Pod Save the World - What’s Next for Syria?

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

Tommy and Ben discuss the latest developments in Syria after the fall of the Assad regime, including the debate in Washington and European capitals about whether to talk with the new Syrian government, remove sanctions, or remove Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham’s terrorist designation. They also cover Trump’s trip to France and meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump’s loyalty test for those seeking national security jobs in his new administration, whether South Korea’s president will be impeached after declaring martial law, the collapse of the French government, a court order canceling Romania’s election results, and the corruption trials of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Then Ben speaks to Dareen Khalifa, Senior Advisor at the International Crisis Group, about what’s next for Syria and her insights into rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani.  For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

Welcome back to Pottae of the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, huge news this week. The Mets landed Juan Soto. Yes, we did. A steal at $765 million over 15 years? 15 years, yes. The largest contract in, I think, American professional sports history. Tell the people who Juan Soto is, I'm sure, 90% of our audience. So, Juan Soto, the best part about it is he was recently an outfielder for the New York Yankees. Yeah, they suck. Fuck them. He's young. He's in his mid-20s, but he's been around for a few years because he's

broken really early with the Washington Nationals won a World Series there. You know, five tool players, we like to say, can hit for power, can hit for average, can run, can field. The best part about this is we now have the owner that is spending all the money. It's a real shithead. And so the fact that we took this guy away from the Yankees. Insider trading. Well, you know what?

It's working for good now. He's putting that money to good use now. I heard his wife's the real driver behind the Mets organization. She really cares, like, is great to the players. They love her. The players love her. We're assembling a mini-Dominican national. team here. Juan Soto, Dominican, Francisco

Dindora, best player of Dominican. We've got other Dominican players that I think was part of the draw here. So the future is bright for the Mets. Bright, albeit expensive. And we could be regretting that conflict when Wonseil was in his 40s, you know? Yeah. But hey, that's Steve Cohen's money, not mine.

Yeah, Steve Kohn's money. Well, it's funny the thing about sports contracts generally is Patrick Mahomes signs his deal for, what was it, half a billion dollars. And everyone was like, that is the most eye-popping salary in history. And now everyone's like, man, that's a deal. Yeah. Mahomes had half a B.

Well, we signed Lindor to a 10-year contract a couple years ago. There was like $300-something million. And I was like, whoa, that's so much. This is like double that. Nuts. There's a, I mean, baseball is going to be looking at the salary cap, I think, because this is kind of wild. They got to do something. That's a lot of money.

And we won't talk about the Jets or the Patriots because we suck. We don't want to talk about it. Kind of like seeing Aaron Rogers, you know, flail into his Netflix. He's a whiny baby. We got a great show for you today. Long time no C since we did this on Sunday. We're going to cover the latest from Syria, including the debate in Washington

and a bunch of European capitals about how and when to engage with HTS and other Syrian rebel factions that now control the country. We're also going to talk about how the Western countries can support reconstruction efforts. We're also up to update you

on how Europe is treating Syrian refugees and their reaction to Assad's ouster from Russia. Then we'll check in with President Trump, his trip to Paris, his treatment of foreign leaders, and is transitioned team's loyalty test for national security staffers. Very fun. Finally, we're going to cover the

follow-out from South Korea's martial law declaration last week. I can't believe that was last week. The collapse of the French government, why Romania's election was nullified, and B.B. Netanyahu's legal troubles are been going on forever, but they're kind of just beginning. Yeah. But they're never going to end. No. So that's how it goes in the autocrat land. And then, Ben, you did our interview today. Who did you talk to? Yeah, it's great interview. I talked to Doreen Khalifa, who is the senior analyst on Syria for the International Crisis Group. She's been following Syria for many years living in the region. And we talked about just, you know, her feelings at watching this rapid transformation. But also, importantly, she has spoken several times to Al Jalani over the years, who's obviously the leading figure in HDS,

the leading figure in this rebel offensive. So we talked about what she learned in her conversations with Jalani, how to think about HTS, how much they plan for this transition. transition, how they might interact with all these other factions in Syria, what the current countries bombing Syria are up to, that's the United States, Israel, and Turkey, and how the international community can better support Syria than stopping it. Yes. And we talked about this question of the U.S. policy around designations, which we'll get into as well.

So it's a really fascinating conversation from someone who literally knows, I mean, spent, you know, hours and hours and hours with Jolani. She spoke to Jolani as recently as when he was a very interesting as when he was a very interesting. in a lot about, so she's up to date. Like, we'll get to this later. It does show you how kind of dumb U.S. policy approaches can be at times. Not talking to people. You have these outside experts who have spent dozens, tens of hours with now the leader of Syria.

It seems like that'd be valuable. Yeah, she's like, I had a really interesting four-hour meal with the guy, you know, learned a lot about him. Yeah. You can learn by talking to people. The frontline doc I talked to you guys about on Sunday, that reporter spent seven days in Idlib, including a bunch of time with Jolani. Yeah. I imagine that was pretty valuable.

