeed, Russian warplanes routinely bombed Syrian rebel targets and Russian troops were stationed in Syria. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has gloated about the ousting of Assad, calling it an historic day and said it was a direct result of Israel's actions against Hezbollah and Iran. But at the same time, Israel will most likely soon have an Islamic state on its border. Syria, a country of 23 million, is geopolitically important. It links Iraq's oil to the Mediterranean, the Shia of Iraq and Iran to Lebanon and Turkey, a NATO ally to Jordan's deserts. Assad's decision to brutally crush a pro democracy movement triggered a 14 year long civil war in 2011 that led to 500,000 people being killed and and more than 14 million displaced. Now what will Hayat Tahrir Al Sham seek to renew relations with Iran? Will it impose an Islamic state? Will Syria's many minority groups, Alawite, Druze, Armenian, Chechen, Assyrian Christian and Turkmen be persecuted? Especially the Alawites, a heterodox offshoot of Shiite Islam comprising around 10% of the population which Assad and the ruling elites were members of. How will it affect the U. S backed and Kurdish led Syrian Democratic Forces which hold the Syrian oil rich territory in north and east Syria? Why are the US and Israel bombing targets in Syria following the ouster of Assad? Will the new regime be able to convince the US and Europe to lift sanctions and return the occupied oil? What does this portend for the wider Middle east, especially in Lebanon and the Israeli occupied territories? Joining me to discuss the overthrow of the Assad regime and its ramifications is Alistair Crook, a former British diplomat with more than 30 years service in the Middle East. He worked as a security advisor to the EU special envoy to the Middle east, as well as helping lead numerous efforts to set up negotiations and truces between Hamas, Islamic Jihad and and other Palestinian resistance groups with Israel. He was especially instrumental in establishing the 2002 ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. He is also the author of the Essence of the Islamist Revolution, which analyzes the ascendancy of Islamic movements in the Middle East. Let's put everything in context. So let's go back to the Arab Spring, Alister. There were widespread demonstrations in Syria, as there were throughout the Arab world. These were crushed very, very brutally by the Assad regime, which triggered the civil war. But let's start there.
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Alistair Crook
Okay, well, with the Arab strength, Spain, really, its roots, if you want to go back to the roots of that whole process, was a meeting that took place with then Vice President Cheney after the war In Lebanon, the 2006 war in Lebanon, and it entailed Prince Banda, who was then head of Saudi intelligence services. And what happened at that meeting was that Cheney started moaning and saying, look, what's going on? You know, the invasion of Iraq was supposed to weaken Iran, and it doesn't seem to have done that. And now we've got a Hezbollah who has emerged victorious from this war in Lebanon. And Prince Bandar interrupted at that point, and he said, no, the king believes that the solution to this is we've got to take out Syria. Syria is the weak link in this whole process. And Cheney sort of backed off. And he said, well, what do you have in mind? What are you talking about? And he said, well, there's a solution. It is. If you like Islamic revolutionaries, they're the ones that can work for you. And again, Cheney sort of backed away a little, said, well, you know, United States can't do too much about that. You know, we wouldn't want to go too far in that. And Bandar said, no problem. We will do it all for you. It'll be done. You don't have to intervene. It will follow. And so this was a sort of second round. The first round had happened in Afghanistan long before when I was there, when, of course, Saudi Arabia, at the behest of the United States, sent Islamist movements into what was the secular society in Afghanistan in order to bring it down, to damage Russia and to weaken Russia at the point. And so this came up at this point. But you have to grasp the big geopolitical picture of what was happening. Saudi Arabia was proposing to invert the whole paradigm of the Middle east in the 19th century and beyond. It was Iran, the Shah. This was. It was a big, powerful country, and it was the leader in the Middle East. And what he was saying is, let's invert it. Let's isolate Iran and make the Sunnis paramount in the Middle east, give them the primacy. And so it was an attempt to sort of shift the whole balance around in a different way and to give the Sunni world. And this had been part of America's policy from 96 onwards. I fixed this idea of working with the Gulf states and with the monarchs and emirs of the Gulf against. Then it was against Baathist regime and others, but then it was against Iran. And I remember, I mean, I was writing, you asked about the Arab awakening and what happened at that point. Well, it was, I think really in about 2015 or earlier, I'm not sure if 12 or 13 even that Obama signed the presidential finding, which is an order, I mean, it's an order that is given and was given to the CIA to oust Assad and to overturn the government there. And so ever since then, there've been a whole series of sort of three letter, whole ragtag of three letter groups that have received American training, Israeli training, Turkish training in Syria, mainly for the purpose of ousting Assad and fulfilling the finding, Obama's presidential finding. But even this started to fail, in my view. I wrote, I remember in, I think it was around 