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David Rutherford Show: Syria Is the Warning — This Is How Global Conflicts Begin | Kevork Almassian
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David Rutherford
Land Two American soldiers and an interpreter recently killed in Syria. Why do we have troops still in Syria? Join me today as I welcome Kavork Almassian, Syrian expert and from the homeland itself to the David Rutherford Show. I saw your most recent analysis of the current situation in Syria. I was blown away by it. I think I'm a big proponent of of people who are from the area who have intimate personal connections to a place to be able to give the best analysis. And and after going and watching a bunch of your videos and going through your your profile on X and watching your YouTube channel, I just thought my audience would benefit immeasurably from your expertise. So thank you so much for joining me.
- [04:48]
Kavork Almassian
David, thank you so much for the opportunity. When I started my own YouTube channel in 2017, my main goal was to build BR with the American people because I believe we have a lot in common and politicians try to separate between the people in order to portray one people as evil and the others are saints. It's just a black and white picture that they try to portray. But when we really understand each other, we will also come to the conclusion that many Politicians who wage these type of, let's say, aggressions on other nations or other people, they don't really have the case, and therefore, they try to give different narratives to their own people in order to sell a war, basically. But this time in Syria, this was a covert, where it wasn't declared, let's say, to the. To the audience.
- [05:35]
David Rutherford
Well, I mean, I'm the perfect example of that. I mean, when I was in the SEAL teams and 911 happened, and it was like, okay, we got to go seek revenge. We got to go kill a bunch of Afghan Taliban, Al Qaeda, whatever. It was just Muslims in general, you know, I concocted a significant level of hate when I knew nothing about the Afghan people, the Afghan history. I mean, I remember as a kid watching the exposes on 60 Minutes with my father about the Afghan war and the Mujahideen, but now, all of a sudden, it's completely flipped. I'm a little confused. I go over and after my first deployment, I was fundamentally confused because I started to see the politics play out in the war itself. And then as I continued and went to work for Blackwater and went to work for the Agency, I really came. Like, I did my research and read probably, I don't know, 15, 20 books on Afghanistan, the people, the history, the culture, the various cultures, its importance in the region. And that was transformational for me to realize how to separate. Right. Cause I think the challenge, and you stated it perfectly, that politicians and people in power are constantly trying to pit us against one another. We're seeing it in our own, in America now, but all over the world. Pit Americans against this class of people or this class of people by contextualizing it. And it's very black and white. And what I do understand is that none of this is simple. There's many different layers of complexity. And I'm so grateful that today you're gonna share with our viewers your insights as to what those complexities are. So as we get started, can you just give a brief history of yourself and what got you to the position that you're in today?
- [07:35]
Kavork Almassian
First of all, this was around 100 years ago. 115 years ago, my ancestors fled the Armenian genocide. This was in the current day southern Turkey. So they had to flee. Some of them fled to eastern Syria, where it is now called Qamishli, and others to Aleppo. I was born and raised there as a Syrian. My ethnicity is Armenian, in an Orthodox Christian family, and I studied in Syria, so my mother tongue is Arabic and Armenian. And after high school, I also Continued my bachelor degree in international Relations and Diplomacy in the suburbs of Damascus. My instructors or the professors were multinational. Some of them were Americans, others were German. So I started learning English, thankfully, let's say at early age when I started my bachelor's studies. Then, because I was. My GPA was high. My university sent me to Paris. I studied European affairs for one year in order to learn about more the European Union. And finally I started my political science master degree and specialized in Middle east politics. And my research thesis was basically about the Syrian war, the anatomy of the Syrian war, in order to try to come to an academic conclusion, basically whether what happened in Syria was a democratic revolution or another characterization. And my conclusion was it was a regressive uprising and the militant insurgency against a political authoritarianism with the goal of establishing a regressive Islamist type of theocratical regime in Damascus. Something that my supervisor rejected. That's why I didn't get my, my, my. My certificate up until this moment. But I'm a. I'm a very stubborn person when it comes to my nation. The least to say because I believed that when you participate in with your research and publish an academic paper that goes against your own con, I believe that my input would have been counterproductive, let's say, for the history of my country. So I rejected to change my dissertation, I rejected to change my research. And I stayed on my conclusion, which I have argued for over 14 years. And I believe the outcome of the Syrian war is quite clear now, objectively, for the people to see whether kiddo back then 24 years old, was correct or the supervisor with lots of PhDs and doctorate degrees was correct. In 2015, actually, my city, Aleppo, half the city of Aleppo was occupied by Al Qaeda offshoot Al Nusra, which was led by Jelani. My brother was kidnapped by a group affiliated to the Jelani Group. And this group was directly funded by the CIA. And we were able to free him and pay a big ransom to, unfortunately, terrorists in order to free my brother. And after that we came to the conclusion that it is not possible for us to continue living in a city where half the city is occupied by Al Qaeda and we as Christians there would be under imminent threat. So I fled to Germany. I was a refugee in Germany for a few years, but I learned the language quickly. I integrated into the society and started working. And in 2017, I started my YouTube channel with the aim of trying to tell the people the other side of the story. I don't claim at all that I own the truth or the entire picture. What I try to encourage the people that you have, the mainstream press and you have a lot of nowadays, YouTube channels, podcasts, you can watch everything. What I'm trying to do is show you a different perspective of what happened in Syria and what is still ongoing in the country. And you can make up your mind at the end of the day, watch everything if you have time. Because this is also very difficult for ordinary people nowadays to really dedicate some time to watch. You live in the US and you, you know, people are very busy with their daily lives, nine to five and then coming back home, eat something, sit with a little bit with the children. They don't have much time to educate themselves about what's going on there. So I truly hope there would be more people who realize and notice that unfortunately this system has created some sort of passiveness among the people because these policies are killing people around the world. That's what I try to encourage the people to be more, let's say, engaging in politics.
- [12:27]
David Rutherford
That's brilliant. And I mean, what's interesting is, is that with the explosion of, of, I guess, YouTube and other social media platforms, acts all that, you know, these opportunities for people such as yourself, really, the people who understand the ground truth.
