Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter: Putin’s Syrian Strategy

Episode Date: December 17, 2024

Scott Ritter: Putin’s Syrian StrategySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, December 17, 2024. Scott Ritter will be with us in just a moment on President Putin's Syrian strategy. But first this. We're taught to work hard for 35 to 40 years. Save your money, then live off your savings. Unfortunately, there are too many threats undermining the value of our hard-earned dollars. The Fed's massive money printing machine is shrinking your dollar's value.

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scott welcome here my dear friend before we uh start talking about uh syria uh there was an assassination in moscow today of a high-ranking Russian general, General Igor Kirillov. What can you tell us about it? Well, the Ukrainian government, in a strange move, has taken full credit for this, indicating that they directed their intelligence services to carry out this assassination. It's not an act of war. It's an act of terrorism against a high profile Russian Lieutenant General. General Kirillov was the commander of their chemical biological radiation forces, but he had achieved notoriety of sorts because he is the face to the ongoing Russian allegations centered on American biological labs that had been operating on Ukrainian soil.

The Russians, in the course of the special military operation, had occupied several of these and gained access to documents. He was using these documents to make the case that the United States was engaged in what Russia assesses to be offensive biological warfare activities that were in violation of the biological toxin and weapons convention. It's a violation of law. And, you know, the Ukrainians had indicted him two days ago, and then they killed him. It's up to the Russian government to decide. Dmitry Medvedev, the former president, former prime minister, and current deputy head of the National Security Council held a meeting where he said that those who perpetrated this

attack, that is the government of ukraine and its defense ministry must be held uh accountable uh eliminated um what russia does i don't know because they you know probably looking forward to engaging in fruitful discussions with president trump once it becomes president trump and might not want to poison the well but you can't uh sit back and allow assassinations at this level to take place in your capital. How can they take place in the Russian capital without some collaborators on the inside? Well, I wouldn't say collaborators on the inside. I would say that uh you know russia contrary to uh popular belief is not a police state uh the fsb has tremendous resources uh to investigate after the fact and i'm sure that they

will in short notice um find out you know who the individual or individuals are who perpetrated this but you know it's not a police state. When you enter Moscow, you do have relatively free reign to travel and move about. And there is an extensive Ukrainian community in Moscow, Russian community, and many of them may be disaffected with the Putin regime and operate as a sleeper cell. They can do the surveillance to get patterns of life reports back. And then, you know, smuggling the material we saw, they were able to bring in an assassin to kill Darya Dugina and Tatarsky. And I'm sure that they were able to bring somebody in who was able to,

after establishing, you know, a pattern of life activity with this general uh position a scooter nearby with explosives and that was remotely detonated at the appropriate time killing him and his advisor uh this isn't um this isn't impossible what you're not going to be able to prevent things of this nature uh even with a crackdown but what you can do is deter them from happening again and you do that uh by ensuring that the consequences of such actions are uh so extreme that nobody would ever want to do it again i mean this this is shades of the mossad really uh scott is there a military purpose to killing a general who's not engaged in battle and not commanding troops at the time of his death, but rather is exiting his home to go to work in the morning? No, it's an act of terrorism, pure and simple.

Let me put it this way, just so your audience understands. If the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or one of his deputies was leaving their home this morning to go to work and a bomb placed in his garbage can went off and killed him and his aide. Would you expect the President of the United States to sit back and do nothing, especially if we found out, for instance, it was done by adversarial nation, we can call it, let's say it was done by Mexican cartels. Do you think right now, you know, hours later, we wouldn't be bombing those cartels into oblivion? I don't think the Americans understand what happened here because we projected into Russia, but try and project it back into us and something of this scale happening. You know darn well what we'd be doing. And that's the situation that Russia

faces right now. This was an act of terrorism, an assassination of a senior military general, high-profile military general, done by an adversarial nation, not for military impact, but for political and terrorist impact. Does Syria still exist today as a geopolitical entity? No. Syria, the nation of Syria, has been eradicated. It's gone. As we speak, Israel is occupying land,

not only in the Golan Heights, but projecting up towards Damascus and south in Dara to control that area of the border. Turkey has its proxies in total control of most of the rest of Syria. Erdogan apparently in a speech to the AKP, his political party, talked about Turkey's historical opportunity to reverse the bad outcome after the end of World War I, where Turkey lost control of the vilayets, the cities, the regions of Aleppo, Raqqa, Hama, and Damascus. And it appears that Turkey is going to be controlling what we currently call Syria today, but the Syrian nation that existed under Bashar al-Assad's presidency is gone. And how much land have the Israelis stolen? Ambassador