2012, I wrote and I said, things are shifting because what I see is this. We used to look at Palestine and we used to look at the Middle east through sort of secular eyes, albeit Orientalist eyes, but through secular eyes, we used to lose it and see it in sort of instrumental fashion. Palestine, you know, it was about institution construction to state solution. And I wrote even then that I thought this was shifting towards, if you like, symbols of religion, Al Aqsa versus Temple Mount were going to be the new war that was coming. And gradually, if you like, the Saudis wore out their interests in Wahhabism. Wahhabism, extreme form of very narrow religion of Islamic religion based on texts and on document, which was known quite obviously as a management of savagery. And this was the turning point really. I think it was starting to shift in the other direction. And now Saudi Arabia has almost completely got rid of, if you like, the Wahhabi influence. Other parts of the Gulf have become more, what I call, more interested in Bloomberg in their stock market ratings than they are in the geopolitics of the region. So that is the shift. Now what's happened essentially with this is an expansion of Obama's finding because gradually the most severe sanctions The Caesar sanctions were imposed on Syria from, you know, from the beginning. And then the Kurds were empowered in the northeast of Syria and they sat on the Syrian oil fields and that oil was taken from them and sent Turkey. And it was entirely an illegal operation. So Syria lost its oil revenues. And then later the Turks came down into the western part of Syria, occupied Idlib and took Aleppo. That was the industrial part. And so the agricultural, the oil industry, there was no economy, no economy left. Just to give you a practical example now, where we've had, we've seen that the Syrian army sort of were declined to fight. A conscript in the Syrian army is currently paid $7 a month. A general in the Syrian army receives $40 per month. The HTS and the others of the militia received $2,000 a month. That is the state in which really Syria just didn't have, for one thing, the resources to seemingly be able to put together an army or fight. Russia tried to do this in 2018. It said to Assad, we'll remake your army, re equip it, new equipment, we'll train them, the latest things on credit. You don't have to put money up. Assad said no. Then more lately, the Iranians have said to them, you know, we can support you, we can support your army, we can help, but you have to invite us. I mean, we can't come in as an occupying force. We have to be invited. Assad said no. And throughout this period, he has been warned that something was coming. The Iranians, the Quds Brigade of the IRGC about two months ago went to Assad and they said to him, something is happening in Idlib. Beware, watch out. And I imagine that the Russians were equally aware of this. And the Turks have now publicly said that this was on the cards. They were operating this six months earlier. It's started from their perspective six months earlier. I would actually put the date for the preparation of this for two years ago, probably. But anyway, they openly say six months ago, you know, it was underway. Being prepared and being prepared obviously with America and being prepared with Israel. Now why did he say no? Now, I don't have an answer that is definitive of this, but. But I remember some years ago, I remember well that I had. There was a discussion and I know the details of it, that when mbs Mohammed bin Salman was sort of new on the stage and young MBZ from the Crown Prince of UAE were talking and he said, listen to Mohammad bin Salman if you want to be crown prince. The path to being crown prince is through Israel, and it's through the Israeli lobby in Washington. That's what you need to do. And that's, of course, what UAE had done already with its base in Washington presenting itself in ways to America. And I think what we've seen in the last three or four years is we've seen actually that both. That Assad was distancing himself from both Iran and from Russia. And I think that he was being pulled more and more by the Gulf states, thinking that if he approximated closer to the Gulf states and away from Iran and Russia, this was his path to sort of survival, because Washington would like that, but more importantly, Tel Aviv would like that and that would work with him in that way. Well, in the end, it just was nothing left to work with. So Erdogan, who had been for months, months, years, trying to persuade Assad to allow his government to be, if you like, I can only describe it as a sort of controlled Ottoman structure rather than a government of the Syrian people. And I remember he was pressing it very hard at one time when I was with Assad in Damascus. And Assad said, look, you know, these people like Hamas and the Muslim Brothers, who are guests in my country, and we've helped funded, supported them, you know, now telling me how to run the country and that they want the Muslim Brotherhood. And it's a very sensitive. It's a very sensitive issue, the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. I'm sure, you know, because of the affairs with Hamza.
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Chris Hedges
Well, we should just explain for people who don't. There was an uprising, I think his father, Hafez Al Assad, at least 10. He raised the city, 10,000 dead. You can explain the context of that. And it was a Baathist, secular regime, Ba'athism coming out of Nasser. Saddam Hussein was a Ba'athist. But just explain, going back that history, why they were so terrified of the Muslim Brotherhood, as, of course, was other rulers like King Hussein.