Joloni's pretty savvy to do it. Imagine you learn more actually going to the living and talking to people than trying to to intercept a few phone calls and, you know, deciphering what was said. Paying off a few people who tell us stuff that we want to hear. Okay, well, so hopefully listeners checked out the bonus episode we released on Sunday because that's going to get into the back story of sort of how these rebels capture the country in less than two weeks and forced Bashar al-Assad to flee to Moscow. We're not going to recap all of that there.

because there's a lot more to cover, but a lot has happened since Sunday. So HTS, this main rebel group leading the fight, they made a flurry of announcements. Those include the formation of an interim government in Syria, led by an HTS leader named Mohammed al-Bashir, who's going to serve as the interim prime minister until March 1st. Bashir was the government in exile leader in northwest Syria for the last few years. They announced a general amnesty for former members at the military who were conscripted to fight for Assad. and HTS said they won't interfere with how women look or dress. On Sunday, there were all these rebel groups looking for Syrian prisons and prisoners.

They freed countless people. There's incredibly moving videos of people getting released. There was a story in the Guardian, Ben, of a man who had been held since 1982. His crime was refusing to bomb the Syrian city of Hama during an uprising in the 1980s under the previous Assad regime. Unbelievable. Guys in there for 40 years. Yeah, I mean, they clearly just threw people away and, you know, just forgot about them.

Just rotting these prisons. And no plans to ever really seize people. Yeah, it's just awful. But, I mean, I think there were some hopes that, you know, there's all these reports on Twitter of like another level to the prison or secret cells in a different part of the prison where there might be more people. I think a lot of those hopes have dissipated. And it seems like the majority of people who had been, you know, quote unquote, disappeared by the Assad regime were unfortunately murdered. Syrians also broke into Assad's palace. they found exactly what you'd expect,

like garage after a garage full of Ferraris and luxury cars. I don't know if you saw this. Clarissa Ward was doing a live report from the garage of the car in front of like an Asin Martin and a Ferrari. Lamborgini's Ferraris.

Yeah. Clarissa, you know, who's been covering Siri for a long time and she and I have talked about Syria a lot over the years like she's earned this, you know, moments to be in Damascus as much as anybody, any Western reporter at least. Yeah, she was doing a live report

in the square in Damascus interviewing this 25-year-old woman about just like this ecstatic moment of freedom for these people. We also spoke with a man named Abdul Karim Akzayez, who's the co-founder of the Syrian Development Center about what he is hearing from contacts in Syria

about these first few days under HTS. Here's a clip. The practices by the opposition fighters have shown a lot of promises. They were really giving a lot of reassurances for minorities, for all people, from all ethnicities, religions, sectors. And we've been talking to people in Aleppo, in Damascus.

People feel really happy. They described that the way the opposition fighters were treating with them with respect, with dignity, and felt that even people who were living under Assad, even people who were supporting Assad, now feel that Syria is starting a new phase, a phase that can bring hope and optimism to all of its citizens. One of the concern that I have and many people in Syria have is the situation in northeast of Syria with the self-administration.

I wish that there will be some sort of negotiations, some openness from the abortion side and from the Kurdish side to open negotiations to agree on an inclusive government that will make sure the rights of all citizens of Syria, regardless of their ethnicities, religions or sectors. So we hope that this will be the future of Syria that will attract all the diaspora, all the expertise to go back to rebuild their country again. So, Ben, the big question in Washington and capitals in Europe is how to deal with HDS. As we discussed Sunday, HDS has its roots in terrorist organizations, including ISIS and al-Qaeda. The U.S. has designated HDS as a terrorist group. I believe the U.K. has as well. I'm not sure about the EU. But now Biden, you know, the U.K., EU leaders, they have to do.

decide whether to lift terrorism designations and generally sanctions on Syria and how to talk to them or not. Tony Blankin, the Secretary of State, could lift the terrorist organization designation at any time. The Associated Press reported that Biden is still, unquote, wait and C mode regarding the designation, but they pointed out that U.S. officials can speak with HDS regardless. Of course, it creates problems for everybody else. What do you think the right move is here? Like, how would you be recommending that President Biden and then Trump approach this? Well, first of all, I just want to say, you know, Karim, as someone I talked to in the past, and he's the kind of guy that, you know, he was a doctor in Northwest Syria treating kids wounded by barrel bombs, right? So it's just a reminder of how people are in this kind of new moment of hopefulness.