Murray told us this morning it's more than three times the size of a Gaza strip. Yeah, I haven't done the measurements on it, but I wouldn't dispute his figures. And I don't know if the Israelis are finished in their territorial acquisition. I don't think people will understand the totality of the geopolitical consequences of the collapse of Syria to the axis of resistance. Israel was on its back feet. Netanyahu now has emerged as a victorious leader. Everything he promised that he was going to deliver apparently now has been delivered.

He is saying this is not only the defeat of the Assad regime, but the weakening of Hezbollah and Iran. This is the end of the Palestinian resistance. Hamas cannot survive without the axis of resistance supporting them. So it's the end of the threat of a Palestinian state. It doesn't matter what the world wants. Israel will probably end up depopulating Gaza and eliminating much of the West Bank through more settlements.

This is the establishment of greater Israel, and greater Israel needs more territory. And, you know, he'll flex as far as he can. I do think there's a limit to the expansion of Israel. You know, Netanyahu doesn't want to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And you could do that by overplaying your hand. But Israel's feeling very confident right now. Is it a justifiable confidence? Or should he be careful what he wishes for?

I think it's a totally justifiable confidence. I don't see Iran being able to resurrect the land bridge to lebanon which means that hezbollah is in a very difficult position where it's probably going to have to um turn its resistance forces over to the lebanese armed forces in accordance with security council resolutions and then the hezbollah as a political party will have to meld into the political scene without the weight of its militia behind them. They don't have a leader as capable of Hassan Nasrallah. There is a competing Shia political party, the Amal, there. And it will be a diminishment of Hezbollah. And moreover, by

eliminating the Hezbollah militia, which was basically the equivalent of the armed forces of a nation state, the cocked pistol that Iran used to be able to have pointed at Israel's head is gone. And this diminishes Iran's ability now to influence what's going on in the region. They now have lost Syria and Lebanon. And so Iran is in a much weakened position, again, at a time when we have a president coming in who is prepared to deal decisively with Iran's nuclear program so Israel is very much in the catbird seat here the uh the wild card is uh is Turkey and what Turkey is going to do but I think Turkey is going to be very happy with um you know getting back territories that it uh it felt that unjustly lost at the end of World War One and focus on this, which is a major victory for Erdogan, and less on,

you know, creating a conflict with Israel. How does the United States play its cards as an ally of Turkey and as an ally of the Kurds, bearing in mind the bitter animosity between Erdogan's Turkey and the Kurdish people? The Kurds will be betrayed as we always betray them. Unfortunately for the Kurds, this is a historical reality. America has never been true friends of the Kurdish people. We used the Kurds for our political advantage. We needed the Kurds to have a base in Syria to facilitate the anti-Assad strategies that we had to help suppress ISIS, although I have to laugh at the notion of suppressing ISIS since we have an al-Qaeda, ISIS, jihadi in control of Syria

right now, Jolani. So it just makes no sense. He has a $10 million bounty on his head still. A $10 million bounty from the State Department on his head and runs or ran an organization denominated as a terrorist organization which means if you provide material assistance to it you can be indicted even though obviously the cia provided material assistance to it you can't make it well no but we can. Remember, the Kurds that we support, Judge, are the YPG, which is an affiliation of the PKK, which is a terrorist organization recognized by the United States, Turkey, and others. And how did we deal with that? We renamed them. We now call them the Syrian Democratic Forces. So I'm sure at some point in time, we will be able to go in and rename HTS and we'll call it the Syrian National Forces. And Jolani is wearing a suit instead of his jihadi and his beheading knife will be put