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Alistair Crook
They saw the Muslim Brotherhood as a very strict Islamist movement whose tale, and there is some truth to this, veered off into sort of Wahhabism and Salafism. That was certainly true in Gaza and elsewhere. But Erdogan tried to take control of the Muslim Brotherhood because he wanted to present, as I just said, you know, that whereas Cheney was empowering the kings and amirs of Sunni Islam to be the masters of the world, Erdogan wanted to go back to Ottomanism, a form of neo Ottomanism. And Erdogan feared that no one liked the Ottomans, basically, outside of the Ottoman wealth. And he wanted to insert that. And Assad saw this as a huge danger and that this was going to be a militant attack on the state. But during that period after this, I mean, the state has become weaker and weaker and weaker. And so when, if you like, when Russia said, well, we can try and build up your army and try and make you stronger, I don't think he had the resources, don't think he had even. You know, when you're paying your troops $7 a month, you know, you just don't have many resources. They were. The people were starving, they were losing hope. And there was a lot of corruption. You can imagine soldiers on $7 a month, you know, stop the people at the checkpoints and demand money from them. And that sort of thing was going on. And then he was being dragged towards the Gulf states, thinking this might be a solution for him. And then Erdogan decided to mount, if you like, this coup through Idlib, using a motley group of militias and others and those that are loosely tied to ISIS or Al Qaeda. And I think that what happened was because he went to see President Putin on the day before Friday, I think it started Saturday, and he spent some time with President Putin, hours, and then flew back the same day. And we have no idea what was said at that meeting. There's no record of it from the Kremlin side and there's no record on the Damascus side of it. But I think that was probably the point. Putin said, I'm sorry, Assad, it's game over. There's going to be a change and you're going to have to work with it. So I think from the Astana, from the meetings between Iran, Turkey and Russia, Russia had come to the conclusion on two grounds that, I mean, first of all, this was going to be a terrible mess if Assad fell. And I think he was probably being advised that this is almost inevitable outcome. The situation was becoming irreversible. So I think in one sense, he could see that this would be a terrible mess. Yes. But at the same time he recalled Afghanistan, and the same time he knew that one of the plagues that is in hand against Russia is to we it, to give ways of pulling it from its focus on Ukraine and the war there, to create new fronts, new pressure points, more pressure on Assad, and that he decided, you know, what was the primary interest of Russia? The primary interest is not the small wars, the big war, not Romania, not Belarus, not Mondavia, but the big war, which is against, if you like, NATO and the west, which wants to if you like, peel him away from China, peel him away from Iran, scatter the brics across the globe and leave Russia isolated. And so I guess he decided that that was to be the case and Iran were very clear. They went, Larry Janney went to see Assad well before the actual collapse and said, you know, to say, look, it's coming, it's coming, you're going to go. I mean, it's. There's no way the army is going to protect. And I think, I know that Larijani, he wouldn't even see him. And then he told him he was wrong. And I just think that at that point it was all over. And so Russia and Iran and Erdogan got together and they produced this document. Of course, I mean, you know, it's all diplomatic speak. It doesn't. It has got no religious meaning. It talks about elections and a ceasefire and everyone is going to stop and get together and come. And the legitimate opposition must be included and hts excluded. I mean, all this is fiction, of course. It's never going to happen.
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Chris Hedges
Let's talk. Let me ask a little bit about what this. Let's start with Turkey. I mean, I hadn't heard that figure of $2,000 a month. That's a lot of money in the Middle East. Is that Turkish money? Is that Israeli money? Is that US money? I just want to talk about the us, Turkey and Israel independently. And then, of course, we have to acknowledge, I think you would agree, this is quite a blow to both Russia and Iran, in particular Hezbollah. It's the lifeline to Hezbollah, of course. But let's start with Turkey. It was Turkey who was, where, who, where did the arms and money come from? Was it primarily Turkey?
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Alistair Crook
Most of the training? I mean, there's been a lot of training of these groups even across from sort of Central Asia. Uzbeks, Turkomans and others, former jihadists, former fighters, Al Qaeda fighters have been taken in. And indeed, if you look at Jelani's group, you know, this polyglot group of militia, more than 30% actually come from Central Asia. They're not Syrians at all. So they've been brought in. And Turkey is well known to have a training center for these groups. Even allegations that the famous fire at a concert hall in Moscow last year, earlier this year, that many people died in, they were Turkmens, and that it came from that they were trained in Turkey. So there was a. There's been a long process of this. And yes, it's funded by America because it's part of the process. He sold it to America as part of the process of getting rid of Assad and getting a Western friendly government installed in Damascus. Of course, he framed it as a Western friendly government. What he meant was a sort of neo Ottomanesque government in Damascus. And as I say, I know that because, you know, Assad was telling me at that earlier point, you know, how much pressure was on him to sort of bring in sort of parts of the Ottoman world into his government. And he refused. And that cause of the breakup originally. So, yes, money coming in Turkey, working closely with America, particularly in the groups in the south which were operated. It was complicated in Syria because the Pentagon was training some and CIA training others in Syria at the same time. And some of those groups were fighting each other, even though they were both on the American payroll. So America was funding a lot of this for Turkey. It was seeing Turkey as someone who could be helpful to Israel. And Turkey was very supportive of Israel. And things only started to sort of go wrong, I think, around 2016 when Turkey said that there's been this plot against him, a coup, A coup. And that he blamed it was an American coup attempt to get rid of him. And at that point he's become much more militant. His ego is huge. He made a statement yesterday, I saw it this morning, he was sitting there and he said, there are really only two leaders in the world today, myself and Putin, that I've been around a lot longer than Putin. So, you know, you can judge what, you know, how he sees Syria. Something for him to take. But I think the great weakness and the flaw of this whole construct that has taken place and allowed to be taking place is he claims and thinks he can control Jalani and the jihadists now posing as ex jihadists and diverse characters have embraced diversity and inclusion and whatever else. And he thinks that, that he can control. And even his own people say, and they've said it clearly in the press too, he doesn't control these people. He controls a few of them, but he doesn't control them. And he certainly doesn't control Gilani, who set up a very oppressive structure in Idlib while he was the boss there. Very oppressive, strict Wahhabi. And anyone who disagreed was disappeared.