- [12:45]
Kavork Almassian
Right.
- [12:45]
David Rutherford
That was always the thing is, you know, you're. You learn something and then I would go overseas and I'd be on the ground and it was completely different than anything I had ever been able to consume via the mainstream media or whatever limited research that I got through our intel networks. But it's the ground truth that always tells the truth.
- [13:08]
Kavork Almassian
Right?
- [13:09]
David Rutherford
All right, so if you could, would you just describe the framework of the Syrian war, its inception, really the dynamics of, of what led to the massive influence from the Central Intelligence Agency. That first chunk, if you could, actually.
- [13:31]
Kavork Almassian
Syria has been very central in the policy of the U.S. in the region because there was a perception that you cannot make war in the region without Egypt and you cannot make peace in the region without Syria. So those are the two countries surrounding basically Israel who had very capable armies, national armies. Egypt still has its national army. Syria was another one which had to be weakened at least or persuaded to join a more pro American camp in the region. Now in the Middle east, as your respected audience probably know, the vast majority of the countries are autocratic countries. Some of them are republics and others are monarchs. Democratic culture is, in my opinion, it exists in some communities, but in majority of the communities, the relationship between the people is mostly based on their understanding and their following of religion. And if you are very much into, let's say, a vertical relationship between yourself and God. This also reflects on the society and the society reflects on the political class, because the political class comes from the society. It doesn't come from space. And therefore, I have argued for some time that if we create a vacuum, if we create chaos in Syria, this will definitely not lead into democratic transition. Now, of course, the planners in the U.S. they have argued in front of the people that we are there to bring democracy, human rights, etc. And I knew from the beginning those are all bollocks. I mean, I'm old enough to remember Libya and also Iraq. I think the major sin of the former Syrian government in the eyes of the US Planners was its insistence on a foreign policy that keeps Syria a geopolitical partner and strategic partner of Iran, strategic partner of Russia. And this partnership reflected on has created a policy that challenged the absolute dominance of the US over a very vital and important region, some of which because of the trade routes, others because of the energy infrastructure in this region, but also the security of Israel. Now, Syria was a country which adopted a policy that says we are not going to recognize the political entity of Israel. We are not going to accept the legitimacy of Israel that was built on the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians after the Nakba in 1948. But Syria at the same time engaged in indirect talks with Israel over the Golan Heights. At the end of the day, Syria always said, if you, if you give me back my. The Golan Heights and allow the Palestinians who are refugees from the 1948, to go back to, to their homes, we could reconsider this position. I think because of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and General Wesley Clark and others mentioned seven countries in five years, there was a state of paranoia in Damascus that they're going to be next on the list, on the hit list of Damascus, of the United States. Therefore, Syrian policymakers, especially Bashar al Assad, has moved from a direction that was progressive in the eyes of the United States. Hillary Clinton calling him a Democrat, a reformer, John Kerry visiting him, Tony Blair is hanging around with him in Damascus into all of a sudden the evil that we have to remove. Because this paranoia created a situation for Assad that once Saddam was ousted, then the Secretary of State of the US Back then Colin Powell comes to Damascus and says, look, habibi Hasadam is gone. And now we have a list of demands. You either follow these demands or you're next. And those demands had, like we have. This list is public, right? It's reported everywhere. There is no mention for democracy, for the improving the human rights conditions in the country. What they really asked for is Syria has to cut its strategic relationship with Iran, it has to kick out the Palestinian factions, it has to seal the borders with Lebanon, not to support Hezbollah. And also, very interestingly, they asked the Syrian back then government not to receive any of Iraq's scientific and intellectual elites in Syria. So Bashar did exactly the opposite of these demands. Everything they asked for, he just double down. And Then like in 2006 when Israel and Hezbollah war happened in July 2006, for the first time, Syria has given a type of weapons to Hezbollah that there were footage of Israeli Merkavas basically being destroyed in plain sight in southern Lebanon. This was a little bit humiliating for the Israeli, let's say superiority in the region and also its military manufacturing. I think this was the red line that Assad has crossed by giving the type of weapons to non state actors in the region to oppose the Israeli, let's say, war or expansion inside Lebanese territory, including sending cornet rockets to Hezbollah, to Hamas and other parties. I think this was the main reason they wanted to oust him from from his position. And the evidence for it is that once the regime change happened, Jelani didn't come and organize elections or said we are going to improve the human rights situation. What he said, basically he made statements after statements through his foreign minister and himself that we will not pose a threat on Israel, we will not attack Israel. In the contrary, we will accept the presence of Israel and also we will normalize ties with Israel. Therefore, he went to the US he met with President Donald Trump and he said, basically we want to become geopolitical partners with the United States. This is a stark shift in Syria's geopolitical posture, right? I'd say so. The thing is now Syria has moved from a political authoritarianism under which people were not allowed to challenge the political system in a serious manner. So if you don't speak about politics, you're free. You can practice your religion, you can practice your rituals, you can do any business you want in the country, into political and theocratic authoritarianism. Basically in the country that under this system, even if you oppose Assad and you have an opposition figure and you supported the uprising against Assad, that doesn't spare you from being targeted by the Jolani regime if you were born in the wrong religion or sect. And we have seen this in Asueda where the Jelani terror army basically went from house to house executing people. They're asking the people at gunpoint asking them are you a Muslim or are you not a Muslim? And they're hunting them like rabbits in front of their houses. So this is the state of the affairs in the country, but it is accepted and normalized because Jelani says that we don't want to challenge the US or Israeli dominance in the region. That's the only reason, in my opinion, that have brought Jelani into power. And probably some people say that this is the a formula that they wanted to bring into Syria because Jelani believes in attack theory, ideology and then everyone in the country, those who belong to the ethnic and religious minorities, they will find themselves alienated. So they will go into their cantons, which means Syria as a nation state under which I as an Armenian, others are as druze, Shia, Sunni, etc. We were all Syrians. Now under J people are Sunni, Shia, Armenian, Christian, etc nobody identifies himself or herself as Syrian any longer.
