Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - THE END OF ASSAD IN SYRIA - with Nadav Eyal

Episode Date: December 8, 2024

HOUSEKEEPING NOTE:  Please note that as of our Thursday episode this week, we will be updating Call Me Back’s cover art. This will not be a dramatic change, but as to not miss out on any new episodes due to this change, please keep an eye out.  TODAY’S EPISODE:  A lot has unfolded in the Middle East over the past 48 hours, with the fall of the Assad regime. Nadav Eyal returns to the podcast today for an emergency episode to discuss the end of Assad’s rule in Syria, and the implications for Israel.  Nadav Eyal is a columnist for Yediiot. He is one of Israel’s leading journalists. Eyal has been covering Middle-Eastern and international politics for the last two decades for Israeli radio, print and television news. To visit our website where you can access transcripts for each episode, sign up for updates, and get in touch with us: https://arkmedia.org/

The Middle East is forever changed. We have seen Iran lose. Syria, they have basically lost their grip of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and they have lost a lot of the power of Hamas in Gaza, and Arabs across the region are saying themselves. The proxy system of Iran is gone. For the Middle East, it is truly the fall of the Berlin Wall. It's 9 45 a.m. on Sunday, December 8th here in New York City. It's 3 45 p.m. on Sunday, December 8th in Israel as Israelis monitor events closely on the other side of the Israeli Syrian border. It is 4 45 p.m. on Sunday, December 8th in Damascus. A lot has unfolded in the Middle East over the past 48 hours with the fall of the Assad regime, which we will be focusing on today with Nada

Veyel and the implications specifically for Israel. We will be doing other episodes in the days ahead that take a broader look at what is going on, but today's episode is primarily focused on what this whole escalation crisis development, depending on how you look at it, looks like from Israel's perspective. But before we get into today's conversation, one housekeeping note. On our Thursday episode, you will notice the podcast's cover art will be slightly changed. It's not a dramatic change, but I wanted to give you a heads up so your eyes don't miss

it. Next time it pops up in your feed Alon has been urging me for some time to agree to a change in our cover art We first created this cover art basically on a PowerPoint slide when we were mere Children in the podcasting world experimenting tinkering with launching a podcast and never got around to updating it I was perfectly comfortable with the old version. I'm a Luddite, I'm not quick to modernize, but Alon has persuaded me that the time has come. We need to be running this podcast like the mature adults

he thinks we need to present ourselves as. So you will see that change to our cover poster art as well as some other changes coming your way with regard to the podcast But now on to the much more serious subject of today's episode Nadav Ayal on the fall of Assad in Syria. This is call me back And I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast And I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast, Nadav Ayal from Yediut Akhranot. Nadav, thanks for being here on this eventful day. Thanks for having me, Dan.

Nadav, if we were to look back at all the transcripts of the Call Me Back podcast going back to October 8th, by the way, all those transcripts are available for those who want to peruse them on ARKmedia.org. That's ARK, ARKmedia.org. If we were to go back and look at all these transcripts and search the word Syria, I think we would be hard-pressed to find much of anything about Syria over the last 14 plus months, let alone any conversation or speculation that Syria was the next domino to fall in the Iranian proxy system. And yet here we are, a regime that has been in power for half a century, meaning through

Bashar Assad and Hafez al-Assad, has now fallen in a matter of days, actually about 13 days. So, Nadav, what is your immediate reaction to these events? First, it's a huge drama of historical proportions. And for the Middle East, it is truly the fall of the Berlin Wall. And this is not only because of the so-called axis of resistance that we're going to discuss. It's also because this is the last dictator or the last dictator family that this region has seen that has fallen. And to a large extent, these events that have begun with the Arab Spring have

now materialized to the fall of the last one. Saddam Hussein was overthrown by the United States. Muammar Gaddafi fell following the Arab Spring. Hosni Mubarak, of course, was deposed following the Arab Spring. And now the Assad family has gone from Syria after 54 years, and more than 60 years of the Ba'ath family or ideology that control the country. And it's such a pivotal moment because it is very much related to the war and to October 7. Nadav, before you get into that, I just want to just again,

we're going to hear terms, we're trying to push this episode out quickly. So we are going to move relatively quickly, but you will hear in this conversation today, Nadav and I dropping terms, I'll try to catch them in real time. Ba'ath Party, which Nadav is referring to, is the party that was the Assad party effectively in Syria. It was the party, the political party of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