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Chris Hedges
Let's talk about Israel, because Netanyahu has gloated about this. In the short term, it does seem to benefit Israel in the sense that, as we said before, Syria is the transit point for weapons and aid to Hezbollah. Hezbollah troops were fighting for Assad. They withdrew just before the fall of Assad. Israel has moved forward in the buffer zone on the Golan Heights, they've moved tanks. This is occupied Syrian territory. So just as in Lebanon, they've used this moment to seize more land. Israel, like the US has bombed supposedly weapons facilities, intelligence facilities in Syria. But this question I have to ask you. I don't see how an Islamic state, and I agree with your assessment of Jelani, of course I don't see how an Islamic state in Syria in the long term is beneficial to Israel. But perhaps you can talk about all that.
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Alistair Crook
Okay, because, you know, we have to go back a little bit and look, you know, there's been this huge change in Israel from just over a year ago when the whole paradigm of Israel was overturned. And suddenly we saw the Mizrahi coming into the government, into it. They had a very. They were really antagonistic to the European style Israelis from the Kibbutzniks, the Ashkenazi, they were hostile to them. They had three agendas, basically. They had one agenda was to establish Israel on the land of Israel, translated no Palestinian state. The second one was to create, if you like, a really Jewish state, Jewish in spirit, and they think that they have it. And the third element was halakic law to come in. I mean, the seculars in Israel didn't like this one bit and were. And Israel is deeply divided on this front and other fronts at the moment, almost to the point of civil war. Just short of it, Netanyahu has become ever more authoritarian, controls literally everything personally. He has a coalition which is very much at the right. But the other important change that's taken place is an epistemological change. They're no longer secular. The Israelis that you might have known in the 70s and 80s were secular Europeans. These people are biblical. And there's an eschatological element to it which changes the epistemological. There's no point talking about rationality. And does this make sense or is this in the interest? Because they have a vision and it's not about just the vision, but the vision is you requires and mandates your commitment and your belief in it. You're not supposed to reason with it. You take it. And this is the vision of the future. So there's this big change and moving towards this, Israel has moved through what I call magical wars. The wars are quite magical. I mean, in Gaza, it's a great victory. It's a huge. Even though it isn't a victory at all, it's far from it. Hamas is still there, but it's presented as a huge victory. And Already they are organizing for settlers to come in and take the land of northern Gaza and subsequently to repopulate. That settlers are already putting their names down to be in the settlements of Gaza. And then they say in west bank. It's also a great victory because Smotrich, who's a minister in the cabinet, minister of defense, as well as administration of the west bank, he's actually delegitimizing the whole of the Palestinians in the West Bank. And then they claim a great victory against Hezbollah in the south of Lebanon, even though they suffered enormous losses, had to pull all the reserves out. So they're in a fix because the army doesn't have enough men. It's about 20% understaffed for the commitments it's already got. And increasingly, reservists are not showing up to duty. The army say they're exhausted, but primarily they say there's no plan, there's no structure. What are our objectives? What are we actually trying to do? Oh, this is a little bit sort of rational. He isn't on the same page. He's working towards the grand victory, which is something different. So we've had all these sort of magical construct. And so the magical part of it now is Syria, Another great victory for Iran on the route to the war on Iran. So this is what it's all about, showing how it's successful and it's going on. And now the final cherry on the cake is to persuade the United States that it has to support Israel in its war on Iran. And, of course, suddenly we have the nuclear weapon being presented as if you like the motive for this war. And you see Trump even now saying, oh, well, what's happened? You know, it's partly to do with Ukraine, but it's also because of Israel's fighting successes. Well, most Israelis would say, we haven't got any successes. This is all, you know, magical. I describe it as like. It's like a Ponzi scheme. You know, this is a financial scam, but in this case, it's a geopolitical Ponzi scheme in the sense that everything is a victory for Israel. Everything is taking us closer to ultimate victory. Ultimate victory is to get rid of the head of the octopus, which is Iran, and we're moving towards this great victory. And there are all these people trying to stop us, Biden is trying to stop us. All sorts of people are trying to stop us, but we're on it. So it's very important, like a Ponzi scheme. If you stop making money, the thing crashes. If you find people sort of withdrawing money from the fund and saying, well, is this really going to work? Is this really a good idea? Then you're finished. And so Netanyahu's structure is a sort of magical thinking that he's got to keep everything to be a victory moving towards the direction that he's always wanted it to go, is pulling, inveigling the United States through some provocation that they will do on Iran into supporting a war. Now, I just add, because I don't want to give the wrong impression, I think a war with Iran would be disastrous for Israel, might even destroy Israel, and it would be a great defeat for the United States. I won't go into the reasons for that. But just to say, you know, I don't think people have thought this through. I mean, you know, it's based on the simple sort of understanding, absolute conviction in the West. Russia is weak, America is strong, Israel is strong, Iran is weak. And, you know, there's nothing you can say really against it. And then you have some four star General Jack Keane coming up on television in the US and saying, well, the Israelis have knocked out Iran's air defenses. The Israelis have damaged their nuclear program by the attack on Parchin. The Israelis have really reduced Iran. It lies naked before us. It is stunningly vulnerable. And this is what the talking heads on CNN are saying clearly, you know, laying the grounds. Parchin is held up. But it's really no different from when Colin Powell went on television all those years ago, before 2006, that you see what's in this vial here. This is weapons of mass destruction. And this is what the war is going to be about. They didn't strike anything at Parchin. There's clear evidence that the Israelis were not able to even fire ballistic missiles. They never got closer than 70km to the Iranian frontier. So, you know, this is a magical. It's difficult to deal with us in a Western way, like most of the audience would like me to say, you know, on the one hand, on the other hand, because we're talking about something that has moved into an eschatological, if you like, mindset that this is ordained, this is the Bible, this is what the Torah says, this is what we are going for. And we do it because we have to believe in revelation. Forget rationality, it's revelation.