- [21:54]
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- [25:35]
David Rutherford
All right, that's a brilliant assessment. One of the things that I think I was always perplexed with too was the witnessing of the first part of the GWAT and all of our world leaders basically saying, hey, are you with us? Are you going to help us execute and prosecute this thing? And obviously he chose not to. And so can you describe when you believe the COVID war began where the funding, how it took place, who were we funding, what groups? And then really the role they played in Jelani's rise to power.
- [26:18]
Kavork Almassian
Actually in 2011, when, let's say the protests started against Assad, I was one of the people enthusiastic about these demonstrations. I wanted for Syria to become more liberalized in terms of its political system. And I am a person who I believe, when I live in a democratic country, I will respect the democratic system and the constitution of this country. And we live under a democratic rule without any problems. But when I saw the demonstrators calling for non democratic transition, for example, you occupy a police station and you go on the minaret or on the balcony of the police station. What's the first thing if it's a democratic revolution? The first thing you should ask for the values of the political prisoners. You want plurality in the parliament, you want the abolishment of the one party rule, for example. But then people, I'm sorry, I also have a long beard, but I distinguish between a hipster beard and the Salafi beard. The Salafi beard doesn't have the mustache, right. And then people with long beards without a mustache going on the balcony and saying, our first demand is we want to cancel the mixed gender schools in Syria. It's like moment I thought, this is about democratic transition. Why would we protest against the mixed gender schools? I went to mixed gender school. I mean, that's what's completely fine for me. And the second demand is, we want for the woman wearing burqa to be able to teach in schools. And now in Syria, under secular regime, in the past, burqa is allowed. People can wear a burqa wherever they want, in public or in private. It's not a problem. Only in teaching field they have come to the conclusion that the child has to see the face of the teacher for his social interaction and social intelligence to grow. That was the only place where the women wearing burqa were not allowed. So they wanted to abolish that. They wanted for the woman wearing burqa to come back. So I started noticing patterns that are undemocratic. People go to street and say Christians to Beirut and the otherwise to the coffins. I mean, those have nothing to do with democracy. I myself Christian. What do you want from me? Shall I go to Beirut? Because you believe that Lebanon should be Christian and Syria should be all Islamic. No, but still I supported the political opposition until this was in August, June 2011, when a massacre of Syrian officers happened. 120 Syrian soldiers were massacred. By the so called rebels. And you start asking yourself the question, watching this footage, where do these people get all these weapons from? I mean, in order to ambush a military convoy, you cannot just be playing PlayStation and then go to the street and carry out, you know this better than myself. Right. So these people should have received a little bit of training, training at least, and some weapons in order to carry out a very organized and successful ambush which could kill tens of Syrian soldiers. And I started remembering what happened in the 80s with the Muslim border uprising, started to draw some parallels. But during this time, Operation Timber Sycamore was not known to anyone. It was, yeah. In 2012, this has accelerated, especially when the U.S. defense Intelligence Agency, the DIA, they made a report about Syria, send it to Barack Obama, telling him basically, basically that the driving force behind the insurgency against Assad are Al Qaeda in Iraq, Salafi's jihadists, and the Muslim Brotherhood. And knowing that Obama put his signature on Operation Timber Sycamore because the people willing to fight against Assad, who's going to fight against Assad? The secularists, the liberals? Those people do not want to get killed against a strong army. Those who want to get killed are the people who belong into certain ideology. And that is, I want to become a martyr. I want to go to Jannah, to paradise. And those were the ones who believed in this takfiri Islamist ideology. That's why in my opinion, even if, for an argument's sake, if I, even if I want to be very, let's.
- [30:36]
David Rutherford
Say.
- [30:38]
Kavork Almassian
You know, maybe, maybe Obama didn't have a choice. You know, even if, if that is the case, I still cannot really forgive the fact that this type of people were empowered so much that they destroyed a nation and the reputation of the people. Like I am now Assyrian, right. I live in Germany. What do you think is my reputation now? If, if, if you, if you, if you pick hundred Germans now, I can assure you 90 of them have bad impressions about Syrians. Right? And the reason for it is because Syria was not radicalized society. But, but when you dump so much weapons into a society and then you task your regional allies, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to radicalize the Syrian people via religious speech and sectarian hatred. Like you turn on your Al Jazeera and this is something that many people do not know because they don't watch and understand Arabic. But if you turn on your Arabic, Al Jazeera, they were calling for a holy war against Syria, they're calling for jihad against Syria. And then you turn on your Al Jazeera English English, because the targeted audience is different. They're like, everybody, everybody deserves democracy except for Qatar. And then you turn on your Al Jazeera plus, which is this social media platform. They like talking about pandas and LGBTQ community, which tells you something, that this channel has a political agenda. And when I watch and when I turn on Al Jazeera, Arabic. And then there is the biggest and most influential Islamic scholar in the Islamic world who is now dead. He goes on Al Jazeera and says, I give a fatwa and I allow the Syrian rebels to kill every civilian and every soldier who works for Assad. And this means in the Syrian public sector was so big because it was a socialist country. Like 50% of the people used to work in the public sector. This means everyone who works for the Assad government, if you work in the Syrian airlines, you're considered part of the Syrian regime. They have killed thousands and thousands of people, just ordinary people, based on such fatwas. So the blame is lies on these countries which radicalize the Syrian people through hatred and also psychological operations like crimes happen in Syria and for example, chemical attacks. Right. And I have discussed this in length on, on my channel investigations and try to find loopholes in these official narratives. So they blame Assad for every single thing in. In Syria. And rest assured, these channels are so powerful that they have created the public opinion. And that is Assad is or was the Hitler of the 21st century. And everything is permissible against him. Assad was no saint. No politician is saint. But that's true. Yeah, but. But portraying him in a way that you allow the killing of 600,000 people, this is not some flies, you know, those are people who were killed in a discourse of a war for the interest of people that. Who do not care about the Syrian people. This is what I try to tell many Syrian people, unfortunately, you know about Operation Timber Sycamore. If you tell any Syrian now about Operation Timber Sycamore, I can assure you the vast majority of the Syrians have never even heard about this operation. And they don't know it was over in 2017 by Trump. And then they moved into the economic warfare. And that was the Caesar act, which Trump implemented. And I believe were it not for these sanctions, those harsh sanctions on CB in 2017, Assad would have survived what they did basically in 2017, because Assad invited his allies, Iran, Russia and Hezbollah, and they managed to eradicate the vast majority of these radical takvis, and they have pushed them all into one spot called Idlib, the city of idlib. But in 2017, when Trump said, this covert operation costs us $1 billion per year, and who are we supporting? This radical jihadist? No, we have to stop this operation. And we have more meaningful ways to do that. And that is economic warfare. And since then, if the Syrian, let's say if I had to buy something, for example, this microphone, let's say, used to cost $1, right? Or 1 Syrian pound. After the sanctions, it costed 800. And. And Syria doesn't own its own oil fields because the US Forces are stationed there. Sanctions imposed on Syria and any other third country company which dares to deal with Syria, which means everybody is terrified. Nobody wants to deal with, with Syria, including the allied countries, because Russia has bigger interests with the United States than with Syria. Iran also doesn't want to put put itself under more harshest sanctions. So Syria was abandoned, basically. And the impoverishment which hit Syria after these sanctions was that 95% of the Syrian people went broke. They were below the poverty line. And if you're, if you're poor, do you really care if your political system is Assad or if it's Ji? What you really care is you need bread, you need milk for your children. So they have demoralized the Syrian people after this economic sanctions that, that they no longer have the appetite to continue fighting for their own nation. So that's why in 2024, the regime change was successful.