So when he says the collapse of the Baathist party or the Baathist regime, that's what he's referring to. It's a pan-Arab socialist secular approach to Arab life and nationality in the Middle East that has finally completely and utterly collapsed. And of course for Israelis, but not only for Israelis, this is a dramatic moment because as I said, it's very much related to the war. And it's very hard to imagine this set of events unfolding if Israel wouldn't have done what it did in recent months. The Middle East is forever changed.

We have seen Iran lose Syria as such an important part of that axis of chaos. Syria as such an important part of that axis of chaos. They have basically lost their grip of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and they have lost a lot of the power of Hamas, of course, in Gaza. And you have serious analysts of Iran who are saying the so-called axis of resistance is simply gone right now. It doesn't mean that Iran is gone. It doesn't mean that it cannot inflict damage. It doesn't mean that they're not gonna rebuild.

But right now, their entire strategy in the Middle East has failed. On October 6th, 2023, just before the Hamas attack, Iranian proxies had a noose around Israel. Hezbollah had more than 100,000 rockets and missiles, some of them GPS equipped. It had tunnels that were going underneath of the border into Israel. Hamas had dozens of thousands of fighters and many thousands of rockets. And we know now had a serious plan that they actually and unfortunately implemented to

have an invasion into Israel and have their genocidal attempts with Israel south. The entire axis of resistance was built around the Syrian regime that was weak but still very much supported by Moscow and Tehran, one a regional power and the other a global power. And it seemed like Iran is shining in the region. And with the opening of the October 7 war and the invasion of Hamas, the Houthis attacked, other militias attacked, Hezbollah attacked, and everything seemed to be demonstrating a vision of what Yashya Senua called the Flood of Al-Aqsa.

So they were surprised by the timing, but their heart was in the right place, which is trying to destroy Israel. Well, the Flood of Al-Aqsa turned into the flood against Iran, the flood against its proxies. And what we have really seen today is that the Assad regime is gone. And therefore, even if you think about this geographically, and you think about Tehran and Iran, and you think about this crescent from Iran and Tehran through parts of Northern Iraq to Syria in a land bridge all the way

to the Mediterranean and to Beirut to the Dahya, the stronghold of Hezbollah. This is a completely changed strategic environment for the Israelis. And it is first and foremost such a blow to the Islamic Republic that now needs to really make big decisions and ask itself whether they're gonna see this quick collapse in Iraq for instance controlled to an extent by some of their proxies through the Shia political system that was built there or maybe this could happen to the regime itself in Iran.

And Dan, let's have no mistakes about this. What troubles the Ayatollahs in Iran is first and foremost that what we have seen in Syria happen to the regime will happen to them. They don't have an active rebellion, but they are not popular. And this is what many people in the West and in Israel are aiming for. So to say that the tide has shifted would be such a gross underestimate to what we have just seen. So these are truly remarkable and historical days for the Middle East.

You just made this comparison to the fall of the Berlin Wall, which gave me chills. I won't hold you to the comparison too tightly, but that said, you dropped it, so I will explore it. Was that just a metaphor? Or do you really think Iran's proxy system and the speed with which it seems to be collapsing is comparable to the collapse of the Soviet bloc, beginning obviously with the fall of the Berlin Wall and then into 1990, 1991 and beyond. Is that actually an apt comparison? Using the term Berlin Wall as to the Assad regime fall is not my invention.