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Chris Hedges
I want to ask about the Turks. So, and I spent a lot of time in northern Iraq, actually spent time with the pkk, covered all of the fighting in southeastern Turkey, including the Nehru's Rebellion. The Turks are Obsessed with this US backed Kurdish militia force that controls the oil fields in the north and east of Syria. One has to assume that, that that's the next move. They want to essentially push the Kurds out and seize those oil fields. That's my hypothetical or that's my guess. Is that correct?
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Alistair Crook
So it started, they were already attacking Mandish, they're attacking those Kurdish groups there. And more than that, because this is one of the big fractures taking place because Turkey is determined to destroy the Kurdish, what they see them as terrorists and a great threat to Turkey. Let's have no doubt. This is a wide. It's not just Erdogan, it is a wide Turkish view. Not everyone in Turkey holds it. But then you have these. And now, I mean there is real fighting going on in Manbish. And on the other side you have Israel saying, we want to build up this Kurds. We would like a Kurdish state to be formed in the eastern part, joined in to Erbil and joined to Iraq. And that's our objective. And so the two of them are. And unfortunately this is going to be the case not just in the Kurdish part, but in many parts of Israel. There's going to be a clash as things go on between the interests of Jelani and the leadership there and the interests of others. What happens to the Alawites, what happens to Latakia? That sort of. This is a stretch along the coast where the Russian bases are. But it's always been historically an Alawite sort of statelet, shall we say. So I mean there's going to be. And some of the Syrian army have sort of kept their forces a little bit together. I don't want to sound too much. They took all the armor into Iraq, a whole division took its armor into Iraq. You know, we've seen it before happen in other places. In for example, in Egypt, how even though a military that has been defeated and has been discredited, somehow, you know, bits of it come together and find popular support. So will they come in and start fighting Jelani's groups? What will happen? No one knows. It's going to be, I think, a really huge mini wars, cultural wars, fighting. And I think Turkey thought it would be able to sort of manage these like the puppet master from outside in Ankara. And I think that already that's gone already. Yes, Russia's influence is gone, Iran's influence is gone. But I think Turkey is just evaporating now before our eyes because they're not being able to do what they think they were going to do. In the northeast, Erdogan has said he wants to take the whole of the northern strip right across Syria through to Iran as a big, big buffer zone to protect him from any influences from outside.
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Chris Hedges
I don't see how the Syrian economy is going to function if they don't get back the oil fields. And we should be clear. One of the things that many things that led to Assad's deep unpopularity, aside from really savage repression, was also the fact that there was only electricity an hour a day in Damascus. Prices were astronomical, unemployment was widespread. Of course you had sanctions against Syria, but those oil fields are. Aren't they vital? I mean, if they don't recapture those oil fields, how are they going to ever. And much of the country is destroyed and has not been rebuilt. It's one of the problems with the millions of people, Syrian refugees. There's nothing to go back to.
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Alistair Crook
This is what I was saying. The oil has been taken. That is also the agricultural land of Syria that is now occupied by the Kurds. So they lost the revenues from agriculture, the revenues from oil, and the industrial parties around Aleppo and Idlib, and that has been under Turkish control for this period, and they are being under sanctions. So, I mean, the people have been. I mean, there's absolute poverty in Syria and people are in despair and have lost hope. And this has been a big case. And I do think what you're saying is very important because I think it's fundamental to also to the Russian calculations. Okay, Turkey, all right, the West. You've broken Syria. You broke it, you pay for it, because you know it's going to cost a huge amount of money. At the moment, Qatar is paying for the electricity in Aleppo. It's having to pay for, as a big bonus for HTs, that, you know, Aleppo now has electricity at night and all the day, because Qatar was given 30 million or something to pay. But that's just one part of it. I mean, the whole state would need rebuilding and reconstructing. And I think that's ultimately why, you know, the thing collapsed, because it was just irrecoverably, financially, militarily and actually institutionally, because the institutions had become very much affected by it. I mean, the Ba'ath party has been long decrepit in Syria, and Assadis find it impossible to reform it.
- [43:55]
Chris Hedges
Can you draw parallels between the US Invasion and occupation of Iraq, also based, of course, on magical thinking? Is that the kind of chaos that you envision enveloping Syria?