away for the moment. We are hypocrites and we'll make compromises like this. But I don't see him long for power. This was accidental. He wasn't supposed to take Damascus. He was supposed to stop at the M4 highway. Nobody anticipated the collapse of the Syrian army. Not him, not the Russians, not the Iranians, not the United States, not Turkey, not anybody. When he rolled into Damascus, he did that on his own. And everybody's been playing catch-up ever since. But eventually, the powers that will be, he's not going to be there for long because he can't. I mean, you can't have an al-Qaeda operative as the head of a government over what used to be called the nation of Syria. What would he actually be the head of,

given the Israeli and Turkey division of Syria into their own lands? Well, I mean, I think what you're probably going to see is that it's going to be difficult for Turkey to directly annex these lands. I think what Turkey is going to do over a period of time is turn them into sort of a protectorate. And they will get a status. And then what Turkey will do is seek to promote autonomy. And that at the appropriate time, Turkey will seek to hold referendum that will then absorb these territories. I don't see Turkey turning around and just doing a land grab right now, but we are looking at a process that could drag out for a decade or so

before Turkey begins to start acquiring. But again, Erdogan has articulated in a party conference that he sees Raqqa, which is the area to the east of Aleppo where Kurds are, he sees that becoming a Turkish protectorate territory, Aleppo and Idlib, both where now Turkey has raised its flag um hama the historical center of uh syria and down to damascus so um it's it's it's uh you know there's that old chinese curse or at least what's allegedly chinese curse may you live in interesting times and uh without a doubt we live in interesting times how has al julani become a media darling uh the the cia did this um he was you know he he has been the the turks have been propping him up and and building him up as a leader but um when this offensive began uh you had a cnn come in and do this interview. It's a purely scripted interview carefully coordinated between CNN and the CIA together with the Turks. It's like a PR campaign.

You're just going to basically redefine this guy. He's going to get a new identity. I used to behead people, but that was my bad boy phase. I'm in my good boy phase you know i'm in my good boy phase now he is what he is al-qaeda is al-qaeda you're never going to change who he is or what he is he's a beheader um but he's he's being you know changed into something different by the cia to uh you know to sell this to the american people because american people thought about this for a moment and remind this guy has the blood of Americans on his hands and yet we're going to let him be the head of Syria he has a 10

million dollar bounty on his but for a reason for a reason we didn't just come up and do it I mean that's how I've been a lot in that 27 million dollar bounty this guy's got 10 million dollars he's he's not small fish um and yet here he is he's's the head of Syria. And we've got this whole make good. Look at the British. The British arrested Richard Medhurst and others for daring to tweet things about supporting Hamas, et cetera. And the British government just sent their officials down and they're meeting with Jomani, meeting with a terrorist, the person they acknowledge as a terrorist, which would be in violation of their laws, just like you mentioned American laws. They immediately should throw out all these cases they have against journalists who dared tweet something supportive of Hamas when the British

government is meeting with Jolani. What becomes of Iran now? What do they do? They're confronting a new American president who was determined to disrupt their development of nuclear weapons, a newly emboldened Netanyahu. Iran may very well be America's next war of choice. Well, I'm hoping that it's not. You know, in the West, in the United States especially, we tend to denigrate the concept of Iranian democracy. But Iran is a democratic state. It's run differently than ours. You know, we don't have political parties. I mean, they don't have political parties.

And, you know, the DNC and RNC doing the money thing and AIPAC controlling. You know, they have different power centers. They have the Guardian Council that that runs all the candidates through in terms of their ability to govern from an Islamic perspective. But you also have to pass through the Expediency Council, the Assembly of Experts and the consultations that are had with the supreme leader about what direction do they want this country to go? Because it is, after all, a theocracy with a heavy democratic presence. This president passed through all those wickets. And this is a reformist president. And the reason why he got elected is because the powers that be recognize that there is a growing desire inside Iran for reform, meaningful reform, not just economic, but social.

