Judging Freedom - Kevork Almassian: Who Controls Syria?

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

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you Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, April 14th, 2025. Our friend Kivork Almassian is here, will be here in just a moment, on just who started the war in Syria and who prevented peace. But first this. While the markets are giving us whiplash, have you seen the price of gold? It's soaring. In the past 12 months, gold has risen to more than $3,000 an ounce. I'm so glad I bought my gold. It's not too late for you to buy yours. The same experts that predicted gold at $3,200 an ounce now predict gold at $4,500 or more in the next year.

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Learn how you can store gold in your IRA tax and penalty free or have it sent directly to your doorstep. There's zero pressure to buy and you have a 100% risk-free purchase guarantee. It's time to see if gold is right for you. Call 800-511-4620, 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com and tell them your friend the judge sent you. judge sent you. Kivork, welcome here. All right, we're looking for you. There you are. Welcome here, my dear friend. It's always good to chat with you. Recently, our mutual friend, who is a regular on this show, Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, summarized very neatly and succinctly at a conference in Russia, something you and

I and everyone watching the show has known for a long time. It's a long talk, but I'm going to play 90 seconds of it and then I'll ask you your thoughts. Chris, cut number four. I think it's important for us to understand where this entire war came from. It did not come from Bashar al-Assad. It came from Washington. There was a decision in 2011 to overthrow Assad. Actually, that came from Jerusalem.

This has been a desire of the Israeli government that stretches back more than 25 years. Netanyahu's idea is make the Middle East in Israel's image, overthrow every government that opposes Israel. He's had a friend in that, and that is the CIA and the United States government. So this war in Syria did not come from Assad's repression. It did not come from Assad's dictatorship. This war came from a presidential order by Obama to overthrow Assad starting in the spring of 2011.

We have a name for this program. It was Operation Timber Sycamore. The United States, together with other countries in this region, trained fighters, especially jihadists, including the ones that just took power to overthrow the regime. This created chaos. Is Professor Sachs correct? Actually, I wanted to start today's conversation with you about this video, and you just played it for us. And actually I wanted to salute him and because it takes lots of courage to say what he said during this forum which is held in Ankara, Antalya and Turkey has been a major player in this conflict since the beginning. He was of course

correct about Operation Timber Sycamore but the decision to overthrow Assad has been taken in 2008, not in 2011, because in 2008 the former president of France, Sarkozy, invited Assad to Paris on the French National Day and he wrote him a red carpet and then they put him on a podium alongside other world leaders and they tried to persuade him to shake hands with the former prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert. And there is a video of it on YouTube, everybody can watch it, when the leaders of the world, including the French foreign minister, including Ban Ki-moon and the Qatari emir back then, they tried to even physically push him on the podium to shake hands with Ehud Olmert and Assad turned his back and he walked away. And I think this was the moment when, let's say, the West and the allies in the region,

they have realized that Bashar al-Assad is not going to accept normalization of relations with Israel because Syria's, one of Syria's elements of strength was its support for the armed struggle of the Palestinians and the Lebanese, namely Hezbollah and Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Therefore, they wanted to cut Syria from this axis of resistance and persuade it on the side of what is called the moderate Arab camp, which means Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, the countries which have friendly relationship with the United States and also with Israel in this case. So the decision was made there and in 2011, this decision has been put into implementation. And this was called Operation Timber Sycamore. It was a covert operation.

It was secret. It was never discussed in the Congress or the American people didn't know about it. And they have funneled $1 dollar per year between 2011 to 2017 into arming and training basically radical jihadists including groups that were linked and affiliated with Al-Qaeda and this has led like we've seen that all of a sudden this jihadist started using American TOW missiles for example Stinger missiles and they have decimated and destroyed tens of Syrian army tanks, thanks to the American weaponry, but also we had lots of funding from Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

So the American support in this case was around, let's say, seven billion dollars in seven years, and this was the costliest CIA covert operation since the Afghanistan war, when again again the CIA supported the same... What would have motivated the United States to do this other than to please its ally and vassal state, some would say controlling state, Israel? Actually Israel was the main reason why the United States waged this operation against Syria because Syria doesn't pose any security threat against the United States waged this operation against Syria, because Syria doesn't pose any security threat against the United States or its interests in the region. It has been a smaller country compared to Iraq and much smaller army than Iran, for example. But Syria used its allies, for example, in Lebanon and in Palestine as a leverage

against the Israelis so that they can have this buffer zone, for example, between Syria and the Israelis, because the Israelis have the Greater Israel Project and they want to stretch and extend their territories into Syria. So Syria protected itself also through its allies by giving them weapons and munitions training on the Syrian territory. So yes, the main consideration here was Israel and this is what also Professor Jeffrey Sachs said that the decision came from Tel Aviv.