And that leads to your question. I would lift the designation. I'm not going to be, you know, I'm not going to tiptoe around this. And, you know, I talk about this a bit more in the interview, but the reality is here's the practical effect of that designation. If HDS, which is governing Syria right now, I mean, they're the main driver in this transitional governing process, if they're designated as terrorists, nobody can deal with them without violating that designation. And so humanitarian assistance can't get into the people in Syria because it would have to pass

through the hands of people that are designated. At the same time, by the way, the government is sanctioned, you know, so if you, you know, the rump of the Assad government is full of sanctions. sanction people and the opposition is full as designated people. And therefore, U.S., as usual, U.S. sanctions and designations will literally prevent all the things that everybody is saying need to happen. You know, humanitarian assistance, getting refugees back in, starting dialogues, you know, and so what are we waiting for? HTS has said all the right things. I'm not suggesting that there aren't extremist elements that have to be dealt with, but why not lift these designations, but say,

if we see any of this behavior, this stuff can be reimposed immediately. So it's not like you lose the capacity to do it again. And so instead of it saying, we're going to keep all these restrictions in place and you have to kind of earn your way out of this in an incredibly difficult environment, why not say we're lifting this,

but we'll come down on you like a ton of bricks if we see anything that we don't like. That's what I do, because otherwise the U.S. is actually going to be obstructing a transition instead of helping to support it. Yeah, and what's weird is, So on Monday, an EU spokesman said it won't engage with HDS, quote, full stop, which just seems crazy to me.

But meanwhile, Aaron Zelen, who's a scholar who studied HTS, tweeted that the HTS political affairs department met with ambassadors from Iraq, Bahrain, Oman, Egypt, UA, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Italy and Damascus today. So half the world is moving on and just recognizing these guys. I'm not sure what the point is of anyone else waiting. And again, this may be just lip service at their pen. but they're saying all the right things right now. And we can see with cameras on the ground that they're not killing minorities and Damascus.

And if we don't allow people a chance to, you know, rehabilitate themselves, then we're going to give them no option but to be more extremist or to turn to governments that we don't like for support. So I just think this is one of those things where we have to get out of our own way. Yeah, and look, I know what the counterargument will be. It will be like this guy was an ISIS, you know, these leaders. were in al-Qaeda. People also point out that, you know, there was a time when everyone was hopeful about Bashar al-Assad

and viewed him as maybe a reformer, and he was getting welcomed in London and in capitals by heads of state, and he turned out to be the worst butcher in modern history. But I still am with you. I think we should move, err on the side of moving too fast when it comes to sanctions relief, air on the side of moving too fast

when it comes to removing the foreign terrorist organization, in part because we could slow down everyone else, who are worried about getting sanctioned if they're working with HTS. And like this is this reconstruction project in Syria is generational. You know what I mean? And if NGOs, companies, other governments have to worry about getting punished by the U.S. just for having conversations, that's a huge problem. And at a minimum, I mean, the Biden administration should be figuring out a high level contact

with HTS immediately. Like Bill Burns should be on a plane to Damascus tomorrow if it's safe enough. And look, Joe Biden is. Unencumbered by politics. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, like, this is not a problem. It's not running for office again. No, probably not.

And also, my messaging would be, yeah, we're moving fast in Syria because we're going to ice out Russia and Iran and make sure that they lose their foothold in Syria. And also, we want to create the conditions. So there's not another civil war and that people can return home from these European capitals or they're refugees. So it just seems like a no brain. Well, that's a good example. So you heard Kareem say he's worried about northeast Syria.

what he's worried about is the Kurdish forces who are backed by the United States. Apparently, we're giving them intelligence the last two weeks, too, to take more territory. Yeah, and now they're feeling very vulnerable because the Turks are coming after them. You know, they don't have a good relationship with HDS to say the least.

Wouldn't we want to be in there trying to negotiate, so instead of it being a civil war, where everybody's attacking the Kurds we've supported that we can at least try to broker some discussions between the Kurds and HTS and the Turks and, you know, the longer we wait on this kind of stuff, the harder it is to do that. So again, you can say if you do X, Y, and Z, you're back on the list and all this stuff goes in place immediately. But otherwise, what are we waiting to see here?

I agree. And like the Turks are really like, they're the kind of biggest player here in my view. I mean, they have a shared border. They have this huge Syrian refugee population. They're worried about Kurdish control of the SDF who they view as a terrorist organization and a threat. So it's going to be critical to keep Erdogan on sides. But, you know, Ben, more broadly in Europe, I mean, on Sunday we talked about how all these European countries took in a lot of Syrian refugees and how they might respond. Unfortunately, it got ugly very fast. There was a great report on this in Politico.

So Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, and the Netherlands and the UK all said they would halt Syrian asylum applications. In Germany, that means freezing 47,000 application. Greece is freezing 9,000, Belgium, 3,000. Austria is going even first. The Interior Minister said, quote, I've instructed the ministry to prepare an orderly return and deportation program to Syria. So it sounds like Austria wants to expel some or all of the 100,000 Syrians currently living there. Germany is currently hosting about 800,000 Syrian refugees. Some members of Germany's CDU party are talking about returning them home. And remember, the CDU is Angela Merkel's party. It's not the AFD, the far right, the neo-Nazis. I guess there's a slightly helpful sign, which as Politico said, Germany, Austria, Turkey and Jordan. We're talking about a reconstruction and return conference in the spring. Hopefully that means like ponying up real money. But it's kind of not kind of troubling. It's very troubling to see these countries moving to push refugees out when there's still

like airstrikes happening and there's no government and there's, you know, potential for chaos. And you designate the government as terrorists. So you were deporting them back to a place where you say the government, you know, this shows the inconsistency in the policy. Yeah. And look, the truth is, I mean, a few months ago, Italy, was leading the charge to normalize relations with Syria to send back refugees to the Assad government, which was like indefensible and evil knowing what we knew then and even more disgusting, knowing what we know now. But I mean, I don't know.