And he made a decision early on that he's not seeking confrontation. This is a different president than President Raisi, who died in a helicopter accident last May. This is a president that is openly seeking to reestablish relations with the West. This is a man who has gone on record saying that he was opposed to the Operation True Promise II, the Iranian ballistic missile attack against Israel, that he didn't want it to go on because he was in the midst of discussions and negotiations with the European Union about lifting sanctions. And this attack happened and those discussions ended. He's not happy with the aggressive posture taken by previous administration of Raisi and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command. So

in many ways, he may view this setback in Syria as an opportunity to pave the way for meaningful discussion with the United States about how to exchange Iran's nuclear program for the lifting of sanctions and the normalization of relations. Maybe not diplomatic relations between the United States and Iran, that's a little too much of an ask, but basically for the United States to back away from its policy of regime change. And Donald Trump has said this in the lead up to back away from its policy of regime change. And Donald Trump has said this in the lead up to his election. He said, I'm not seeking regime change. I'm seeking the betterment of relations, normal economic relations.

And I think there's a window of opportunity now for this. And this new president is empowered by the fact that the IRGC is on its back feet, having suffered this setback in Syria. And I don't think there's an appetite for a full-scale war with either Israel or the United States or both. I think the Iranian people have said, we want peace, we want better economic opportunities, and that can only come with the sanctions being lifted. And what you need to do to lift those sanctions, you probably need to do. And that could be the better deal.

Remember when Donald Trump pulled out of the JCPOA back in 2018, he didn't say, I'm doing this because I want to take down Iran. He said, it's a bad deal. I'm looking for a better deal. I think we have a window of opportunity for Iran and the United States it's a bad deal i'm looking for a better deal i think we have a window of opportunity for iran and the united states to negotiate a better deal will uh the appetite that netanyahu has to destroy parts of iran whether it's their nuclear capability or their government or whatever he wants to destroy, is that exacerbated or will he dial it back?

I think that the United States can eliminate Iran's nuclear program through negotiations. Basically, what Trump would probably seek is a JCPOA without the sunset clauses. The sunset clauses are those clauses that um took iran from a a controlled environment that kept them one year away from a breakout a scenario where they could have nuclear weapons today they're literally three to five days from having a nuclear why should israel have nuclear weapons and not iran you know that's a that's a good question but that's a reality that uh complicates this uh you're not going to get israel to agree for a quid pro quo there you know there was a window of opportunity if uh if syria hadn't fallen and then yahoo was

in a political bind and he his government collapses it appears it was on the way too before this uh miracle um you know and then a new israeli government came in and uh they had to work towards a palestinian state under pressure from the world. There may have been an opportunity to get the normalization of relations between Israel and the rest of the Arab world for trading the Israeli nuclear program with the Iranian program, etc. But today, Israel is too strong of a position. They're going to get everything they want from the Arab world because the Arab world always caves. And they don't have to give this up. But what you can do is because it's a force of deterrence, by eliminating Iranian nuclear program, you can make the Israeli nuclear capability moot, meaning there's no reason for it to exist. and you can maybe try to deal with it at a later time. But I think right now what needs to happen is a new nuclear deal that permanently

puts in conditions that keep Iran from breaking out, you know, one year scenario. They don't get to, they don't get to, they have to, they're going to have to dismantle many of these centrifuges, allow very stringent inspections. I imagine to turn this into a treaty that's ratifiable before the U.S. Senate, that many of these inspectors will have to be American citizens, something the Iranians have said they won't accept. people. When Donald Trump was president, he not only changed the nuclear posture of the United States to one that embraced the concept of nuclear preemption, but he changed the employment plan specifically to adapt capabilities for a nuclear war against Iran. So we are locked, cocked, and ready to go for a nuclear war with Iran. And the president who made that part of our policy is coming back into power. And he has said, I'm taking out the Iranian nuclear

program. So if I'm an Iranian president, I have two choices. I can either ask the Supreme Leader to make the political decision that we become a nuclear power. And the second they announce that, American nuclear weapons will be raining down on Iran. We're not going to wait for day two. Not with this president. Not with Donald Trump. Or he can say, we can find a way to trade this nuclear capability for the best deal possible in terms of getting sanctions lifted, getting our economy back on track, et cetera. And I think most rational people would choose the second course of action.