It's something that the Syrians and Arabs across the region are saying themselves. The proxy system of Iran is gone. Again, I don't know if they can rebuild it, but right now it's not there anymore. And this is a careful and solid assessment. It simply is non-existent. The Iranians have asked the opposition in Syria

politely to allow them to evacuate their personal. They are not calling the opposition in Syria anymore the rebels. They have changed in their newspapers and televisions from calling them papers and televisions from calling them the rebels or sometimes the heretics, they're now calling them the opposition. And this morning they're already calling them the new government. So the Iranians are very quick on their feet to understand that this has changed. The other element is I think the Assad dictatorship was a specific element of the Middle East, frozen in time, frozen in time, like East Germany to an extent. A dictatorship the way they don't make them anymore unless you are in North Korea.

I was up all night watching the Syrians and Arabs across the region, waiting for the liberation of a specific prison on the outskirts of Damascus. And that prison, said Naya, prison, is on the outskirts of Damascus. And this is the place in which a few years ago, there was a press briefing by the State Department and they basically told the world that they have come to the conclusion that Assad has built a crematorium and they've showed satellite images and they explain why parts of that building, parts of that prison are warmer and there is snow there and they see that the snow is melting.

And this is from where the smoke goes out. And they were actually explaining in our time and age that he's burning the bodies of the people he murdered. And there are also photos of the mass graves that were built there. And we know from prisoners that some prisoners were thrown into salt rooms and these salt rooms are rooms in which the regime kept bodies because they didn't have refrigerator rooms to keep the bodies, but they would also throw live prisoners there. And this is the kind of dictatorship that the Assad family has built.

I walked with Syrian refugees in Europe from the moment they stepped out of the boat in Greece in Kos, and I walked with them through the Balkans and through Hungary. I heard their stories about what the Assad regime did to them. And this is something that sometimes doesn't, it's not understood in the West. Assad is the biggest murderer in this neighborhood. He killed more than 90% of the people who died during the Syrian civil war, with all due respect to Islamists and Islamic State and all the rest. It's Assad who's the biggest butcher around.

Just to put a fine point on that, Nadav, you're talking about since 2011, since the 2011 civil war, you're talking about north of 600,000 Syrians that have been slaughtered during this 13-year period. And that's not to mention the some 12 million, somewhere between 11 and 12 million Syrians that have been displaced. A little more than half of those have been internally displaced. But still, you're talking about somewhere between five and six million Syrians that have left the country, that have been forced out of the country, been turned into refugees. Put that in context. This is what Assad has

been doing. The butchering, the displacing, turning of millions of people into refugees. What he did there to some parts of his own society was definitely of the likes of genocide. These are mass graves and mass executions and ethnic cleansing and an idea that he will have more of the Alawi. He's part of the Alawi minority and the Alawi minority will become more powerful and bigger in the demographics of Syria simply because he is expelling or he is pushing people to leave the country. And millions of Syrians who are refugees live now in Europe, of course, but mostly in Turkey. Turkey is important.

Right. Nadev, I want to come back to Turkey, but before we do, just to help our listeners and viewers understand what has happened in the last couple of days. So we had Yonatan Adiryan in our last episode and he was describing the geopolitical events that were creating the environment that led to what we have seen. And I want to come back to those events with you when we talk about Turkey. But can you just talk about the last 48 hours, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which again, search our transcripts, you wouldn't have heard of HTS before the last episode of Call Me Back. I think for most observers of the Middle East over the last year, no one was talking about

HTS. What happened in the last 48 hours? Well basically, the moment that Israel announced a ceasefire in the north, the pickup trucks of the Syrian rebels began moving down south. Same day, they began their mobilization down south from the Idlib area and they were thinking about catching the regime and Hezbollah off guard. I should say that Hezbollah in these areas of Syria, Hezbollah is one of the factors that allowed Assad to remain in power.

It was Hezbollah who sent their fighters to fight and to murder for the regime in Syria because it was so important for the Iran-led axis that the Assad regime survives. And then the rebels, mainly the HDS, but not only the HDS, began moving down south with their either pickup trucks or armored vehicles. And to their surprise and amazement, nobody fought back. And this is the reason why the Assad regime has fallen. Its army simply did not fight back almost at any place in which it was attacked. Soldiers deserted their positions, commanders, they threw down their weapons. There were virtually no real skirmishes or battles during the fall of the Syrian regime.