Normally I would ask the question it would be, what can the U.S. do to kind of slow down these European governments, but Donald Trump's not going to do that. He's not going to do anything. But I think it's to channel it where you discussed in the spring, if there's a process by which Europe is helping to pay for reconstruction and helping to facilitate the return of people safely, is engaging the new government, which again, I want to be clear. It's not going to just be HDS. And HDS has said they want to dissolve and kind of meld into the new government, but you want to help that process succeed as best you can to create the most orderly process to return refugees.

And to be clear, this is self-interested, because if this gets fucked up, if the transition gets derailed, if the country goes back in the Civil War, well, guess what? what? There are going to be more refugees to Europe, and those people aren't going to go home. So even from just to self-interested, we want to have less Syrians living in Europe mindset of some of these countries. The way to effectuate that is actually to help the transition succeed. Yeah. One interesting note on why I think a lot of countries were so happy to see Assad go. I don't think we've ever talked about Capdagon on the show. It's this, it's a drug. It's a great New York article. Yeah, there's a great article in this. Basically, this is an amphetamine-like drug. It was developed to treat ADD, narcolepsy and all these things in the 60s. it's highly addictive. And it's, you know, the Syrians, uh, once they were sanctioned after the Civil War started, they were cut off from the international system. The Syrian government turned to Capdagon production and trafficking for revenue. Apparently this was run by a branch of the military controlled by Assad's brother and they worked directly with Hezbollah on the export, uh, in production and trafficking of these drugs. And basically it flooded all these Gulf countries and got a bunch of people in

Saudi Arabia in particular, addicted, and they were furious at Assad for doing nothing to stop it. So another reason they were happy to be like, all right, buddy, get out of here. Yeah, I mean, he was a big chunk of state revenue was basically amphetamine smuggling across the Jordanian border into the Gulf and Europe. And it's a wild story. There's a very good New York article that speaks to just kind of how by the end the Assad regime was just kind of totally corrupt cartel, essentially. Yeah.

They're trafficking in drugs. They're trafficking in guns. they're buying Lamborghinis, they've got torture chambers. I mean, this is about as dark as it goes. Yeah, truly evil. So the Russians are scrambling to figure out what to do here. They're trying to build relations with the rebels

to preserve their naval port and their air base in Syria. They're also trying to guarantee the safety of their military and diplomatic personnel who are still in the country. It's going to be fascinating to see if E. HDS will let the Russians stay in Syria. It seems challenging, given that the Russians were bombing the shit out of these guys for nearly a decade.

but strange. And as recently is like a week ago. Yeah, right, right, yes. But the Guardian noted that Russian state media softened its tone on HTS already. They went from referring to them as terrorists to the, quote, armed opposition. The story also noted that Iran's embassy was basically ransacked and looted, but the Russian post haven't been touched. So different treatment. The Russian media is also just deriding Assad.

They're calling him a wimp and a loser and a fail son. And that part's great. A couple days ago, though, Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, was in Doha, he was doing the Doha Forum or whatever this cluster fuck event is. He got peppered with questions about Syria during this live interview he did with Al Jazeera. Here's a clip. It is not our fault that the biggest trend of the modern world, namely the fight against those who want to keep hegemony. And on the other hand, those who would like to live in a free world.

The fight of these two worlds, one. phasing out and another one emerging is not going without clashes. And the Middle East and Europe is not enough already. The NATO under the United States command pronounced last year at the summit that the security in Euro-Atlantic is indivisible from the security in Indo-Pacific region. They are creating NATO-like military blocks. NATO infrastructure is being promoted. to the region, this is a reflection of attempts not to allow the hegemony to face out.

But this is a fight against history. Sort of interesting how he views losing their puppet regime in Syria as an attack on U.S. hegemony, but an interesting glimpse into their broader worldview. It's everything is, everything can be shoved under the same big umbrella, which is everything we do is justified because we're combating American hegemony. and thinking maybe that Al Jazeera's audience will, you know, you'll find some sympathy there. But the reality is we shouldn't at all whitewash how many people Russia killed in Syria. You know, they bombed completely indiscriminately places like Aleppo.

They were bombing these rebel forces, again, a few days ago. The reality is that they've always had this presence in Syria. I think some people, again, a lot of people became Syria experts, circa, you know, 20 teens. them, including me, you know, to be honest here. But the reality is that they've had those, they've had presence, enable presence in those bases before the Civil War, you know. And it's their main platform in the eastern Mediterranean in that part of the world. And so they'll want to keep it.