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Alistair Crook
Well, I think there is one thing where it is very clear what happened. I Mean, was the planning for this in Iraq, particularly the British and America had bought off most of the army, the Revolutionary Guards, Republican Guards, I mean, had been bought off large amounts, even in gold. And so when it came to it, they didn't fight. It was already sort of half ordained, but then they didn't know what to do with it, how to take forward. And I think it was really sort of very much expressed by the governor, what was his name that came in Kinan, I can't remember, but their first appointed governor of Iraq, and he arrived there and he said, listen, I know nothing about Iraq, I don't know about its culture, I don't know its history, I know nothing. But I'm here because I'm an expert in neoliberal economics, right? And there was no empathy, there was no sense of how to bring, you know, people together to deal with it and manage it. And I see zero sign that at this stage, anyone likely to come forward and be able to have that sort of charisma and to have that understanding of how to bring, you know, humans, to lead humans towards a sort of sense of understanding a community again, to being part of belonging, being connected again to a society. And the Syrians just feel, and all elements feel so disconnected from society. I think they feel it, you know, they just don't see how they're going to connect. So they just look after themselves. Someone offers them $400 for a weapon, why not? That's like a fortune. Take it. So I think this is, this is partly again, you know, the sort of why Russia does understand it a lot better than the west, what's happening. And I think Russia sees the big picture all the time. It sees the big picture about the building forces. I mentioned Lavrov saying we're moving towards a hot war and he is preparing. And it's all about Mackinder and the heartland that is the, the heartland of Central Asia. And this is why, you know, he's preparing for it. Because I think, and I wrote about this just recently in quoting some Russians who are very close to him, you know, the west gets this entire back to front. Putin has said this time and time again. He said it to the Foreign Ministry at his speech and he said it again in the press conference at Astana the other day. I will not accept a freezing of the conflict. I will not accept that, because I know what you want to do is you just want to then take the rump that is Ukraine afterwards and NATOise it and rearm it and be prepared for the next War in a few years time against Russia. No, we have to go back to it and look at it. How do we solve this properly? How do we solve it in a fundamental way? And what he says strikes me as correct. He goes back. The basic problem arose on the, if you like, the unification of Germany when America gave the guarantees that that frontier, the border of Germany represented the border of NATO, and not just NATO, but of Atlantis interests, economic, institutional, whatever you like, that there had to be some sort of agreement. So what he's been saying and what was in those treaties of December 21st was saying we have to have an architecture, we have to have some basic understandings where the frontier now lies between Atlantis interest and the interests of Central Asia, the heartland, the world, if you like, of the Central Asia, China, Iran, all of that, right through to the coast. And you have to start with that and then eventually you get down to the actual issue, which is Ukraine. Because once you agree a sort of overall architecture, Ukraine will naturally fit somewhere into that. We can't say how exactly, but it will. Maybe parts of it will go to Poland and to Hungary or something or not. But get the big picture. Don't come here and just say suits for her in Ukraine because you inverted the whole thing. You've got the wrong end of the stick and you don't listen and hear what I'm saying to you. So I think it's very important. And he even gave a big hint in his statement from behind his desk in his office. And he said, and what he said was, you know, I feel it was a great mistake in 2019 when you, the United States did away with intermediate missile treaty agreement, and that's what he said. But if Trump's team heard it and paid attention, so, you know, why not send an Invalid, you know, Mr. Putin, it was really interesting what you said in that talk, and you said that was a mistake. Would you like to sort of say what you see is a way to deal with this and what would be the future and how we would arrive at that sort of thing, and then, you know, ultimately you'll get to Ukraine in the discussion. But if you come in and say, freeze, we want to freeze, otherwise we're going to hit you with more sanctions or we're going to sanction you more or do this or that or send more attack hands and it won't work. So, I mean, he gave a pretty good clue. This is diplomacy. You come in and you don't start off saying, let's cut to the chase, what's your Bottom line, this is mine. Cut the difference. It's not a real estate deal. It has to be done differently. And Putin said, why not? You know, this isn't. Let's talk about that. Let's see if there's an agreement. If we do that, then we get into the architecture of Europe, the whole security architecture, and that matters a lot to Putin. I know it does.
- [51:26]
Chris Hedges
Well, I'm not no fan of Trump, but in terms of Ukraine, it's far more. The Trump administration appears to speak far more rationally than the Biden administration. I want to go back to Syria and just to close. How could this all go terribly wrong? Pain for us, the ways this could just unravel in ways that jeopardize stability within the Middle east and perhaps even globally.