And this is something that we have to reiterate today because as we speak at the current moment we are receiving reports and those are still allegations that the self-appointed president of Syria, Abu Mohammed Jolani, has met with Israeli delegation in Abu Dhabi two days ago or yesterday. So now we see that there is talk about normalization of relations between Syria and Israel again once Assad is gone. So he was the obstacle for this normalization of relations, and October 7 has been, let's say, Israel saw it as an opportunity to wage a barbaric war

against Gaza and then decapitated the entire leadership of Hezbollah. And then they came after Assad by collaborating with the Turkish side to resume this regime change operation, which started from the north of Syria and then they moved all the way to the south. And this was, of course, supported by foreign intelligence apparatuses because, Judge, I know for a fact, this is not something that is secret, but I know for a fact that the Syrian army lost its communication and their communication system has been hacked and they have received orders from the

higher command, which was of course, it's a hacking to lay down their arms. So there are so many cases in Syria that the army laid down their arms because they received orders and those orders came from non-Syrian side and it wasn't from the Syrian army leadership. How many people died as a result of this Barack Obama instigated war? 600,000 Syrians died during the discourse of this. Now one-third of these casualties were Syrian army soldiers, officers, and the soldiers in the Syrian army. One-third were from these jihadists that Obama trained, and then we have one-third from the civilians from all sides. So the casualty rate is very big, but the tragedy also goes beyond the casualty rate because 70% of the civilians have been displaced now. We have millions of people internally displaced

and millions of people refugees. So Europe received 2 million Syrian refugees, Turkey received around 3 million refugees and Lebanon received around one and a half million refugees. So it was catastrophic for the entire region and also for Europe. Now they complain about, for example, the populist right-wing groups in Europe and they want to stop them, but they were one of the reasons why this happened. Syrian war and the Libyan war were the main reasons why we had hundreds of thousands of people marching towards Europe after decimating their countries and of course their

had hundreds of thousands of people marching towards Europe after decimating their countries and, of course, their future and their economic, let's say, survival in their own countries. At the current moment, I speak with Syrians every day, and people are living below $1 per day. So how do you expect them to stay in their homes under such circumstances? Was there a peace agreement brokered by Kofi Annan

when he was the Secretary General of the United Nations? And if so, what became of that agreement? So the Kofi Annan peace plan for Syria, this was a six-point peace plan, and this was launched in March 2012 by the Arab League first and then the United Nations. And this was put into, let's say, discussion in Geneva and Kofi Annan has mediated between the Syrian government and the Syrian opposition and received the approval of the Syrian government in this case. However, the Obama administration back then, they have vetoed this peace agreement and they have approved the continuation of the operation Timber-Sickomer,

despite the fact that the Defense Intelligence Agency of the United States, DIA, in 2012, they have warned Barack Obama that the driving force behind the insurgency against Assad are the Islamists, are al-Qaeda-affiliated groups, and the Muslim borderhood. And despite knowing this, he continued giving them the weapons and also encouraging the allies in the region to funnel all this money into Syria. But we have to understand, George, that weapons can be destructive but also you need the ideology because these people who fought against Assad, they were takfiris. They were the ones who are very discriminatory against any other religion or sect and they believed in the so-called martyrdom in order to achieve their cause.

And in this case, we have seen hundreds of suicide bombers, car bombs, et cetera, into the country. And this was all legitimized by so-called imams in Saudi Arabia and in Qatar, basically, giving fatwas, saying that it is permissible to kill any Syrian, whether you are a civilian or you're a soldier, but you live in a government-held area or you stand with Assad. And this has been all publicized in Arabic because I follow these TV channels, and I see that many in the West do not know that there is also an ideological element of it, and this is coming from countries like Saudi Arabia

and Qatar, and those were the main backers basically of Jolani. Tell us about Jolani's background and how he became the head of the state in Syria today. So Jolani in 2003, he went to Iraq and he joined Al-Qaeda and his expertise was to build car bombs and he sent tens of car bombs into Shia neighborhoods and there is lots of blood in his hands and there are cases against him in Iraq and he's wanted in Iraq because of these terroristic, let's say, acts in 2003.