- [36:27]
David Rutherford
All right, thank you for that. That was brilliant. Let me ask you this, all right, so you talked about US Troops being around and securing or oil fields. Can you walk us through how those were identified, how that process took place and then how long and how. What kind of size force are we looking at that are American forces that are around and protecting those, those spots?
- [36:57]
Kavork Almassian
So basically Assad lost control over these oil fields on the eastern shore of the Euphrates for a long time, since 2013, 2014. And the power which first occupied these oil fields was Jelani's people, who is now in power. But then when ISIS grew, ISIS occupied all these areas. And coincidentally, ISIS moved. Of course, I'm being sarcastic. ISIS moved from an organization into an Islamic state thanks to its revenues that they made from these oil fields. Right? And when you see the satellite images that the Russians published first when they intervened In Syria in September 2015, you see hundreds of oil tankers basically just walking and going to Turkey and they're selling their oil to Turkey. And the son of Erdogan Bilal back then used to have a say over this file. And they are giving Them cash dollars. So all of a sudden ISIS expands. They get all the Toyota trucks and they get the weapons and they expand and they take over these oil fields. But then when the Russians intervene. So the intervention of the Russians was so crucial that the Americans had also to intervene. Otherwise they would have lost leverage over the country completely to the Russians. So they managed through the Kurdish forces, sdf, ypg, to move from the north into the east of Syria and take over these oil fields. So the contact line between the Assad government, the Russians and its allies was the Euphrates River River. On the eastern shore are the Americans. On the western shore are the Syrians, Iranians and the Russians. And here they have drawn the contact line. This is the rules of engagement. You don't cross, we don't close. But eventually Stevens lost 50% of their oil revenues because now these oil revenues are in the hands of SDF and also the Americans because they're selling it also to the Kurdistan of Iraq. And the oil that Syria has in, in in the other 50%, they're unable to export it because they're under sanctions. And when any of these refineries were, let's say there is a damage you need to repair, okay, you need spare parts and you cannot even import spare parts because of the sanctions. So what has happened during this time? The Russians and the Iranians, they started sending fuel to Syria. Some of them were hijacked in the Mediterrane by the Americans. They didn't let them arrive to Syria. So basically they choked the country from all sides. And I was in Syria in July 2024, so a few months before the Assad fell. And when you walk in the streets and you see the depression and the misery in the eyes of the people after all these years of war, and then you have all this huge super hyper inflation, you don't really expect these people to be resilient any longer. They were really demoralized to the ext that they don't care who is in charge and who is in power. I think it was very successful covert operation in Syria, which they could copy later in other places. Unfortunately, that we lost a lot. You know, like this is something that I have to stress to your respected audience that we had homes, we had businesses, we had hopes, we had future to think about in our country. Now, now it's all gone. Even if I want to go back to Syria first, I cannot myself because Jelani is in power. But even if I was unknown person, I cannot really find myself belonging to such a country any longer. Whose main ideology and the governing system is basically people who were either part of ISIS or part of Al Qaeda. And now they pretend and masquerade as reformed rebels in the country.
- [41:01]
David Rutherford
Country.
- [41:01]
Kavork Almassian
But they cannot fool us because we as Armenians paid 1 1/2 million people of our people in the past by people with similar mentality. They cannot fool us by saying we were. We are reformed. I. What I believe is they are in strategic exhaustion. They have fought a lot for a long time, for 14 years, just like others, and they are not in a position now to continue fighting and be, let's say, confrontational inside the country and outside the country. But once Turkey consolidates its power in Syria, I think that would be the next stage in a new multi layered war that is expected in the Middle East.
- [41:42]
David Rutherford
That's brilliant. I think you're spot on with that. I think you're going to see a union between a network of countries that we haven't traditionally seen because they're all, I think, gaining a lot more economic influence on these countries that have been, you know, ravaged by war for so long in civil war. All right, you posted on your X account a recent story published by the New York Times that essentially compares Jelani to Mandela, which I thought was interesting to say the least. Can you give us a little bit of background on who the. This, this rising political star is? And I mean, I'm. The most disgusting thing to me as a g wat veteran who, you know, my friends have most likely, in fact, one of my close friends, Scotty Wirtz, was blown up in Syria along with Joe Kent's wife back in the day when they were supposed to be out. But Trump's first DOD group basically blew off his orders and left people in. In country. Can you explain to me who Jelani is and what you believe based on the words he said, the speeches he's given, what his intentions are with this, with the country of Syria.
