Angry Planet - Syria, Russia, and Iran’s Complicated Relationship

Episode Date: August 28, 2020

Hello and welcome to the final episode of War College.Don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere. We’re just becoming Angry Planet.From time to time we record things that, for whatever reason, don’t quite work. Sometimes the audio is bad. Sometimes the news cycle destroys the story. Sometimes the the very famous, big name podcast host you have on as a guest is clearly drunk and loses his end of the audio. Sometimes you find out the guest is a CIA agent who never set foot in the country he’s talking about and decide to scrap the episode.The following audio is almost one of those episodes, but I think it’s still worth a listen. Back in May just before Jason returned to the show I talked with the British journalist Gareth Browne about Syria, Russia, and Iran. We talked the geopolitics of the region and what’s been happening since Solemani’s death.Some of the information here is out of date, and there’s places where the audio is a little … scratchy. But I think this was a good conversation about some vital stuff and I thought it’d be nice to go out on something like this before we officially launch Angry Planet. We’re clearing the backlog, so to speak.Thanks for listening, we’ll miss War College but we know we’ll be happier as Angry Planet.Recording 5/26/20Russia’s goals in SyriaThe roots of Russia and the Assad family’s relationshipHow much of the country does Assad still control?Iran backed militias in Syria“War has changed”How the death of Qasem Soleimani changes everythingThe court politics of Russia, Syria, and IranThe legacy of Hafez al-AssadSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. Hello, and welcome to the final episode of War College. Don't worry, we're not going anywhere. We're just becoming angry planet. From time to time, we record things that, for whatever reason, don't quite work.

Sometimes the audio is bad, sometimes the news cycle destroys the story, sometimes the very famous big-name podcast host you have on as a guest is clearly drunk and loses his end of the audio. Sometimes you find out the guest is a CIA agent who never set foot in the country he's talking about, and you decide it's best just to scrap the whole thing. Following audio is almost one of those episodes, but I still think it's worth a listen. Back in May, just before Jason returned to the show, I talked with the British journalist Gareth Brown about Syria, Russia, and Iran. We talked to the geopolitics of the region and what's been happening since Soleimani's death. Some of the information here is out of date, and there's places where the audio is a little scratchy.

But I think this was a good conversation about some vital stuff, and I thought it'd be nice to go out on something like this before we officially launch Angry Planet. We're clearing the backlog, so to speak. So thank you for listening. We will miss War College, but we're going to be much happier as Angry Planet. You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories. behind the front lines. Here are your hosts. Gareth Brown, thank you so much for coming on to War College and walking us through this topic. My pleasure. Thanks for having me on.

Okay, so can you broadly give us the details of the relationship between Russia and Iran? As I think the perception in America is that they're allies, right? Which is, couldn't be further from the truth. Yeah, it's a complex issue. and it's quite opaque in many regards. We've seen, particularly since around 2015, we've seen this massive kind of Russian re-engagement in the Middle East, especially in Syria.

Iran has obviously been in the neighbourhood, so to speak, has always been involved. And I think there's been this interesting relationship, which has been of strategic importance to both of those kind of powers. But I think more recently, especially in Syria, we're seeing a divergence in interests. And whilst they're working together on certain levels and in certain areas, in other parts of particularly Syria, their interests are starting to diverge.

Or it's becoming more obvious. That's not to say that any kind of recent crisis, let's say COVID-19 or anything like that had suddenly pushed either Russia or Syria in a different direction in the Middle East and in Syria. it's maybe nudged it or exacerbated other stresses. But yeah, I think it's important to bear this in mind. There's been a lot of talk recently about these recent tensions in Syria between Russia and the regime and the IRGC and IRGC-linked militias. I'm sure we'll get into this a little later on. But from my perspective, I don't think these tensions are recent revelations.