After more than 13 years, they turned out to be a complete paper tiger. And I should also say that no Arab country, neither did Turkey and Erdogan, who are really the patrons of HDS. They didn't expect that. The Iranians didn't expect that. Nobody in the world foresaw that. And this is just you know an amazing intelligence failure and one of the reasons in retrospect and of course in retrospect we're all geniuses right but one of the reasons is that it's the Syrian lira that was about 26,000 Syrian lira per dollar. And this is how Assad paid his army and his soldiers. So he was paying them in an extremely devaluated currency, and they were broke. And they had absolutely no

motivation anymore. And what really happened is that Syria's allies, like Iran and the Russians, were going, and you could hear that they were saying that, if you're not going to fight, we're not going to fight for you. And if you look at the number four division, number four division is probably an elite division of the Syrian Assad regime. It's led by his brother, Maher Assad. By Bashar Assad's brother. Yeah. led by his brother, Maher Assad. By Bashar Assad's brother.

Yeah. So Bashar Assad is a psycho. Maher Assad is a sadistic psychopath, really, truly a terrible, terrible man responsible for many of the massacres, including Assad gassing his own people using nerve agents against his own people. So Maher Assad had a lot to do with that.

And his division did absolutely nothing in terms of resisting the rebels. And to their own amazement, they were basically driving down south, taking town after town. So began with Hama. Hama is the place in which the Assad regime, the father, Hafez al-Assad,

had his largest massacres to that date. And that's a symbolic place in the history of the Middle East because it's the Muslim Brotherhood that had the rebellion against Hafez al-Assad in 1982 in Hama. And he slaughtered, I mean, it's tens of thousands of people.

He basically leveled the city, killed at least between 20 and 40,000 people nobody knows. He expelled 100,000 people. He did that in three weeks. And that was the end of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria until the Arab Spring. And they took Hamas with basically no shots fired. And then they continued on to Homs. Homs was extremely important because there's an area on the Mediterranean that's called

Latkia with the ports of Tartus. And this is where the Russians were, and this is where most of the Alawi minority lives. And the gateway to that beach area of Syria is through a strategic town called Homs. And when they took Homs, it was game over for the regime. And to that extent, this is one of the reasons I thought about mentioning this metaphor that is in mind of the Berlin Wall, because at the end, this was a terrible and bloody war and hundreds of thousands of people died, but the regime fell with almost no shots fired. There was nothing left there.

It was a shell, and we didn't know that. This is also, to an extent, a demonstration of the entire axis of resistance of Iran. And it brings about the question, was the West maybe, and even Israel, too careful in addressing these regimes? So one of the things I wrote this morning is that the three elements that assisted the Assad regime were first and foremost Iran and its proxies like Hispana, secondly Russia, and the third element was the West because it was the West that somehow thought that there would be stabilization in Syria with Bashar al-Assad.

It was the West that was pressuring the Arabs to accept Assad back. And of course, it was President Obama that signed an agreement with Russia at the time and decided to disregard his own red line after Assad attacked his own people and gassed them. And I remember the rebels in Syria saying, waiting for the attack by the US, saying, the regime will collapse,

even if you attack them lightly, because they're so fragile. Just to put dates on this, 2012 is when President Obama issued the red line, then Assad used the chemical weapons. And then everyone was waiting for the US to step in and then the US didn't. And then the US cut this deal with Russia to quote unquote move part or most of Assad's chemical weapons stockpile out of Syria. And this obviously resulted as part of this

deal in Russia having an even stronger foothold in Syria. So all this has happened over the last decade plus, that's how far back this goes. And what you're saying, I think, is that maybe we're now all realizing, and some were saying, but they weren't heard, that all this dancing around how to manage Assad was completely underestimating of how wobbly Assad's regime was. of how wobbly Assad's regime was. Yes, and to an extent, a feeling with Syrians,

with Arabs across the region, that they were totally forsaken by the West. Because let's face it, Syria is not an important country then. And it is definitely, you know, nobody occupied buildings in Columbia University as a result of Assad murdering his own people. There was no real international pressure against this regime. The reason the West cared about Syria truly was because of the refugee crisis. And there is an argument to be made that if you didn't have the Syrian civil war and

the refugee crisis, we wouldn't have had a Brexit because this was definitely something that was conversed in Europe. Well, yeah, we could do a whole episode on the migration crisis that has ripped out of the Middle East into Europe. It's a fascinating conversation that maybe we should do a whole episode on. I want to, I want to ask you about where the IDF is now. So the IDF has been mobilizing forces to the Golan Heights. It has been reported that they are advancing right into Syria.