- [43:13]
Kavork Almassian
Actually, this was in 2003 when the Iraq war happened, and Jelani decided to go from Syria to Iraq to wa war against the Americans. Now, when he was there, he joined the Al Qaeda in Iraq, the aqi. And he was. He vowed allegiance to Ayman Al Zawahiri. Basically, his expertise was in car bombs, right? And this guy is responsible for sending car bombs mostly into Shia neighborhoods to start a civil war in the country. Because this Takfiris hate Shias way more than Americans. They hate Shias and Alawites and Druze because they believe in Ibn Taymiyyah's ideology. IBN Taymiyyah was 800 years ago. They call him a revolutionary Islamic scholar who basically said we, as Muslim ummah, we should first purify our domestic home. And our domestic home should be purified from the newer and more progressive interpretations of Islamic Islam. And those are the Druze, those are the Alawis, those are the Shias. So their first focus was on these minorities. Now Jelani, when he was there, he was captured and he was put in different prisons. One of them is the Bukakam. And this is a question I wanted to ask you as well. If you believe that is it theoretically possible that this guy was recruited in Albuquerque camp or does the CIA have such a, such, let's say, precedence of recruiting people or making them agents for the CIA? Why I'm asking you this because the timing makes no sense to me. So he was imprisoned in 2005 and then released alongside Baghdadi in March 2011, which is the first month of the operation Timber Sikhmer. And then Jelani goes to Syria and forms Al Qaeda in Syria called Japet Al Nusra or Al Nusra Front. And I don't believe that somebody leaves Iraq, goes to Syria and all of a sudden he has the financial power, he has the structural organization to form a strong army like Al Qaeda without foreign backing. There has to be some secret services involved in this. If it's not American, it's something else. But definitely this guy, when he moved from Iraq to Syria, he was already ready to lead an organization that was non existent in Syria. When he went there, he started from scratch and he made a big, big fighting army with multinational terrorists from all around the world. So he moves to Syria, he starts this organization Japetonus but nobody striked Jelani. That's also big question mark, like we all have how many armies in Syria, The Syrian army, Army, Iranians, Hezbollah, Russia, Americans or the US led coalition. And none of them Israelis. Israelis targeted J In the past 14 years there were so many leaders of other organizations were either killed or ambushed or during the infighting they were, they died. But this guy was never, never attacked in the past 14 years as if he was prepared and groomed. And it makes sense because he started to move from this being an emir of Al Qaeda into let's reform ourselves and break our relationship with Al Qaeda during the same time when Operation Timber Sikuma was over 2017. So 2017 Operation Timberskumer is canceled by Trump. And then this guy comes and makes a statement, says oh, we will cut our ties with Al Qaeda. Now we thank them they are great people. We love you guys. You were great with us. You helped us. But we have to make a more. More a comprehensive coalition. And our jihad is only going to be now domestic. We no longer want to do international jihad. And during this time between 2017 to 2024, this guy has been prepared for this role. I mean, I'm not saying this. I will give you an example. The former U.S. envoy to Syria, James Jeffrey on PBS, he says, I'm quoting him, he says Jelani's army has been a strategic asset for, for the US Strategy in Idlib. And then the former US Ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, who was in Damascus when the war started in 2011, says, I myself trained this guy. Like we were sitting together and I was teaching him how to take him out of the terrorist world. I mean, I don't know, like, I shall I bring a contract showing that J is working for outside forces. It. It looks clear to me that this guy was prepared and groomed for a certain role. And what is this role, when the regime change happens in Syria, is to shift the serious geopolitical posture from a country which was UN In a camp that the United States doesn't like into camp that is allied with the United States. And now we see that Jelani is. I mean, I haven't seen Trump putting perfume on any other leader except for Jolani. And this guy, this guy is seriously something, you know. And for example, yesterday Donald Trump was doing the Hanukkah or this was, I don't know, two days ago during the Hanukkah evening, and he bragged about giving the Golan Heights to Israel. And this is Syrian occupied territory. And it's been two days for this statement. And the Jolani regime didn't utter a word about it. What does that tell you? It tells you that if you work for the U.S. you don't bark at the U.S. right. Like at least a diplomatic statement by the Foreign Ministry saying, no, this is a Syrian territory. Those are the resolutions of the UN Security Council. But he doesn't do. Do that because his legitimacy, so called legitimacy, is based on this consensus which happened before ousting Assad. All of a sudden, things changed in the region. The Turks made their first move against Assad. This was in the north. And the Israelis also weighed in. They took the opportunity very well. And the Americans, Donald Trump had to accept the outcome of this conflict because it happened during the transitional time when Biden was leaving and he was coming to power. Power. And then these regional powers, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, they Had their guy Tom Barak who is the U. S Special envoy now to Syria. Tom Bavak is not representing the American interests for your audience, for your respected audience. So this guy has interest with billions of dollars in these gulf countries, name it Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Turkey. And he is basically pursuing the policies that these countries want to pursue in Syria, Syria, now Israel of course they were happy Assad is leaving and they destroyed the Syrian army completely. The strategic stockpile is gone. But Israel sees an opportunity in Syria. If you are Netanyahu and you don't have a Syrian army to challenge you, what does, what does I mean nothing stops you from rolling into Syria. If Netanyahu wants now in 48 hours less he can occupy Damascus. So why would he stop? If you are Netanyahu and you believe in the greater Israel project, why would you strike a deal with Jelani now called the security agreement and stop your expansion? Every day Israeli forces establish new military posts inside Syria and expand and expand and expand. Damascus is now in the fire range of the howitzer. So Damascus militarily speaking has fallen already. And the Israelis are trying to establish their post in very sensitive places where there are water resources, where it's a high heel, etc. And Jelani doesn't have the means to resist against Israel because Israel is different. Israeli army is so capable that they would destroy the hell out of him if he tries to move. Move. But I would like to just for, for the sake of argument, you know, in the past 10 years and 14 years these Jolani forces, they have been firing these American to missiles against the Syrian army tanks, the T72, the T91, they have destroyed countless of them. Just one, I need you for just one time. Fire against an Israeli tank. Not even once. He fired against an Israeli tank. It's, it's, it's mind boggling to be honest with you.