They're issues, fissures that have always been there. and in many ways, I guess we're bound to come to the boil at some point. All right. Iran, I get why they have stake in all of this, why it's important that they are active in the region. Like, I understand it. But Russia fuddles me a little bit. And you said that their engagement is recent, especially in Syria, recent in terms of geopolitics.

Can you tell me what we know about what Moscow's goals are, what they're doing and where they're operating. Sure. More recently, that relationship has become muscular, but Russia has a long-standing relationship with the Assad regime. That goes back to the Cold War. It was a very reliable client for the Russians. And actually, if you look at Russian troop levels, going back to the Cold War, they've never really changed much.

Russia has always had that military presence in Syria. They've always had that military base, the Mediterranean seaport. Those presence, that kind of presence, has been there. in one form or another, but what we've seen since 2015 specifically, which is when the kind of Russian intervention in Syria officially started, this was at a point when actually it looked, it's hard to believe it now, but it looked like the Assad regime was really on the verge of falling. It was really in dire straits and Damascus falling to whichever rebel or opposition group

was a kind of realistic prospect. And that's when we saw this kind of muscular Russian intervention. And that has, it's been very heavily reliant on kind of Russian special forces, but it's taken a lot of different shapes. Everything from working with local actors, recruiting militias, fighters, there's economic interest there. And then there's also attempts to shore up the Assad regime's legitimacy and the legitimacy of the state institutions. And I think this is a particularly kind of cogent issue at the minute. because whilst Iran, how many times have we heard talk about this land bridge from Tehran to Beirut, this being part of the IRGC's kind of regional ambitions, those kind of interests

have always been there. But I question how much the IRGC, the Iranians, have invested in the Assad regime per se. And what we've seen since the start of the Syrian Civil War is through the use of use and recruitment of militias groups like Hezbollah, other IRGC-K-C-C-C-C-C-C-Force-Linged groups like the Liwa Fatimayun, Jose Nabiun and the Iraqi militias too. We've seen the Iranians essentially creating an apparatus in Syria, which is independent of the state. So their interests and their influence is, to a large extent, not reliant on the government of Bashar al-Assad. Through proxies, and it's done through groups like Hezbollah. And in a way, it's coup-proofed, I guess, its interests against a sudden fall or toppling of

the regime in Syria. That's how the Iranians. How much of Syria can Assad be even said to control right now? Yeah, he controls the important part. That's what you might say. Most of the population is in the West in these big cities where we've seen these particularly ferocious battles in the last five or six years, whether that's Aleppo or Hamer or Homs. and he controls much of that kind of Western Mediterranean coast.

As you go out to the east and in the southeast and obviously in the northeast, where the Kurds are in control, that control by Assad is obviously far and greatly diminished. But a lot of that area is desert. There are oil fields out there, of course. But the kind of population and economic centers are under the regime's control. And what are Iran's specific goals or do we have, or as much as we know? So I think the Iranians are definitely interested in using Syria as a launch pad for their kind of regional ambitions and for regional control and exercising that. Much as we've seen them do in Yemen with the Houthis, Syria is a massive node for the Iranians.

They've got their very powerful kind of proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah. and to lose Syria, for lack of a better phrase, would mean potentially losing access or direct access to that group. Obviously, there's importance in Syria. There are kind of Shia shrines, which this sort of stuff appears a lot in the Iranian propaganda and messaging about why Syria is important. There are some economic interest there, but it's also just as much about using Syria to push the Islamic revolution to other countries, or to ensure it is ongoing across the region. Has there been any, let's get into some of the things that we teased a little bit ago. Tell me about the tension between some of these Aran-backed militia groups and Russian troops in Syria.