This is going to be pretty awkward because you can tell that the incoming crowd and the opposition in Syria kind of doesn't want to pick big fights right now. You know, we'll talk about Israel. well, you know, Russia, they're not really, you know, they didn't, they didn't pull their personnel out of the embassy in Moscow. It's the same people there. I think that they want to kind of keep things from posing any existential threat to their transition for the time being. And so they may not mess with these Russian bases right away. But at a minimum, it's, you know, it's awkward. You know, to, I mean, in the same way, I guess that Guantanamo is awkward. The U.S. has a base in Cuba. because I think I've talked to Syrians over the years.

These Russian facilities kind of became seen almost as a form of colonization. You know, you had to speak Russian in certain areas. The Russians kind of acted like colonizers. They were kind of dicks in the communities where they lived. So there's probably a lot of resentment built up. And this is something that is going to be tricky. But at a minimum, Russia has less influence because they don't have a puppet. Yeah, there can be a real awkward.

kind of group therapy session led by HTS. You know, you got the Americans. You're like, really sorry, we imprisoned you for five years in Iraq. Yeah. And the Russians being like, we're sorry, we bombed, itlib for a decade. You get the Iranians who invested, there's a Carnegie report that Iran invested 30 to 50 billion dollars in Syria over the past 13 years. And they just lost a whole bunch of influence there. So, I don't know.

Better help? Yeah. They'll be talking to some of the other countries, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Well, more to come on this one. All right, Ben, so this is going to be Trump's, you know, policy problem soon. So let's talk about the latest news from him.

The first is the dumb thing. So a week ago, we talked about Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau going down to Mar-a-Lago to have dinner with Trump to talk about the tariff threat, see if he could work something out. On Monday, Trump showed his appreciation for Trudeau's visit by tweeting the following, quote, Governor Justin Trudeau of the great state of Canada, blah, blah, blah. Thank you for coming. So I guess he really likes that joke. America's hat kind of joke. Yeah.

I mean, it'd be interesting to be Canadian and, you know, how does that feel to be... I wonder how that plays up there. Probably not good. Probably not great. But, I mean, we've said this before, but we're going to keep saying it. The charm thing doesn't work with Trump. It just doesn't. And it doesn't, you know, I'm not blaming Trudeau for going to Mar-a-Lago, but this idea

that you can kind of, if you're nice to him and stroke his ego, he'll be, you'll pat you on the head and won't mess with you, is not borne out by anything we've ever. seen about Trump. If you're the leader of a democracy, Trump pretty much is not going to like you, you know, unless you're like a strongman leader, like a Maloney maybe in Italy. Or Modi, yeah. Or Modi or an Orban, right, a kind of soft autocrat. And that's what I see here, you know. I mean, and it's still maybe worth going out of Marilago just so you can talk about the tariffs. So I don't begrudge Trudeau doing that, but nobody's going to charm Trump out of being an asshole. No, and he also probably views him as liberal and weak politically.

Trump's basically just acting as president. You know, Biden is kind of a non-factor at this point. So Trump went to Paris for the reopening of Notre Dame five years after a fire destroyed it. There's a smart move, I think, by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to invite him. While there, Trump and Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky met for about 30 minutes in a meeting broker by Macron. Zelensky described the meeting as good and productive. He also said, quote, I stated that, We need a just and enduring peace, one that the Russians will not be able to destroy in a few years,

as they've done repeatedly in the past, end quote. Here's a little flavor from Trump's comments while he was in France. We had a great relationship, as everyone knows. We've accomplished a lot together. And the people of France are spectacular. I guess it's one of our largest groups in the United States, French people. And we respect them and we love them, very talented people, extremely energetic people. as you know very well.

Yeah. And it's an honor to be here. We had a good time together, and we had a lot of, a lot of success, really great success working together on defense and offense, too. And it certainly seemed like the world is going a little crazy right now, and we'll be talking about that. It's the most banal observations, energetic friendship. What are these successes, too?

I don't know about forgetting him, but what were the major breakthroughs in U.S. as well as offense? Yeah. He describes the French people as if, I don't know, they're like a high school team. Yeah. They're energetic. Good-looking people. Coach like the JV team that is high school. Anyway, so the Zelensky thing piece was Blisdigger. Like Trump ran on a promise to end the war in 24 hours. Trump did not make a statement after the meeting, but on Sunday he truth the following. Quote, Zelensky and Ukraine would like to make a deal and stop the madness. They have ridiculously lost 400,000 soldiers and many more civilians. There should be an immediate ceasefire negotiations should begin.

Too many lives are being needlessly wasted. Too many families destroyed. And if it keeps going, it can turn into something much bigger and far worse. I know Vladimir, well, this is his time to act. China can help. The world is waiting. Zelensky, you know, I guess a response to that post put out the number of casualties in Ukraine. He said it was around 43,000.