Can you talk about what you know about what the IDF is up to right now? What Israel did in the last 24 hours is, first of all, attack stockpiles of weapons, what Israel labels as strategic weapons of the Syrian army of the fallen regime. For instance, missiles and rockets and stockpiles of some chemical weapons, the type of chemical weapons that remain in Syria even after that agreement that you mentioned, Dan. These are aerial attacks by the Israeli Air Force that have been happening across Syria in the last 24 hours as the regime is falling. So this is the first thing. The second thing that Israelis have been doing is capturing territory in the buffer zone between the countries that

used to be held by UN observers and others. And this is a result of the rebels coming too close to the border and Israel not wanting to have Islamist groups devoted to the idea of destroying Israel, at least on the record for now, Israel doesn't want them on the other side of the Golan Heights. Because of that, Israel has captured the buffer zone. It's a formal announcement by the prime minister and the defense minister. There are also reports, which I cannot verify right now with Israeli sources, but they come from other sources that Israel has captured the Syrian Hermon.

So the Hermon mountain is the highest point in Israel and it's a strategic point for the Israelis. It allows you basically to see everything all the way to Damascus. And the other side of the same mountain. By the way, as a recreational matter, Nadav, it's also where Israelis go ski. Go to ski, yeah. Well, ski is a big word for the Talmud. Ski-ish, ish.

See snow, see snow. Bring the kids to see snow, stand in a traffic jam that lasts for four hours. Next time you're in Israel, go and do that. And the other side is of course the Syrian hormone and the IDF according to foreign sources has captured the Syrian side of the hormone. And these developments are really important

and I can tell you right now if this is a strategy by Israel to maintain these areas or to have a wait and see policy and have them as a source of an insurance policy vis-a-vis the rebels. Israel has sent messages to HTS, to this Islamist group and to other rebels saying, we do not want to fight you. If we need to fight you, we will. Don't make the Golan Heights a new issue. And that's the worry because we were talking about the bright side of all this. And I was talking about how the axis of resistance led by Iran doesn't exist anymore. But the other side and the worrying side is that now you have Syria controlled by an Islamist organization that is a descendant of Al-Qaeda.

Now, they present a completely different approach. They talk about maintaining the rights of all sects and religions, including the Christians in Syria. This group has huge issues with the Islamic State, and they are very much infused by Turkish support. And some would say that the kind of country they want to build is much closer to Turkey that maintains some sort of pluralism, even though it's of course no longer a democracy, and that this is the country that Al-Jolani, the leader of HDS, a man that joined the way of the jihad as a result of the Second Intifada because of his solidarity with the Palestinians.

Just so we'll understand who we're talking about. That Al-Julani is more moderate now and he wants to build a new country in Syria. And some of his initial orders to his forces, for instance, guard the institutions, don't go into private homes. Yeah, a lot of it could be very temporarily strategicarily strategic. I mean they could because some of the other Minority groups in Syria which he may want to discourage from challenging him or or at least

trying to neutralize Like the Christian minority for instance, which was basically My understanding quite supportive of the Assad regime. So there were other minority groups that he doesn't want problems with right now. So it's hard to know exactly what he's. Yeah, I agree. These countries are usually not controlled

by really a multi-pluralist government with different sects and religions represented. Usually it boils down to a strong man. And Al Joulani is a strong man. He's a very capable man. Al Joulani gave an interview to CNN. I really recommend people to watch it. You can see that this guy is not Bashar al-Assad, and I'm not happy about this as an Israeli. He looks like a serious person, and he looks very much in control of what he's saying and what he's doing, and he has proven resilience. And it's really up to him to make a crucial, crucial decision, two crucial decisions.