Yeah, this is, I've written a fair bit about this recently, and I think this is a really fascinating chapter. And I suspect this is what we're going to be talking about vis-a-vis Syria for the next year or a couple of years. But yeah, we're seeing like evidence of tensions between the group. So the one example which I've written about quite recently is with the Fatimiyun brigades, which is it's an IRGC-C-C-C-ccated created militia. They basically recruit Afghan refugees who are living in Iran, Shia Afghan refugees who are living in Iran, and they send them to Syria. And these guys have been, some people have described them as cannon fodder when they get sent to Syria and they get, they've really been in their

of some of the kind of the fiercest battles. And they've been quite effective, actually. Now, Llewa Fatim Yun is through and through an IRGC creation. Recently, I reported on a kind of mid-level commander who's based with the group in Dairazor, who has essentially been flipped by the Russians. Now, this is quite significant because we're seeing Russia attempting to tease away some of the IRGC's prized assets in Syria, and offering training, weaponry, supplies, these sorts of. things. So this was quite a significant development. There have been intentions before. A good example is the battle for Palmyra. That was really a race between, this never really came. This didn't come out

until after the battle, but Palmyra, when the regime took that back from ISIS, that was really a race between the Russians, the Russian back guys and the Iranian back guys. Everyone wanted that propaganda coup of liberating that kind of ancient city from ISIS. And then obviously the Russians won it. And I'm sure you remember the Russian orchestra played a concert in Palmyra, and that was all over the news. And that was the story about the Russian orchestra playing in that city recently captured from ISIS. So that was a kind of early indication of the brewing rivalry. But we really didn't – I've heard stories about the kind of militia commanders,

literally saying to folks in Damascus, get up there, get up towards the front line, just throwing everything they had at it just so that they could beat the other guys. So this is a rivalry that's been going on for five years, longer now, since Russia really intervened in Syria. We've seen it with a few others. There's a smaller militia called Liyah Al-Quds, which is a regime militia comprised of Palestinians. And we've seen the Russians attempting to peel that away to. That's on a much smaller scale. But then these are not isolated incidents.

They add up to kind of Russian efforts to undermine how the Iranians are doing business in Syria. You only have to look at some of the statements being made by Russian officials recently. There's obviously some dissatisfaction there. And my take would be that. A lot of that stems from how the Iranians, the IRGC, and their clients in Damascus are doing things. The Russians don't see that as a kind of sustainable future for Syria. Is there, what are the Russian goals here? Obviously Assad's been a reliable client, as you said.

I'm trying to wrap my mind around the geopolitics of why you would get so enmeshed in this civil war. Like, why do they need to power project in this area? Yeah, I think to begin with, it was really about maintaining access to those Russian bases and being able to station Russian assets to continue to station Russian assets in Syria. I think that was a genuine fear, especially in the earlier. of the war. But it's not just in Syria where we've seen this, but we really have seen Russia and Putin become emboldened, especially with this kind of US withdrawal or this kind of US stagnation when it came to Syria. Russia has a chance to be the superpower and sought this mess out.

And they're absolutely grasping that opportunity with both hands. The fighting is largely finished now. Obviously, we've got Idlib, but I think there's definitely winding down of Russian assets in Syria. But this is where we're really starting to see the difference between the Russians and the Iranians. Now, we see the Russians really trying to reinstate legitimacy in Syrian state institutions. So the Iranians, the IRGC, are happy for militias to be running the show in Damascus and controlling airport security, things like that. And the Russians are saying, no, you need a legitimate state. And we can obviously debate where that legitimacy comes from. but you need a legitimate state which is functioning through ministries, through army units,

divisions of the army, not through these kind of ragtag militias who aren't accountable for anyone. And this is going to be this significant battle because a lot of people in Syria have carved out fiefdoms throughout this war. It happens in every war. And the Russian kind of efforts to rebuild the state institutions are going to clash with that. And it's definitely something to look out for it I think. So do you see that this

as basically entering a different phase of conflict in that region? Like the civil war draws down and you have

now these proxy battles between Russia and Russian backed groups trying to rebuild some semblance of

the state and then the militia groups backed by Iran that are carving out fiefdoms? Absolutely.