- [52:21]
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David Rutherford
Year.
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David Rutherford
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- [56:28]
Public Investing Advertiser / Podcast Host
Right.
- [56:29]
David Rutherford
I know personally several Green Berets that trained Mujahideen fighters in Pakistan how to fire missiles into the Spetsnaz helicopters that were doing the raids. Right. I think we saw multiple, I mean, you can argue Karzai was propped up. You can argue the first few prime ministers of Iraq were just puppets. You can, you know, and, and you asked the question, can we, you know, turn an enemy into an asset? We do it all day, every day, all around the world. I think that that's so, it's such a given. And, and I also think, you know, the confluence of the Arab Spring being funded mostly by USAID and all of their NGOs and, and, and media networks around, you know, as a distraction away. And as well as, you know, what happened in Libya, which was this illegal arms sale that took place and then those weapons were then flipped to who? Jelani and his crew going into Syria.
- [57:33]
Kavork Almassian
Right.
- [57:34]
David Rutherford
And so I, you know, no, I mean, this is kind of our foreign policy for the last 30 years.
- [57:42]
Kavork Almassian
Yes, but David, it won't work in Syria. It won't work with the Jelani people. Because, because absolutely not even. Let's suppose Jelani is an asset and he's collaborating with the United States. But the people who fought for him, they believed, they believed in the cause. Nobody wants to fight 14 years just for money. There are mercenaries, but there are people who are committed and dedicated. They were daily going, guarding, fighting, dying and now that you come to Damascus and say oh we're done here, we're not marching to Jerusalem, although it's like just few months before the attack he or conquering Syria, he said after Damascus we're going inshallah to Jerusalem. So the people who fought for him asking, I mean it. It makes for them at least the transition has to be slower. It's so blatant and so fast that all of a sudden our leader, which we said America is the greater Satan and now he's wearing a Trump perfume. It makes no sense for them. That's why I argued and I said there are people in the J army, they are unhappy with him. And these people could have been possibly involved in the killing of two American soldiers in central Syria in Palmyra alongside a translator. And this is something you notice when you follow the progn media outlets and the amount of confusion and they are embarrassed by the incident itself and how are they going to cover up the attack. And you see, see the spokesperson of ministries of Jelani basically making conflicting reports, contradicting reports and makes no sense and then try to blame it on someone who was in the Jawlani security forces but not the guy who did it. Because if they say this is the guy, they tell the truth then this guy is literally sitting behind Jelani. And we have now overwhelming evidence in Syria that the guy who carried out the attack was was close associate to Jelani. He was sitting behind him. And when the attack happened, they tried to cover up his identity. They didn't want to tell the people who carried out the attack. And if you know the region, this region in Palmyra, yes, it is desert, but this compound is so fortified, it is so protected that no lone ISIS cell could come and crawl like this all the way from the ISIS pockets in the desert desert and come by himself, unseen, undetected and come so close to the U. S Soldiers to open fire on them. It makes no sense. This person was present there when the attack happened and then they tried to cover up and say oh, this was someone he. So the spokesperson of the Jelani interior ministry says that they have noticed some radical views on the guy that they want to blame blame. And he said we wanted we were going to fire him from the security forces on Sunday. But he says subhanallah which means like God's will, he carried out attack on Saturday. I mean this is the so sorry but they are mocking us. You know, they, they think we're idiots. I this is not a story you could sell to maybe to the people who believe in Jelani, but not for, for serious people who, following such security cases.
- [61:04]
David Rutherford
It's staggering. It's absolutely staggering. And it, it, and obviously there's a much greater plan. He's a puppet. They believe, like they always do that these, you know, low level guys that they, they influence or support or bring up through the ranks that there's going to be this allegiance and which is, is absolutely, you know, know, asinine. All you got to do is look at bin Laden as the, the, the premier example of that whole thing.
- [61:36]
Kavork Almassian
Right.
- [61:37]
David Rutherford
He essentially, you know, he, he used us to fight the Russians and then he flipped and he's like, now I'm going to fight you guys because you're any, you know, the letter he wrote lays it all out. It's the reality. It's. And it's, and it's. What's staggering to me is, and the, the reason, the, the kind of, the catalyst moment for me where I, I began to understand the absurdity of all this was when Petraeus interviewed Jelani and was like, you know, how's your mental health? And I'm here as a gwat guy who, this guy's bombs most certainly blew up teammates or friends of mine in Iraq. And I'm watching a guy, I, I actually, he was the head of the CIA when I was at the CIA. We actually, he came for a visit when I was in Islamabad, in Pakistan in 2011. And here's a guy that's supposed to have the backs of all those that suffered from this radical contingency of Islam. And now we're supporting him, we've opened up restrictions, we're going to give him financing, we're going to help him rehabilitate, probably give him weapons and all for what, what is the deal? And so I think, you know, what I, what people need to understand is there's a, a restructuring of the Middle Eastern hierarchy taking place right now. And, and it's, it's, you know what, what I always, what I always pay attention, I pay attention to Aragon. I think for sure he's, he's playing an active role in this. And then I try and pay attention to Egypt and, and Jordan.
- [63:32]
Kavork Almassian
Yes.
- [63:33]
David Rutherford
Could you give your assessment of those three countries and their leaders and how they're reacting to Jelani and Syria's rise?