Later he ended up in the Bukka camp and other prisons of CIA and Pentagon prisons in Iraq and there he met with Abu Bakr Baghdadi. And coincidentally both of them were released in 2011 and one of them formed ISIS and became the leader of ISIS and the second became the leader of Al-Qaeda in Syria, Al-Nusra Front. They were basically partners at the beginning, but then they differed in politics, they differed on who will control more territories, and they have split it. ISIS and Al-Qaeda have become two different organizations. I also checked his educational background, and there is not a single information of him going to school. So he doesn't even have a secondary school certificate, but now he is the self-selected

president of Syria. We don't know if he can really write well in Arabic. He doesn't speak any second language, of course. In any ways, he ruled one of the governorates of Syria for over 10 years with the support of the CIA because the CIA has considered him an asset for their strategy. And this has been confirmed by the former US envoy to Syria, James Jeffrey, who said basically in PBS, to PBS that Jolani's army has been an asset for the US strategy in Syria. So they used him for quite a long time. They prepared him. They have formed him a quite a long time. They prepared him.

They have formed him a very good army, basically well-paid. So we're speaking about $1,000 per head if you join the Jolani army compared to $50 in the Syrian Arab army under Assad. So imagine how much financial advantage Jolani had over the Syrian government, including all these billions of worth of weapons. American weapons were game changers in this conflict. People, if you go back to this old

footage and you see how these Jolani fighters, they were trained on TOW missiles, TOW rockets, TOW rockets against the Syrian army tanks. But now, Judge, we have Israeli occupation in the South, and Israel is advancing every day in the Syrian territories. Have you seen one incident of the Jolani soldiers shooting or firing one of these TOW missiles against Israeli occupation forces? No, zero. No, of course not. Here's Professor Sacks on the outcome of the Syrian war is just what the United States wanted. Cut number five. The outcome of this war is what the CIA wanted back in 2011, which is that a jihad group would take power in Syria after being armed by the United States. The reason I want to be clear about this is that we will not have peace in this region until we have public diplomacy that is based on real diplomacy, not on CIA operations.

And we will not have peace until Israel stops its militarization of the entire Middle East. Will Turkey resist the Israeli militarization of the Middle East? The simple answer is no, but there is definitely an element of Turkey and Israel are competing over leverage in Syria and they are slicing the cake basically between spheres of influence and Last week the Israelis and the Turks have met in Azerbaijan in order to draw the line Where is the let's say this fear of influence of Israel and where is this fear of influence of Turkey and? The talks are proceeding well with the mediation of the Azerbaijan is site Which is a very good ally

of Israel in this case. Now, I want to mention one thing that is a very important charge in this case. The panel mediator, when our professor Jeffy Sachs was asked questions, for example, his name is Waddah Khanfar. Waddah Khanfar was the bureau chief of Al-Jazeera. He was the director of Al-Jazeera in Qatar. And in 2011, WikiLeaks leaked a document basically showing that he used to meet with the CIA operative daily during the 2003 war against Iraq. And he received instructions from the Americans to change the policy of Al-Jazeera

or the coverage of Al-Jazeera of the Iraq war. And the second person who challenged Jeffrey Sachs in this case, who wanted to ask him a question, he is the editor-in-chief of Al-Quds Al-Arabi. His name is Abdulhamid Siyam. And Al-Quds Al-Arabi is also owned by Qatar. So we are having a panel. I'm very happy for Jeffrey Sachx to be in this panel,

but I would truly suspect that they would invite him again after dropping this bombshell in among the crowd of a Muslim borderhood crowd, especially that these two journalists who are an essential part of this forum, they are part of the Qatari, let's say, propaganda machine in the region, including Al Jazeera. So the role of Qatar is we cannot really underestimate it also in this case, and Qatar is a major non-NATO ally of the United States, and it has bankrolled with tens of billions of dollars into Syria. If the CIA spent seven billion, Qatar spent tens of billions into the Syrian war. And this was confessed by the former

Qatari foreign minister saying that they were instructed by the United States to fund these jihadists in Syria. And he confessed and said that, yes, they supported al-Qaeda in Syria, but he refuses to say that they supported ISIS. I mean, at the end of the day, we can argue who supported ISIS, but who has the money in the region? It's the Saudis and the Qataris. And it's not a coincidence all of a sudden that all these ISIS tracks, Toyota tracks, tens and hundreds of them suddenly emerged in the Syrian market. No, this was very well organized, well funded, covert operation, but then we have the information is available.