And this might not, I guess saying that it's a new stage of the war, that might imply that there's going to be open fighting between these guys, which I don't necessarily think is the case. But I do think it's a whole new chapter for the Russians to do what they want to do.

And the Russians are probably the most powerful actor in Syria now. For them to be able to achieve what they want to do, they're going to have to undo some of the IRGC linked gains. They're going to have to unwind some of those IRGC militias. they're going to have to loosen that the grip that the Cuds Force have on certain individuals, certain offices in Damascus, all these things. So I'll give you another recent example was just at the end of April there. And again, this wasn't widely reported, but Damascus International Airport, the security hitherto, the security around the airport had always been controlled by IRGC-linked divisions of the army. And we saw that changed at the end of April. We had the 5th Corps, or parts of the 5th Corps, which is notably, it's a part of the army that's a lot more loyal to Russia, shall we say.

They were given the job of holding security at the airport. Little things like that, I think they really add up to this kind of much greater picture of tension and jostling and jockeying between the two. Yeah, I think I do want to stress that because I think that's important kind of this, feature of the way war is conducted now. That's one of the bigger themes of the show in recent years is that war has changed and it's a bigger topic than just what we're talking about right now, but like this idea of these different kind of proxy groups and in the Russian case groups directly tied, more jockeying for position and conducting this low intensity conflict is pretty typical

now, right? You look at Ukraine. It's a little bit higher intensity. It's about keeping that place in tension and keeping that war going. How has the death of Qasem Soleimani affected all of this? Yeah, this is a really interesting question. Because on the one hand, you have people who say, okay, I remember when this happened, about five months ago now, when he was assassinated at Baghdad, airport, killed at Baghdad airport. Some people are saying, okay, this is the end of the IRGC Kuds Force as we know it. And other people saying, oh, he's just one guy. It doesn't matter. Of course, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle of it. But I think it has had a major effect on how the Kuds Force and the Iranians in general have been able to do business. In Syria,

particularly, also in Iraq, but in Syria, he wasn't just a, he wasn't just a military commander. he was the diplomat in chief. He was the one rushing around and championing Iranian interests. I really can't stress enough how well respected he was on the ground in Syria and in Iraq as well. We've all read that Dexter Filkin's piece, that profile of him. And he's called the Shadow Commander. That's like the nickname he's got. But actually, one thing I've noticed over the last few years,

being in reporting in Syria and spending a lot of time in Baghdad too is it's so many people had met him and I'm I'm not just talking here about the high level guys I'm I've like I've met mid-ranking officers in the Iraqi military ones who they're not even sympathetic to the Iranians mid low-ranking officers and soldiers the same in Syria diplomats civil servants who really didn't have any significance in the grand scheme of things but they'd all met him and interacted with him. He was so visual. He was always out there on the ground. And I think his death was a big, I do think his death was a big loss. No, I was speaking, I spoke to some people in this Afghan militia, the Fatimian brigades. And at the time, they were saying, they were really questioning

if the militia was going to be wound up. It was a kind of existential issue for them in many ways. And where Soleimani was really strong was he was a great firefighter dealing with issues, they came up. And he was famed for that in Iraq when a new government was being formed or where there were issues around minister selection or he was the guy that would fly in and he'd meet with all the parties and he'd bring them together and then help them hammer out on agreement. His replacement, Ismail Rani, he just doesn't have that presence. He also doesn't, he doesn't speak Arabic. He doesn't have that kind of interpersonal relations. So I think it's, I think it's been a huge blow. I spoke with a former Iraqi government minister.

about two months, two months ago about this. And he said the Shia politicians in Baghdad right now, they seem like orphans. That was the exact phrase he used. Like they didn't have this really reliable, kind of inspiring guy who would just show up at the right moment to fall back on. So I think we're seeing things in Syria. For example, this Fatimian commander I was talking about earlier,

who the Russians have essentially flipped. in the last few months. I don't think that could happen if Soleimani was still around because Soleimani would have caught wind of that and he would have gone straight there and he would have sat down and had a one-to-one meeting with that guy in the blink of an eye. And his replacement just doesn't have that gravitas. So I do think it's had a massive issue.