- [52:00]
Alistair Crook
I think the first thing would be just to look at the immediate area, and the first one would be Lebanon, where there is a strong pocket in Tripoli of those who would support Girani strongly against the Shiite. The shiite are about 45 to 55% of the population in Lebanon. But the tensions, the fractures are very obvious in Lebanon because of the ceasefire and because of Israel's massive bombing of civilian areas to try and bring a ceasefire about. Then you go up to Iraq. The Kurds in Erbil, are they going to see their Kurdish colleagues wiped out by Turkey there? And what is going to happen to the Hashad? The Hashad are the militia which are part of the Iraqi army. I mean, they're formerly part of the Iraqi army, but they're quite autonomous in many ways. And these have been working with Iran, and these groups are now armed, and now they've had a whole division of Syrian forces placed inside. Are they going to go and fight the HTs as they sort of encroach and try and cut off Iraq from Syria, as is very likely, then you move further away. How does all this look in the sort of relationship that matters so much to the United States, between the Gulf states and Islam and the region as a whole? And I started off by talking about the sort of big shift, polar shift between Iran was at the apex and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states were at the bottom. And then it was. The Americans tried to turn it upside down. But the greatest. Saudi Arabia will be very nervous, I believe, to see the Ottomans claiming to be one of the leaders of the world, as Erdogan just did. And to treat the. The Saudis is just, you know, another branch of Islam that he doesn't pay a great deal of attention to. And I think also because Inevitably, although they say they won't. I mean, already hijab is mandatory in Syria and women are being rounded up in some places. And I don't know what's happening to them. This is in part of the Kurdish areas, Kurdish areas that are, are run by the Americans. And what happens if the Kurds are really under pressure and they release 50,000 ISIS from their prison in Kurdistan? What then will Iraq do? What will the Iraqi forces do? Will they enter into Syria to deal with the ISIS that have been released into the people? There'll be more ISIS released in Damascus from the prisons there by Jelani. But the point is that mbs, Mohammed bin Salman and the Gulf states, I mean, they become, they've adopted the Western lifestyle almost completely. You know, they're like girls, not quite scantily dressed in their palaces and, you know, on the beach and things like this. And he's moved in many ways. You know, alcohol is pretty freely available and things like this. I don't think he's going to be happy seeing this sort of, because it really hurts because he has a Wahhabi. He is the Wahhabi establishment. The sources of the, of Wahhabism are in the Nijab, not in Jeddah. And this is going to make him, I think, very uneasy indeed. And so is he going to put money in to forces that are opposed to Erdogan and the takeover? Will he support factions in. Well, you see it already. Doha has already come in. Doha, which is at odds with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states on these issues of the Muslim Brotherhood or I mean, of course, Qatar is a Wahhabi scheme. Are they going to go and support it? They're already supporting it in Aleppo, providing all the funding to try and support the credibility and the public appeal of it. That's how the whole region can change. And Israel within this, it sees itself as a grand victor. But I think what has happened and what will increasingly happen whether Durani is the leader or not, I mean, Israel is seen and disliked by much of the world, whether they're pro ISIS or anti isis. For what's happened to Gazans, that already has. I mean, the Middle east, many the states are just seething with anger about it. There are pockets that side with Israel in Syria, in Lebanon, but they don't count impotent, they don't count anything. The great feeling is against it. Then you come to Jordan. What happens to Jordan in these circumstances? Because Jordan has got right on the border. Will they come across, Will they invade? Jordan also has a huge Muslim Brotherhood Contingent. And it also has some quite Salafist elements in it, too. It's been very tense in this period, as it is very tense because of what's been happening in west bank and in Gaza. And Jordan is terrified that Israel will eventually push the Palestinians out of the. Out of the west bank and describe Jordan as a new Palestinian state. And the push on Palestinians in the west bank is intense. And they are leaving and they are moving as the settlers. I mean, there is a big army of settlers, 10,000 strong now, armed by Ben Gavir. And I believe. I can't say for sure, but what I hear from inside Israel is there's going to be an attempt by Ben gvir, who's in charge of the police, coordinated with Smotrich, to clear the Palestinians out of Area C. Area C is a sort of area in the west bank where there is joint security, supposedly joint security responsibility between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. And I think, really, you know, they envisage South Lebanon to be another Area C, that they will sort of take over in the. In the same way. So that's where I would see these things. Meanwhile, the tensions in Israel are growing. Netanyahu goes to court. I think this week. There are big divisions. The Attorney General says that Ben Gavier is an illegal cabinet member. Ben Gavier, she says that you cannot delay this court case. The Attorney General, Ben Gavier and the Cabinet say the Attorney General must be sacked. There's deep divisions within the army who say, you know, there's no plan, there's no policy, there's no blueprint, and we're getting killed. The Orthodox don't get killed. Why do our sons have to bear the loss of life and the Orthodox fee to study in their Yeshiva? Why is all this happening? And so, I mean, Israel is deeply, deeply divided. And many of those Israelis, even former national security members, feel that Israel is on the brink of a collapse, not in the sense of just a military one, but of a institutional collapse. Because all of the structures of law and how the army work, because, you know, it is becoming, in brief, I use this as a shorthand, but it's becoming a war between the Kingdom of Judea and the State of Israel. And Ben Gibeah has, you know, a mini army of 10,000 settlers, all armed or who obey his particular radical rabbis, very radical people who talk about the oral Talmud and not just the Talmud, and then the rather secular Europeanized state of Israel, who want to bring everything under a judicial process and to have the army being, if you like, a neutral element and this clash is profound. And what will come out of it, Israelis don't know. So I mean, it's not the victory that Netanyahu is proclaiming. It's very tentative and as I say, it's all based on the sort of magical thinking that we're on our path to, you know, Armageddon with Iran. And then everything will be, be resolved. Gaza will be resolved, Lebanon will be resolved, Syria, Iraq, all done. Because we will have defeated the head of the octopus.