Was the defeat of Syria, was the destruction of Syria a strategic defeat for Russia? I mean, it complicates Russia's position. But remember, Russia didn't go into Syria as part of imperial expansion ambitions. Russia's not the United States. They didn't invade Syria. They didn't occupy Syria. They were invited into Syria to stabilize a situation that threatened the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The Syrian government had been since Cold War times an ally of Russia, friends of Russia.

Relations had strained somewhat during the post-Cold War period, the 90s, etc. There was no Russian military at the moment. But when the forces of Islamic fundamentalism, including those who are in control of Baghdad today, threatened Damascus back in 2014, 2015, Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Quds Force, flew to Moscow and met with the Russians and said, you have to help us save Bashar al-Assad. It's in the strategic interests of the region for stability. And Russia concurred. They sent this limited expeditionary force who succeeded in their mission. But since then, you know, their mission, it can only be defined by that which the Syrian government will tolerate. And so their mission

continued to be to prop up, to defend, you know, the Syrian government. Indeed, when the HTS, the Turkish-backed al-Qaeda affiliates launched their offensive on November 27th, the Russian Air Force flew into action and launched very effective airstrikes. But after a while, it became apparent that the Syrian army just wasn't fighting, and there was no reason to continue supporting force flew into action and launched very effective airstrikes. But after a while, it became apparent that the Syrian army just wasn't fighting. And there was no reason to continue supporting that, which didn't want to be supported. So the Russians stopped. Now the question is, what legitimate purpose does the Russian presence have in Syria? Again, they didn't invade and occupy this. They don't want to be the unwelcomed guests of Syria. And it appears right now that that's what they've become. So Russia will withdraw, I believe, the totality

of their forces or leave a very small capability. And this diminishes their position. But again, their position was never that of where they were using Syria as a springboard for regional domination. It was therefore to engender stability in a regime that has now fallen. And so I don't think Russia loses too much from a strategic posture because the Russian forces in Syria weren't there to do anything other than protect Assad. What is there to stop Netanyahu from capturing as much Syrian territory as he wants? Nothing. Just Netanyahu. It's up to Israel to make a decision, you know, how far they want to, you know, they want to push this. Right now, they've got a strategic victory right now. It's a victory that nobody in Israel had predicted, I believe.

I think this took everybody by surprise. They weren't ready for the sudden collapse of Bashar al-Assad. And so there's a little bit of a vacuum in terms of policy. So they're making it up as they go along. And there's always a tendency to, you know, maybe bite off more than you should when the opportunity presents itself. But here, some restraint would be advised for Israel. Get a hold of those, you know, again, I'm not in favor of this, just the opposite. But if I were advising the Israelis, I'd say, pick those strategic points

that you think you need to have, Mount Hermon, some of the water basins, and establish your control over that. But don't go so far as to provoke a conflict with the new Syrian government, Jolani, the Turks, or anybody else. Don't overplay your hand. Does any portion of the old Syria remain for al-Jolani to be the head of the government of?

I mean, Damascus and the regions around it? Well, he controls Idlib. He controls Aleppo. He controls Hama, Homs, Damascus. You know, he controls the vast bulk of that which defines Syria. The Turks are moving on to Raqqa. Out west is, you know, is where the Americans are, or out east. There's some American presence in Al-Tanf that are there, but that's in relatively unpopulated desert territory. Jolani controls the vast majority of the population centers. He even controls Latakia, where it's the Alawite homeland of Bashar al-Assad. His forces basically control the vast majority of that which we call Syria. Fascinating conversation, Scotty. Thank you very much. I hope we can squeeze one more in before

Christmas, even though next week is a short week. But thanks very much for your time. All the best. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Coming up at three o'clock this afternoon, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.