It's not just, he wasn't just a military commander. He was everything. He had so much power and so much authority from the Iranian regime, from the regime in Tehran, that he could go into meetings and it could be with an Iraqi minister, it could be with a militia head, it could be with just a few soldiers in Syria,

and he could offer them whatever they needed to keep them on board and to keep them kind of playing ball with the Iranian way of doing things. They've really lost a big Trump card. And I've seen absolutely no indication that his replacement, Ismail Ghani, is attempting to step into those shoes. I've seen no indication that he's anywhere near as visible

and getting out into the ground. getting out into the battlefield onto the ground as much as Kassam Soleimani did. Perhaps he's trying to do things differently. But even now, there's a massive void there. And I think they know it. I think they're aware of it. The sources I speak to in some of the Shia militias in Syria, they definitely say that they notice that he's gone.

They feel that bereft of leadership, that top-tier leadership. Yeah, so much stuff is so personality-driven there, especially when you're dealing with these militia groups. And he, like, Soleimani was the person I thought of as being in charge of Iran. Probably just because I focused so much on the military aspect of it. And yeah, it'll be very interesting to see how this plays out over the next year as everything kind of reconfigures. Because that's what happens when you have someone that holds that much power, there's going to be vacuums. Yeah.

Another kind of aspect of this that I think is fascinating. and I know that you've written about a little bit is what I would call like the court politics of it all, which is I think a good place to get a high level view of how Russia, Syria, and Iran all feel about each other. Can you talk about the Assad family more broadly and its relationship both with Iran and Moscow? The uncles and cousins and etc. Yeah, I think the best way to... to look at the Assad family now is through the institution of the presidency. And look at that as you would, any other kind of Syrian state institution, a ministry or a certain part of the army.

An overwhelming amount of power in Syria is focused within the Syrian presidency. And I would say that the presidency has always been far closer to Russia than it has to Iran. I've spoken with people who work in the office and a lot of them speak Russian. A lot of them have spent time in Russia. If you look at the Russian Parliament, it's largely a showpiece that it's quite closely connected to the presidency. A lot of, sorry, the Syrian parliament is quite closely connected to the presidency. And a lot of the MPs have spent time in Russia and they speak Russian or they're studying Russian. So, you know, those ties are almost.

obvious in that sense. I wouldn't like to label Assad secular. There's a kind of a lack of religiousness amongst the Assad family, which I guess you might say lends them to having closer ties to Russia than to the kind of IRGC and Villiette, if I keep. If I recall correctly, that was one of the selling point is probably the wrong word, but that's one of the things that people were excited about for Bashar al-Assad when he came in, that he was going to have closer ties of the West and be more secular. That was all a facade. It never happened.

He's absolutely a used kind of sectarian and religious imagery as and when he's needed to, particularly when the regime has looked its weakest. And now he's opened the door to whether it's Lebanese Hezbollah or other IRGC groups. And I guess you could say that genius out of the bottle. He has no control over. The sort of proselytizing that we see from Iranian-linked groups, which is really common in places like Derazoor. The regime, absolutely, the regime is just pumping out,

and has been for the last 10 years, just pumping out sectarianism. And a lot of his speeches are very sectarian. But I see his father pioneered a lot of that stuff. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. And that goes back to the Hammer Massacre in the 80s. I don't, I just think there's no evidence that Assad is this kind of, that he lends himself to Villetta for Key, this Iranian system of governance.