The first one is whether or not he's going to make the Golan Heights and the retrieval of the Golan Heights that were taken by Israel in 1967, annexed to Israel, recognized by the Trump administration as part of Israel, whether or not he's going to make this, the retrieval of Arab land, as they say in Syria, a main theme of the new regime. If he's going to do that and he's going to try to have some sort of an attrition war, a guerrilla war in the Golan Heights, we're looking into a new front to Israel and a dangerous one. Because one of the things that we're worrying for Israel is that the Sunni world, not the Shia world that is a minority, will

use pieces of its border with Israel as a place to which every jihadist around will be sucked into joining the fight against Israel. So if you think then about Israel's borders, we have a border with Egypt that won't allow this because we have a peace treaty with it. We have a border with Jordan that's very much struggling but still doesn't allow jihadists usually to come to our border and is trying and has security cooperation with Israel. We have Lebanon and in Lebanon that jihadi force was Hezbollah and Israel to a large extent took care of Hezbollah. And we have had Syria and the Assad dynasty in Syria has maintained that this area will not become a front for a constant war in the Golan Heights of every Jihadist around against Israel. And now

it's the Jihadists, even if they have become more tempered and moderated, which I don't know if that's true, of course. And potentially just temporary, but yes. Exactly. But now they are basically in control of Syria and they can make the Golan Heights the place to go. If you're a young jihadist from Iraq and you're a Sunni. And of course, the Sunnis are the majority in the region and this worries Israel.

So the first decision for the new rulers of Damascus is whether or not they're going to go down that route of a prolonged jihad against Israel, trying maybe to secure the return of the Golan Heights for peace, something that consecutive prime ministers, all the way from Yitzhak Rabin through Ehud Barak and, of course, Benjamin Netanyahu, including after the beginning of the rebellion against the Assad regime, have conversed about the possibility of returning to Golan Heights. Of course, Israelis today are extremely happy that they didn't do that because, look, the Assad regime has fallen. So it's an argument of the Israeli right wing. It was always the argument. Do you really want to secure a peace treaty with the Assad regime

knowing that the next ruler of Damascus can say, oh, they are a dictatorship and we're not agreeing to that, but they will have the Golan Heights all the way to the Sea of Galilee, to the Kinneret. Are you serious? Are you going to give them territories? So that argument has, to an extent, been proven true. And the second decision to be made by the rulers of Damascus is about Hezbollah. Do they allow the Iranians to continue on funding Hezbollah and sending arms through Syria and through the Damascus airport. And some people will immediately say, what? Why would these Sunni Islamists,

anti-Shi'a, anti-Iran people allow Hezbollah to get weapons? And I'm not sure about that. So I want to remind the people listening to us that it was Iran that harbored Al-Qaeda before and after 9-11 and it is Iran that is supporting Hamas and Hamas is basically a splinter Muslim Brotherhood Sunni organization. And why? Because the aim of fighting against Israel is bigger than the Sunni-Shia divide. And one of the things that worries Israel is what happens if Al-Julani and the Iranians and Erdogan all come into a room, metaphorically speaking, or even physically, and say, you know, part of our agreements, part of the things that we can agree about is part of our compromise is for you to allow at least some arms flowing through Syria to Hezbollah.

And that's going to be the basis of their new understandings. And that's a big decision to make. If they're going to make that decision to continue on supporting Hezbollah with the new regime in Damascus, it's a very unpopular decision to make because Hezbollah has been butchering Syrians and rebels for years now. Look, if they're going to cut Hezbollah out, Israel and the new regime in Syria, even if it's an Islamist regime, they have a lot to talk about and to converse positively. But if they're going to allow this to continue, Israel will need to make very difficult decision. And again, this is not the Assad regime.