- [63:43]
Kavork Almassian
I had to mention also Petrous when I mentioned James Sheffield and Robert Ford when they spoke about Jelani as being an asset for the US Strateg. This is so telling when Petraeus said literally your success is our success. I mean like, what does that even tell you, you know, about this issue? I think Turkey is the most influential and the, the power which gained the most from this regime change. And Hakan Fidan, who is the current foreign minister of Turkey, he was the head of the Turkish Intelligence and he's, he was basically the sugar daddy of Jelani. He was the guy who was preparing and arming and training and guiding in intel for the Jolani army from Idlib to Aleppo. This was a pure Turkish operation at the beginning when it happened in Aleppo. So Turkey has invested a lot. And Turkey, under Erdogan, they believe that they are the successor of the Ottoman Empire and they believe that they have to establish a kind of a commonwealth system which absorbs other regions in the Islamic world into Turkey, and one of which is Aleppo, and the second is Mosul in, in Iraq, for example, nowadays in Aleppo, if you travel to Aleppo and I have people traveling and coming back to Aleppo, the airport of Aleppo is managed by the Turks. The security of Aleppo is managed by the Turks. The borders with Turkey are managed by the Turks. The passport, if you want to issue passport, an id, driving license, they are all printed in Turkey. So Turkey has now now complete data of millions of Syrians because they're going to need their national id, because now we have a new regime, their driving license, their passports. So Turkey is basically preparing the demographics and the data of the demographics to absorb some part of them into the Turkish Empire. Now, during this time, the most the country which is alarmed the most are two, Israel and Egypt. Israel wants to see J in certain regions to keep these jihadists under control, but not over the regions like Sweda, like in Latakia, Tatul Jabli or in the eastern shore of the Euphrates. Israel prefers the Balkanization of Syria or at least give some autonomous statuses of this. So they have established the conflicting zone and that is the central Syria. And the Russians are playing some sort of role in keeping these two powers, like a buffer zone between these two powers. But if there is a country which has to be terrified, terrified by what is happening in Syria is Egypt. Egypt should be terrified. Egypt is probably the last republic in its classical sense in the region with a strong national army. And I believe that if the plan is to Islamize the region or bring upon a new type of reordering the maps of the region, then Egypt will be definitely targeted because it is the last country with a capable national army which is able to secure its borders. Egypt doesn't want conflict with Israel, doesn't want conflict with anyone in the region. But what they care about is to be able to keep their country in the hands of the military and not in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood like it happened under Musi in the past.
- [67:08]
David Rutherford
Right?
- [67:08]
Kavork Almassian
And if Jelani is successful and this formula is successful, this will encourage a lot of the oppositionists in Egypt to rise against Sisi. And unfortunately this type of autocrats like cc, the political autocrats are so outdated, so out of touch with reality that they allow for the outside forces to wage these psychological operations against their people successfully. And then they act surprised like Egypt is broke, they're receiving foreign aid under debt from the imf, the World bank and everything. The inflation is high, people are jobless. So of course there are certain sentiments against the political system there. So they will capitalize on it and try to destabilize it. Therefore turn on your Egyptian TV channels 247 news outlets are talking shit about Jelani. Unlike all other Arab countries, only Egypt is so alarmed and still calling him Jolani. They're attacking him day and night and saying that this guy is a terrorist. We have to be careful. He's encouraging the Muslim Brotherhood, it's, etc. So it seems that the intel services in Egypt are aware. But are they capable of aborting such scenario in their own country? I hope so, I mean just as a person. But I think it's too rotten to the core this type of systems that foreign powers are able to destabilize these countries from within. Especially when the economic situation goes like, like out of the cliff. You know, the people are just need some opportunities to, for personal hope. You know, people lost hope in the region, that's the problem now in Syria they will invest a lot, they will bring billions of dollars, foreign investors, etc. But this is not going to bring prosperity for the people. This will recycle the money into the pockets of the investors. Something that civilians do not know that these corporations will enrich themselves. They will give you enough to survive, but the most of the money will not be in their hands. Like the WEF said, you will own nothing. And I think in this case you will not own your country and you will be happy. This is what the civs are celebrating for. So when I see them celebrating I'm like they're celebrating their own demise but they don't know it yet.
- [69:26]
David Rutherford
I, I agree, I agree with you. I, I, I just think you, you, you can't have somebody that, that's this integrated to into that ideology just you know, give it up. And move into this, you know, political process or gamesmanship. I, you can't. Because how's he supposed to keep his base, which are essentially Islamists, right? How are you supposed to keep them in check, under control? You know, is it going out and pilfering, you know, the smaller border, border cities or towns in Iraq? Is it, you know, messing with the Kurds, you know, whatever they have to continue doing? I think it's, it's, it's inevitably it's going to get out of his control. One last question before we end is, is, you know, President Trump classified certain groups of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorists, as terrorist organizations. Did you find that? That what, what in your opinion, what kind of play was that? What was he trying to do both to Egypt and then also their influence in the region?
- [70:34]
Kavork Almassian
Personally, I don't know a lot about the details of the decision and why, but I could share my opinion about the Muslim Brotherhood itself. I have done extensive research about the Muslim brotherhood from the mid-1920s, how they started and how they created, created a natural fall for the nationalists and the socialists back then who were resisting the British mandate basically over Egypt. I think from the recent history of the Muslim Brotherhood it is quite clear that they are the smartest among the Islamist groups in the region. Who they are so good in what is called taqiyah in, in the Islamic terminologies is something that you are per, you are allowed to lie if it serves the end goal of the Islamic caliphate. So what they do, basically they are the ngo, they are the soft power in the hands of the people who want to establish the Islamic Caliphate. What they try to do is basically through charities and through public relations and supporting politicians, journalists, NGOs etc, to gain leverage and influence in Western countries. And, and they play identity policies, politics so well. They integrate themselves or embed themselves with liberal parties in order to have more political clout in, in the country. And you can see clearly that these people are mostly embedded with liberal left wing, what they call left. They are not even left wing parties. Right?
- [72:04]
David Rutherford
Yeah.