Drillet, drill down, explain that to the audience. Yeah, Villetti for Key is the guess, I guess the, it stands for guardianship of the jurisprudent. My farce is a bit rusty, but I believe that's what it understands. And essentially, it's this, it's the, it's the religious mechanism by which the Iranian regime stakes its claim to power. So I think Ayatollah Khomeini, before he came to power, came up with this. And a lot of the kind of Shia clerics dismissed it as ridiculous. I think it's originally taken from an obscure edict that would allow religious establishment to take care of orphans. They become a kind of parent of these orphans.

And he essentially expanded that and said, I'll become the parent of the nation. And so when you look at the most kind of loyal and strongest IRGC militias have been really strong. strong kind of proponents of Villiattifaki. So that's Lebanese Hezbollah. These guys are like deeply religious and you can see videos of them pumped out on social media. They go to the shrines

in Damascus a lot and in Iraq too. This is a really important part of the messaging for these groups. But you just when you look at the messaging that comes out of the presidency, you don't see this Villieti Fiki kind of note being

presented. It's more about trying to a man in a suit trying to be a statesman, an international figurehead. There just isn't that religious imagery that the militias really push out with massive effort and enthusiasm. There's also, there's two tracks of propaganda, right? There's internal and external. There's what you release for the rest of the world, and there's what you're telling your people inside.

I guess now more than ever, it's way easier for the people inside to be also viewing what's on the outside and be connecting dots. Tell what about how has COVID affected all of this? The short answer is no one really knows. Obviously, there is a level of opaqueness. There's a lack of absolute lack of transparency in Syria. I guess in that regard, we'll probably never really know the true extent. The regime messaging is that we've got everything under control. There's been a curfew out in in Syria, in regime of Syria. But definitely since I think COVID is hurting the Iranians the most, we saw in, if we go back to February, the COVID story was especially regionally speaking, the COVID story was all about Iran. We saw those kind of satellite images of mass graves being

dug and there was huge numbers of Iranian parliamentarians picking up the disease. And I think COVID-19 has impacted Iranian-linked groups in Syria the most. Groups like the Fatimian-Myoun in the East were basically told not to leave their bases. They were under really strict orders. And this has coincided too with, if we look over to Idlib, you only have to go back to January when Idlib was the big story. That's what all the headlines were about. There was a million people displaced in a short period of fighting,

and there's been a massive lull in violence there. So I think it's affected everyone, but in particular, a real slowing down of Iranian movement within Syria. So whether that's bringing new guys in or bringing new guys in, or bringing new militias in or moving them out or going out on patrols. We've seen that massively reduced. I think they saw the damage it could do back home. And now the devastation that the kind of the spread of COVID could cause

amongst some of those militias, the situations that they're living in, they simply don't have access to anything remotely resembling treatment or medication or anything like that. It could wipe out whole units. So I think it's really pushed the Iranians on the back. And then you can, if you want, you can throw into that the whole kind of oil crisis as well. Right. Which is another thing that's really hurt.

The Iranians were already kind of strapped. Of course, Russia too, but Russia were a bit better prepared for it. So you see from multiple angles, the IRGCQF's hands being tied. Which just, I know that's interesting because it just feels like it's all up in the air now. The board has been complete. Somebody picked up the Etch-Sketch and shook it. And it's not, like you said, it's not. just COVID, but all of the knock-on effects, and especially the complete collapse of the price

of oil, has hurt a lot of these countries. Yes, certainly. And it doesn't matter how much you're pumping out your ideology. If you're not paying fighters' salaries, it becomes a point where it becomes untenable. And I know for a fact that some of the Iranian groups have not had salaries for one or two months, or they've been delayed. This is becoming more and more common and frequent. And it doesn't matter what personalities you have,

whether you've got Kasem Soleimani around or not, whether you've got, which a lot of these guys still devoutly believe in, if you're not paying salaries, then you start to lose control of your assets. And I think that's absolutely true for the Iranians in Syria. It's maybe a bit different for a group like Lebanese Hezbollah, who have almost become independent. They can cope without the Iranians in many ways.

because they've got so many different funding sources. But some of the IRGC-linked groups, and I think the Iranians, I don't want to say the Iranians are losing control of them, but there's questions being asked there, which weren't being asked a few years ago. When you miss a few meals, you start questioning why you're on this particular assignment, right?