That is way lower than most people estimate. But, you know, look, who knows what he's going to do in Ukraine? I do reading all this made me remember back to 2016, Ben, when everyone was up in arms about the Logan Act and like unauthorized diplomatic negotiations. Doesn't seem like a problem anymore. Yeah, we've never seen a lamer duck or a more, you know, president and waiting president-elect. I mean, everybody's going to see Trump or inviting Trump or calling Trump or talking to people around Trump. I mean, you can already feel the world moving very quickly in the direction of a Trump presidency. I think negotiations even in the Middle East are all in anticipation of Trump coming in.

Look, again, I'll repeat. I don't think, you know, it's not that Macron is charming Trump. I'm sure that's part of it. But what's smart about that is just getting him in the room early with Zelensky. And Macron's been, you know, one of the leading supporters of Ukraine and Europe. he wants to get Trump there, make sure that he's hearing kind of the Ukrainian view of things, kind of as validated by Macron. But you don't know, again, how is that interacting with Donald Trump's brain and his plans?

When you look at that truth, I can't believe I just said that. I know, I hate calling the truth. When you look at that post, how about that, you know, it's not a crazy thing that he said. No. But the problem with it is it's very wishful. Sure, I would like. you know, Putin, you know, Vladimir, you know, he says he knows well. I don't, you know, he had a couple of meetings of them, but put that aside. That doesn't mean Putin's going to all of a sudden do what Trump wants. It doesn't mean that China's all the sudden going to get involved. I mean, we'd like, I'd like all those things that Trump said to happen in terms of like Vladimir listening to reason and China getting involved to try to push for the end of the war. But what we're going to learn after January 20th is how much that actually matters, you know, does, do these people, do these people,

care what you know Zelensky's not going to make concessions he doesn't want Putin's not going to make concessions he doesn't want just because Trump wants to have a win of some sort so we'll see how this looks in practice yeah there was a weird moment too in the meet the press interview where Kristen Walker is kind of pushing on Trump as to whether he had spoken to Putin since the election it sounds like he has yeah but he wouldn't talk about it but you got I'm almost certain yeah I mean wouldn't you be shocked if you hadn't I would be shocked yeah but you know the rubber is about to meet the road it's easy to promise you're down the war it's a lot

And it's harder than this stuff was not going on in 2017. I mean, and again, even if we give Trump the benefit of the doubt, in 2017, you know, he inherited the biggest thing that was going on was a counter-Isis campaign, which is already very much in train and happening, despite what he says. He's now inheriting this shit show in the Middle East, like unimaginable suffering in Gaza, an active war in Ukraine. Like, we've not seen Donald Trump govern in circumstances like this. So we'll see how it goes. To full inbox. Don't worry, though. We've got a great team coming in, Ben.

The New York Times reported that the Trump transition team is giving a loyalty test to people applying for national security jobs. So anyone wants to work at the Pentagon or at an intelligence agency is getting asked questions about who they supported in the election, whether they think the 2020 election was stolen and how they viewed January 6th. Among the interviewers are podcaster Charlie Kirk from TPP USA, friend of the pod and future FBI. director Cash Patel. We love you, Cash. And D&I nominee slash friend of Assad, Tulsi Gabbard. It's a dream blunt rotation right there. So one very well- Probably one that may have taken place, too. Yeah, could you imagine? I don't know. Maybe not Charlie Kirk. Tulsi's just high on life. Maybe that's a very, very loyal Trump flunky that has not gotten a job is friend of the show, Rick Grinnell. Grinnell, as listeners might know, he's a professional Twitter troll who became ambassador to Germany,

Special Envoy to Serbia, and then later, I think he was briefly the acting director of national intelligence. According to a report in Politico, Grinnell was so thirsty to be Secretary of State that people around him were offering to pay MAGA influencer types, money to promote him on social media, up to five figures. But as we know, Marco Rubio got the job. Someone close to the transition told Politico, I think there were a lot of questions about whether Rick was diplomatic enough to be Secretary of State. Yeah, you didn't need an FBI background check for that. We needed to follow him on Twitter. Never fear been. Grinnell apparently is a hotel deal with Jared Kushner to build hotels in Serbia that I'm sure will make them all very, very rich. But loyalty tests, that's troubling.

Yes, loyalty tests are bad. And it basically... I bet a side of the loyalty test. Well, that's the thing is it indicates that these people are not going to work for the United States government. And these are people that are running agencies that regulate or that have contracts or that run covert operations. With the intelligence community? Yeah, or that run investigations.

Do you have to confirm that an election was won by someone who didn't win it when you're going to be leading the IC is crazy? And you're not loyal to the United States. You're loyal to Donald Trump, right? And every now and then we're allowed to do this. So I'm just going to do it now. I mean, what if we, Barack Obama or Joe Biden, for that matter,

if it had gotten out in the right-wing press, that Barack Obama or Joe Biden were having loyalty test. Like Fox News would have literally imploded. They would have shut down. What would the test have been? Well, the panel that you described, I guess it would be in the Obama years, it would have been like Reverend Wright. Right.