I saw someone writing on Twitter, I don't remember who, so I'm crediting you, whoever you are, that soon Israel will have an actual border with Rajab Taip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, because of the influence that he sways over the HDS. And to an extent, I'm almost hopeful that this is the case, because Erdogan in Turkey, we know how to work with, right? But he now has leverage on the other side of this argument. He has leverage on Israel that is territorial. He can basically, Erdogan from Istanbul, a sultan in the making, can now influence things that happen in the Israeli Golan Heights.

And that's the first time that you had this. So to an extent, and I'm sure that you're going to have a specific chapter about the history of Syria and the Near East, it's really important to have that. I'm looking forward to it with the experts you're going to bring over but you have here the Persian civilization that was in control or somewhat control in this area and now you have maybe the new Ottomans that are there influencing. They're back. Yeah and they're Sunni and of course the Persian Empire when it became Muslim, it was Shia and this is the Middle East.

It's full of surprises but it's also full of these historic patterns. As we were speaking, it's now confirmed that the Israeli elite units have taken the Syrian side of the Mount of the Hormon and they have captured that outpost that was held by the Syrian army for many years. It's the Shaldagh unit that has taken it. I would just make the point that it's the first time since 1967 that we see Israel now beyond its border lines or army test lines in more fronts that you would expect. So there are now Israeli forces in Lebanon. Israel didn't complete its pullout of Lebanon or in a thin layer, right, within the Lebanese state. We have IDF forces, of course, in Gaza.

And basically, we now have the IDF in the Ba'athar zone within the Syrian sovereign territory. This war is not over yet. Nadeim, final question. You mentioned the wisdom of Israel not giving up the Golan Heights when Israel was contemplating it many years ago, decades ago. There was also a move Israel made back in 2007 where Israel made the decision to take out the Syrian nuclear program. It ultimately did it unilaterally. It tried to get the U.S. to do it. Israel tried to get the Israeli government, tried to government tried to get the US to cooperate with Israel

on it. Ultimately, the US did not cooperate with Israel but did not stand in Israel's way. Imagine a world today where Syria is completely collapsing, rebel groups are making moves, and there are nuclear weapons sitting there to be grabbed. Yeah, and I think this goes to the credit of the IDF and the Israeli Air Force, but mainly to the politicians who made that decision. Eud Al Mert went to jail and had to leave office, but probably be remembered mostly for that decision.

Not connected to this. He went for corruption, not for, yeah. I'm just saying that his reputation has collapsed following his tenure as prime minister, but he made that decision. And that was not an obvious call. Let me tell you, I had friends around, intelligence services and others,

and people were fearing an all out war. And there was a warning against taking out that North Korean reactor that was built by Bashar al-Assad. The decision was made to do that even if that would mean an all-out war that would be a surprise for Israelis because nobody convened a press conference and nobody even knew. Israel didn't assume responsibility because it wanted the Assad regime to have deniability and to save face and not to lead them to an escalation. And this is something that Israel did.

And of course, you remember that in the 1980s, 1981, was Menachem Begin, another Israeli prime minister that made the decision together with the cabinet to attack the Iraqi nuclear reactor in Osirak. And you can just imagine what would have happened if Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons. And if it is up for the Israelis and they look to 2025, this is what you're hearing all across the government and the IDF. This is the year to make

the decision as to the Iranian nuclear capabilities. And of course, as far as Israel is concerned, they would very much want the US to understand that the Iranians are much weaker than they look and that this problem needs to be taken out. But if the US is not going to play along with Israel or even alone, the Israelis are seriously contemplating on a preemptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. And this conversation is going to lead, I think, our own conversations during the next year. Nadeav, we will leave it there. We will be talking to you in the days ahead about these developments and specifically a conversation we want to have with you

about the impact of all of this on the negotiations for release of Israeli hostages, the ongoing negotiations with Hamas, which have been affected by these developments. But until then, we will obviously be in close contact and following these developments closely. So thank you. Thanks very much, Dan. That's our show for today. Reminder to keep your eye out for that new cover art that you will start seeing in your feed in the Thursday episode and let us know what you think of it. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Alain Benatar.

Our media manager is Rebecca Strom. Additional editing by Martin Huérgaux. Research by Gabe Silverstein. Until next time, I'm your host, Dannore.