Yeah. No matter how ideologically driven you are. It'll only take you so far. Exactly, exactly. And some of these groups really have, not to sympathize with them, but I think a group like the Fatimianiccades, they fought some of the worst battles in Syria. And they always get the worst assignments from a regime, Iranian perspective. They're always in the first line to go in.

That's why they become known as cannon fodder. And that they can only last for so long, I think, when they're having all that. They're dealing with all of that and then they're not getting paid on top of that. They're not getting the residences that they've been promised. A lot of them are refugees in Iran. And then when they sign up, they're promised residency, permanent residence in very rarely materializes. So once you add all these things up,

you start to get this image that the IIGC guys who recruited you from a refugee camp in Iran, we're not going to deliver. And they're not able to deliver. Then that weakens the unit as a whole. And that's why commanders like Abdullah Salahs go and speak to the Russians, because the Russians say we can give you that stability. We can do the things that the Iranians can't do for you.

How do you think this all ends for Bashar al-Assad? Or is it just to, or are we just in a period where there's so much flux going on that it could be anybody's game? Yeah, with Assad particularly, we've seen in the last few weeks, we've seen this kind of direct criticism by not directly from the Kremlin but people close to the Kremlin

of Assad and the regime and there was there been articles there was an article by a Russian diplomat a few weeks ago and he said the way that the Assad regime is running things Syria will never be at peace and there's been a few of these

cases of the Russians kind of directly criticizing Assad and some people have said they're fed up with him maybe they're gonna maybe they're grooming a new guy I don't think that's the case. I don't think Assad is going anywhere anytime soon.

I don't think... Who would you even groom at this point? That's the good point. The Assad name has become so closely tied through the Syrian regime, right? If you go back to Hafez al-Assad or... I was in Damascus in 2018 and those are...

It's Bashar, it's Hafez and it's Maha, the brother. It's when you take that into account, You find it hard to envisage someone who isn't an Assad taking up that mantle because that family name is just so tightly linked to the regime. And the father is still, I'll use a word here, I'm not sure if it applies to the legendary figure in recent history, right? Yeah, I think there's, this is something that I guess that came out in, during the start of the Civil War. Michelle, when he took power, he inherited a lot of not just the apparatus of the government and the, the regime in the military, but a lot of friends of his father. So a lot of the senior officers were friends with Hafez and were in their positions because of Hafez's patronage system.

And then Bashar inherited that. He didn't have his own friends, his own competent, capable army officers to put in to head the presidential guard. It's like he was putting on his father's trousers, his father's clothes in a way. It wasn't a suit that was tailored for him. He is wearing his father's hand-me-downs. And that's still the case since, what, like, 20 years? So 20 years since half has died, but a lot of those individuals are still around and still in very powerful positions.

Despite all the uproar in the last 10 years, you know, in some ways, Bashar hasn't really built his own regime. He's still very much running to his father's regime. You know, his father is still there in many regards. Yeah. And often on the wall or, as a statue staring at you. He's around.

His presence is felt. Gareth Brown, thank you so much for coming on to War College and walking us through this. Thanks for having me. All right. And where can people find your work? In the telegraph, you can say,

write regularly for the Daily Telegraph, the Times of London, and Foreign Policy. It would be the three big ones. All right. That's it for War College. War College listeners, if you want to find us online, we will be at Angryplanet.substack.com, angryplanetpod.com and Angryplanetpodcast.com. It will take you to the newsletter and take you to the episodes.

We are on Twitter still as at War underscore College. Then I expect that we'll change next week. But as far as what you all need to do, listeners, nothing. Just keep subscribed to the same places. We'll be in the exact same places. It's the name and the logo are going to change. We will be back next week as Angry Planet officially.