Memorize a Solowinsky novel. The panel of people interviewing for jobs would have been like Jeremiah Wright and Tony Rescoe. And anyway, put that aside. But it's crazy. And it just shows you that this is a hostile takeover. And again, they have every right to come in and put their own people in certain jobs and try to disrupt things. but loyalty test, I mean, I don't know how many more autocracy signs.

I know we're not, you know, we're debating how much to talk about fascism and things like that. But we've never lived in a country before where people were hired for leading national security positions on the basis of loyalty test. Rick Grinnell, I will say, probably not dumb in the sense that he didn't get the job he wanted to Secretary of State. Sounds like he turned down DNI. Yeah, so he can stay out of government. Probably get fabulously wealthy through corruption with, you know, business. and deals with Jared in the coming months. And you know what?

Like not a pretty non-zero chance that Marco Rubio doesn't serve out four years, you know? So I'm sure Grinnell's just thinking, I'm going to be the next in line. And if you remember even the first Trump term, the appointment's got weirder and weirder as I went. So he may still, you know, be coming back at that job at some point. Yeah, the Trump named a deputy secretary of state

who seemed like a kind of a normie interesting person. Yeah, there's some normies littered throughout this team. Christopher Landau was ambassador to Mexico from 2019 to 2021. So sort of an interesting pick. But I agree with you on Grinnell. I mean, wasn't Grinnell, weren't they going to build a hotel on the site of the former Yugoslav Ministry of Defense that NATO bombed? Wasn't there like a public apology component in a museum that got West Clark all pissed off, understandably? Yeah, yes.

But never miss a good real estate opportunity when you see one, you know. Incredible. It's incredible that these things are happening. Someone needs to just make sure we're cataloging all of them, so we don't miss them. We're going to take a quick break, Ben, before. If you listen to Empire City, it's the untold Orson story, the NYPD. I hear it's like an award-winning effort. It is.

I have listened to the, yeah, it's very good. I learned a lot as a New Yorker. Chandra, the host, is fantastic. Now is the perfect time to start it. Look, don't take my word for it. No. Both the New York Times and the New Yorker had it on their best podcast of 20. 24 lists.

Really? Yeah, Empire City. It's crushing in the reviews. Tons of people are listening. Don't miss out. You'll have FOMO. Empire City, the untold story of the NYPD. You can listen to the series now, wherever you get your podcasts, or binge it ad free on

Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Speaking of incredible events, so last week, we led this show with South Korea. It was only a week ago. It was like a six-hour martial law. Six-hour coup in South Korea. So South Korean president, Yun-Suk-Yul. this short-lived declaration of martial law. The apparent self-coup attempts, because he was in charge at the time, it was very short-lived. It lasted six hours before the Korean National

Assembly voted it down. But this image of these soldiers in the street pointing their guns at Korean citizens scared the shit of everybody. And I think the president's approval rating dropped eight points down to 17 percent. So he's not doing so good. So the immediate question was, after this all went down, when is this guy going to get impeached? And it turns out, the answer is a little more complicated than you would have thought, or I guess anyone outside of America thought, because we know there's no accountability for armed instructions and coups. But here's how the impeachment process works in South Korea. So they have 300 seats in South Korea's National Assembly. You need a vote from two-thirds of them or 200 votes to impeach. There's

192 seats currently held by the opposition and its allies. So they need basically eight votes from the PPP, which is Yun's party that seemed doable after PPP leaders said publicly. that, you know, the president had to go. But on Saturday, PPP members boycotted the first impeachment vote and it did not pass. That said, it does seem like EUNS days are numbered and maybe his party just wanted more time to get its act together. So if the vote does happen, they get the 200 votes. Then it goes to a constitutional court. The court has up to 180 days to decide whether to uphold the National Assembly vote. And you need six out of nine judges to vote for removal. But there are currently three vacancies on the nine member.

court. So there's only six sitting judges. You need all of them. And three of them were put there by President Yun. So that's a fun little wrinkle. But if he is removed, then Korea holds new elections in 60 days, where it seems likely that the more progressive party will win. And then beyond impeachment, it seems like Yun is in deep shit. The leader of the special forces unit that was sent to the National Assembly during the martial law declaration said his troops were told to prevent lawmakers is from gathering so they couldn't vote the martial law declaration down, which I'm no Korean constitutional expert, but that seems pretty coup-like to me. And in the meantime, he can't leave the country. The president can't leave the country until this is all figured out. So to help

us understand what this all means for South Korea is another clip from our friend Danny Russell, who served as Assistant Secretary of State for Asian Affairs in the Obama administration and is now vice president for international security and diplomacy at the Asia Society Policy Institute. Here's a clip. We're talking high stakes for Korea. We're talking high stakes for the region and for the U.S. also. South Korea is a critical player in maintaining regional security. It's a linchpin in U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy.

Disfunction in Seoul equals temptation for North Korea. And it complicates alliance cooperation on everything from missile defense to trade and tech. So the bottom line is this, that the U.S.-Korea alliance is solid. Korean institutions have proved that they are resilient, so we will eventually see stability return to South Korea, but I think only after a pretty bruising process that leaves some damage behind. It's an uncomfortable reminder that even in solid democracies, intense partisanship and bad judgment can spiral into a really damaging crisis.