- [62:16]
Chris Hedges
Just two last questions. What happens to the Palestinians pushed into southern Gaza? Clearly they will empty the north. They're, you know, far down that road already. It's a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in the south. There's no clean water, there isn't enough food. People are living out in the open. What happens in southern Gaza? Does it just sit and fester? The Egyptians, as I was just in, I've been in Egypt, I was actually in the west bank this summer and in Jordan. But my understanding is the Egyptian military has been categorical. The Palestinians will not be pushed into the Sinai. What happens.
- [62:59]
Alistair Crook
Netanyahu at the moment, Netanyahu and his cabinet, it's not just Netanyahu, but the support and the support in the population want to just continue with the process of the slow decimation of the population in Gaza. And there's no, I mean they don't have again, there's no plan, no solution except to continue the squeeze and to continue with the military intervention to make life unbearable. And Smotridge says, well, maybe in the next few years two thirds of them will opt to leave because there's nothing in Gaza. It's just rubble, no schools, no hospitals, nothing. It's all been destroyed. And clearly the aim is eventually ethnic cleansing to clear out the whole of Gaza. Because they have plans and Smotridge has plans and Ben Gibbia has plans for about 50 settlements to be placed in the place of Gaza. And the Palestinians will hold out. They are very tough, they're very strong minded and they will hold out. And it will be, I mean, a daily unfolding tragedy. I can't even bring myself to watch some of the videos that come out of there of children and people burnt alive and so on. So. But I see no solution to this as long as Netanyahu and the cabinet and I don't see any particular immediacy to a fall of the, the government at this stage. I mean, who knows, there's the trial coming up, anything can happen. The whole thing can collapse, I mean, because it's all very precariously based on this tiny sort of fulcrum of Netanyahu's power and his sort of vision of great victory and the support that he.
- [65:07]
Chris Hedges
Gets for that and just to close. How likely do you think a war with Iran is?
- [65:17]
Alistair Crook
I think it's likely. I think it's likely for the following reason. I think that it's not about Iran particularly. It's nothing to do with Iran. Firstly, they want to disrupt Trump to pull him into, if you like, a war on Iran. They think it'll be an easy war. I think they've got this totally wrong. They think it'll be an easy war, but they want to reassert, if you like, American power and leadership. And they feel that, you know, doing, you know, every so often, you know, throwing a small country against the wall and smashing it up sort of is good for this. And I think, I'm not being too cynical, I think that they feel they need a war. There is a strong sense in that, if you like ruling cadre, not for Americans as a whole, but for within that, if you like, that they have to reassert those deep layers of American policy which are. They will not tolerate any, if you like, rival power, any challenge to American leadership and American greatness and American sense of its vision for the future to occur on their watch. And therefore, you know, this has been bedrock, bipartisan bedrock, at the sort of deeper layer of structure that no politician is allowed to challenge. And so I think they will probably do it. It's not about is it good or bad. I don't think Trump will be able to, because they control. The other thing is, you know, basically the Israeli first is want it, and they control Congress and they have the money to do this, and they probably will do it.
- [67:18]
Chris Hedges
But is that an aerial campaign? I don't know how physically would they send troops into Iran?
- [67:23]
Alistair Crook
They can't do troops. No, they can't. You can't, you can't, you can't. It's, you know, it's population is 90 million and it is as big as Europe virtually couldn't do this. No, it's only by. And here's where I, you know, disagree with the consensus in America. They think it's by air assault, you know, shock and awe, a big campaign that will go in and bust it. But the technical reasons for why that won't work are plentiful. First of all, Iran has excellent air defenses from Russia, but their own as well. And the Israelis, contrary to what the media say, were not able to penetrate into Iranian airspace when they attempted that strike 26 of, I think it was October. They were not able to penetrate into their airspace. And when you're talking about a nuclear program or programs that are deeply buried underground. You saw what happened in Beirut. To get at the Hezbollah leadership. It took 85 heavy missiles. And if you're going to fly F35s with JDAM missiles, each of those is about 14 tons. I mean, it's not just the weight they can carry them, but the fuel they use. So you have to refuel maybe once, refuel twice. Then you have to have fighter aircraft to suppress, anti. To suppress air defenses. I mean, you're talking about a huge performance. Is America going to be able to do this? And against. I mean, the Israelis have got multiple. The Iranians have got multiple air defense systems and good radars, over the horizon radars as well. And you know, we were all told that they damaged this Parch in. This was essential. There's been nothing. I followed it. I think you mentioned it in your lead in that I was involved with Iran on the nuclear site for the European Union when Solana was leaving that. I mean, we've been dealing with Parchin for 20 years. The Israelis have been claiming it's got a secret site there and the IEA have inspected it multiple times and found nothing. And there was nothing this time. They bombed two empty warehouses. It was during Katami's presidency that anything sensitive was taken away from Parchin and put deep into the mountain tunnels.
- [70:12]
Chris Hedges
Great. Thank you very much. That was fascinating and brilliant. I want to thank Diego, Max, Thomas and Sophia who produced the show. You can find me@chrished substack.com.
- [70:32]
Alistair Crook
SA.