So what is going to happen? What do you think will happen to Syria next? It'll be divided up between the Israelis and the Turks. Actually, they are already dividing it. But how are they going to divide it? Are they going to create a political system that is based based on federalism, which means you have central government and then you have different mini, let's say federal states, or are you going to partition it and Balkanize it? It depends on Jolani, because if Jolani

continues his discrimination and persecution of the minorities, and we have seen that his militias have killed hundreds and hundreds of civilians just because they were born in the wrong religion in the Syrian coastal side, then of course, the people will look for Balkanization of the country and they don't want to leave with the Jolani regime. But if Jolani changes his course and probably he receives instructions from his handlers

that he has to treat the minorities well, especially the Christians, the otherwise, the Shias, the Jews, and the Kurds, then there is an opportunity to build the federal system in Syria. But I lean towards the theory that Syria will be Balkanized and the Christians and the Alawites are Jews and the Kurds already the same. They all received the signal from Jolani after he went into a free spirit of killing of the Alawites in Latakia, Tartus, Jabli only a few weeks ago,

that you cannot really, like you can take a man out of Al-Qaeda, but you cannot take Al-Qaeda out of a man. This is what I want to say. Yeah. Jeffrey Sachs made a prediction about where these wars will go. Cut number 11. The Syrian war is just one of six wars that Israel has promoted, including in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan. We had the list, actually, from Wesley Clark back in 2001 when he was handed a paper in the Pentagon that the goal was seven wars in five years.

The only war that hasn't taken place yet to Netanyahu's great consternation is the U.S. war with Iran. Do you think the U.S. will attack Iran in order to play Kate Netsinyahu? I mean the goal of the US and Israel is the same in Iran. It's a complete capitulation and surrender of Iran, disarmament of Iran, not only the nuclear program but also its ballistic missile, its hypersonic missile program and also the drone program which present a big challenge for the US hegemony over the region. Now whether they're going to attack Iran or not, which present a big challenge for the US hegemony over the region. Now, whether they are going to attack Iran or not, this is a serious question that I think that the Iranians will choose the diplomatic path, especially after

losing Syria and also the weakening of Hezbollah, let's say, in this case, and the decimation of Gaza, because for them, Iranians are very good chess players and they see things on the long run. And I think that the Iranians do not see that war is an option for them at the current moment, unless of course they receive a first attack, they receive a blow from the Americans. Now the Americans, however, are asking the Libyan style of demilitarization or the denuclearization of Libya. But what happened to Libya after 10 years of the denuclearization? They waged a regime change war and killed the leader.

So repeating this in front of the Iranian officials, I think it only emboldens the Iranian position and they radicalizes. Yeah, because what type of message you're sending them if you say the Libyan model, are you going to kill the leadership of Iran in 10 years? How – let me switch gears before we go, Kivork. How successful or unsuccessful was the American military bombing of Yemen in the past couple of weeks? It wasn't much successful because the Yemenis are completely different from the

Syrian territory and from the Syrian geography. And the Yemenis have taken a very, let's say, tactically speaking, very good military position when it comes to blockading the Red Sea. I think in this case, the Americans cannot really solve this case from the fighter jets. They have to send boots underground. And this has been proven also that it is very, very difficult to achieve victories against the Ansarullah. But Saudis tried it, the Emiratis tried it, and they brought thousands of mercenaries from Africa to fight against the Yemenis. So if the Americans want to change course completely in Yemen, they have to send big military presence into Yemen and boots underground. Americans are ready to do that.

I don't think so. So the key here is Iran. If they can persuade Iran to accept a nuclear deal and decrease its support for the Ansarullah movement or the Yemenis and other players in the region, that would eliminate a big part of the threat, let's say, against Israel and against the United States in the region. So I think the Americans will seek for a negotiation now with the Iranians

and try to degrade the Iranian influence in the region. And eventually this also means degrading some of the potentials of the Yemenis. I think that's the approach at the current moment. Kivork Omasian, thank you very much for your time. Fascinating, fascinating insight from someone who lived through all of this. I hope you'll come back and visit with us again soon. Thank you so much, Judge, of course, anytime. Thank you. Coming up at 3 o'clock this afternoon, Scott Ritter, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. The End.