- [72:05]
Kavork Almassian
I come from a left wing family. I, I, when I moved to west, to the West, I was like, what is this left about? You know, this is completely. Sorry, but the Muslim Brotherhood, I think they are a serious challenge to any society if we, if they want to keep the nature and the character of that society because their intention is not to integrate inside this society but rather to create parallel societies and cantons and create their own mini states. You know, you don't have to officially have a state, but you have an entire neighborhood basically is inhabited by their people and their rules and regulations and laws, the social norms, etc. Etc. Are adopted there. So in my opinion, when I spoke about this when I came to Germany in 2015, I really saw it with my objective eye how they, they come, for example, to a refugee camp where I was and they say if you come to the prayer on Friday, which is a Turkish mosque funded by Erdogan's government, then we will give you a. Is a food. And like first nobody wanted to go and then they started offering free food and free clothings. And for example, the Turkish people who come, they say we have Syrian refugees. If you have spare clothes, you can give it to them. And then all of a sudden nobody goes to that mosque and then you have hundred people, 200 people going there. So I think that's the way of using religion and this charity, which is a. You, you do good thing to people in order to capitalize on that good. And the need of the people to gain votes, to gain leverage. It's all about power games for them. It's. It's about politics. Politics. So I have no doubt that they will definitely create a, a poisonous political environment in the Western countries. And when I spoke about it, it's really strange, you know, like I live in the west and the German mainstream media, they attack me. They don't attack them, they come after me and they say I am hating on Muslims. And I have not even now we have been talking over one hour hour. Not even once I call out or attack religions or people, Muslims as a group, I talk about ideologies, I talk about the founders and some of the malicious people within these communities on what they're trying to do. Because I also believe that many Muslims are victims of these organizations. They truly think that this organizations have the good, they have a goodwill and the best interests of the people at the that hard. But that's not the case because the Muslim Brotherhood is funded by Qatar, by Turkey, by other powers who have an invested interest, they have interests in these countries. Why would they spend over universities, give scholarships, pay hell of a money to people for an article you publish in a Muslim Bollywood affiliated outlet. Like I can give you examples, my friend. I don't know if you have time, but if you work for Al Jazeera, you know Al Jazeera pays a lot of money for its journalists, whether you are a Muslim Brotherhood or not. But at the end of the day, the editorial line on the policy of this channel, it serves the Muslim, the global Muslim Brotherhood movement. Right. So you have Al Jazeera with hundreds of millions of dollars of budget, basically, basically buying an entire intellectual class in the Arabic world, left wing socialists, communists, writing for Al Jazeera. Imagine I, a left wing person would collaborate and cooperate with Al Jazeera in order to make money. And that's how they hijacked the entire intellectual class in the Middle east and they have made them pro Qatari funded so called Arab Spring in the region. That's very striking because in 2013 when I wanted to publish in Al Jazeera, back then I was an ignorant, they asked me to write an article and when I wrote it, they didn't publish it. They said no, it doesn't go in line with our editorial line, etc and then they attacked me again. They, they made, they made, you know, I, I, I know every channel has a policy, but making up entire false claims about someone is criminal in my opinion. And especially when you do it with a malicious intention to turn the RA people against me in order for them to kill me eventually. Right, so they portray you as an evil and Al Jazeera has done it with me in the past because I made a series of videos about the Muslim Brotherhood, five parts on my YouTube channel and two weeks later I saw myself on, in a documentary Anal Jazeera trying to, they portray me as a, as a demon, you know, and, and that then they want to pay me $4,000 to come to Al Jazeera in Turkey to defend myself. It's like that's why I say they have a lots of money. Unfortunately the biggest, the biggest unfortunate misfortune in the Arab world is the allocation of all this enormous wealth in the hands of these tribesmen in Qatar and Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. If this money was spent wisely over infrastructure, universities, schools, instead of spending over Jelani and Baghdadi, we would have had a brilliant and progressed region. Unfortunately it's so misfortune to see all these tens of billions of dollars in the hands of people willing to radicalize the people instead of bringing some relief leave to the people. So I blame them also for the destruction of my country.
- [78:01]
David Rutherford
Well Kevork, that was brilliantly stated. I, I think you know what we're looking at and is a radical shift in the way the Middle East's power structure is. And I think Jelani is playing a major role. I don't know if he's actually in control, but his presence, presence, the, his government, what that's going to look like, whereas funding his alliances, I think it's going to it's going to really shift the the region around quite a bit. I'll be interesting to see where can people follow you, where they can they find you and and what do you have? What are you working on now?
- [78:42]
Kavork Almassian
I'm I'm doing daily live streams between Monday to Friday on my YouTube channel and also on Rumble Syriana and analysis. I started just covering Syria at the beginning but now I cover border Middle East. We cover also Ukraine and Russia and China and the you know, unipolar word multipolar world which I believe people should look very carefully what's happening around the world because it affects us all. So we try to give different perspectives to the people hosting different people. Sometimes myself and sometimes with other guys guests.
- [79:16]
David Rutherford
Awesome. Well sir, I'm looking forward in the future to having you back on. I'd love to have you on in the future to talk about the Amenian genocide if you'd be willing to come on and talk about that. I think that's a piece that Americans really need to understand. I also believe there's an assault on Christianity all over the world and maybe we can get into that a little bit. But it's been such an honor having you on your analysis is incredibly articulate and very well thought out and I just, I feel grateful that you were willing to share with my audience.
- [79:48]
Kavork Almassian
Thank you so much, David. It's a really pleasure and an honor for me to be on your show and hopefully also in the future I would be in the United States and we could have a personal conversation for your respected audience to know. Some people are really surprised, sometimes get surprised. My childhood was mostly on American pop culture, hip hop, Hollywood movies. So I know a lot about the US I would love to come and experience it. I hope my name would not be blacklisted, but I will try.
- [80:19]
David Rutherford
If, if, if you get over, I'd love to have you on the show and take you and show you some South Florida sites. It'd be wonderful.
- [80:27]
Kavork Almassian
Would be great.
- [80:28]
David Rutherford
All right. God bless you Kvork.
- [80:29]
Kavork Almassian
God bless you. Thank you.
- [80:40]
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- [83:34]
Kavork Almassian
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