Feel that one. Yes. What do you make to the U.S. response to all of this? It was, I mean, we seemed rather surprised, understandably, but. Yeah. Haven't we nominated him for like a Nobel Peace Prize or something, too? I believe you might have been recommended by someone. But I, the U.S. has been pretty quiet.

But I'm sure that there's actually a lot of conversation happening behind the scenes. and, you know, we have a huge military presence there. You know, I would hope our military is talking to their military, but like, what the hell just happened? You know, there are a couple concerning things following the story. You know, there were some reports that Ewan and his desire to do this martial law might have even been trying to kind of provoke some incident with North Korea, right? Because remember, one of the ways you can declare martial laws that there's some national security threat. And he was almost trying to gin one up, you know, and he said in his justification there's North Korean elements, but that's scary that this guy might have actually wanted some kind of back and forth to North Korea as a basis for that.

That implicates the U.S. a lot because we come to their aid. So that should give us real concerns about U.N. Because if we have a security guarantee for this country and this guy's so thirsty for martial law that he might precipitate a war with North Korea, that's bad. I think going forward to Danny's point in drawing on our own lesson, right? Let's draw on the lesson of all the things that we've gotten wrong in this country the last four years. years. Yes, the institutions held that was impressive, but there needs to be accountability. There needs to be, who was who knew about this plan? Like, what was the, was the military involved in it or not? You know, you should be impeached. There should be a punishment.

Probably go to jail. Yeah, because, again, someone will write the long arc of the Trump years, but the inability to hold Donald Trump accountable after January 6th, waiting, what, two and a half years to point of, I still don't understand why that happened, you know, either you're going to do it or you're not. So they need to move forward. And yes, there needs to be, you know, some form of reconciliation, but only with accountability attached to it or else you're kind of normalizing that you can kind of do these things and people may be mad at you, but, you know, you can kind of just keep chugging along here. So the People Power Party, ironically named People Power Party for Yun, you know, you'd like to see him impeached an election and then take a drubbing.

And then people who are involved in this held accountable in various ways within the boundaries of the law, obviously, but the law says you shouldn't declare military coups. So we'll see what happens. But for the U.S., you're right. I mean, we're not very visible, but we have a huge interest in this not being an unstable situation given North Korea, given the geopolitical dynamic, given the importance of South Korea. So you'd like to think that we're leaning in here to help that process along. Yeah, we've got a lot of troops in South Korea, a lot of chips kind of pushed into the table

on the Korea-Japan alliance and a scary, scary moment. Yeah. Not one you want to see. All right, Ben, let's go back to France because while Notre Dame has risen from the ashes, the French government has been going down in flames. Oh, good line. Thank you for that, Michael. Back in September, President Emilio Macron appointed Michel Barnier,

this sort of like center-right politician, elder statesman type, and former EU-Brexit negotiator as his prime minister. His appointment pissed off the leftist coalition, who won the most seats in the summer's snap election. It also, you know, made the far-right party wary, the national rally Marine Le Pen party on edge. They said the Barnier would be under surveillance. So Barnier's top priority from day one was getting a budget done.

he needed to try to reduce the deficit with the goal of meeting or trying to meet the EU's requirements. France's deficit is projected to be 6.1% of GDP, which is over twice the EU limit. But long story short, the budget and the manner in which he tried to force it through united the far left and the far right against him. And Barnier in his cabinet lost a no confidence vote very badly. 331 MPs voted against him, which was 43 more than necessary. That must have hurt. With that vote, Barnier becomes the shortest serving prime minister in modern France and the first to be kicked out of office in more than 60 years. Macron was quite pissed. He was very petulant about all this. He said he's going to name a new PM soon. Barnier stays in place with limited

powers as caretaker. I think he has no budgetary authority, but he's kind of there to make the trains run. Macron is very screwed here, though, because he cannot call another parliamentary election until a year after the previous snap election he called in July. So we can't change the political dynamic. He can only just try to find somebody to name that might get approved by the far left and the far right, but that seems difficult. Meanwhile, the French economy is in deep shit. The growth rate is close to zero. Their debt has exploded thanks to COVID spending and the cost of government energy subsidies to manage the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the spike in cost there. The only silver lining for France is that Marine Le Pen from the far-right party, National Rally Party.

She's on trial for embezzling EU funds, and she could face jail time and be banned from running for office for five years. So she would miss the 27 presidential election. But this couldn't be a bigger mess for Macron. So first of all, there's a bit of an original sin here, which we talked about at the time, which is Macron relied on the left to beat back the far right in those parliamentary elections. And then he totally screwed them. in the government formation.

And we said at the time that that was going to make this less sustainable. And I'm not suggesting would have been easy, but perhaps if he had chosen a prime minister that from the get was more acceptable to the left, he wouldn't have lost their confidence

this fast. I mean, that's what under the bridge now, but I mean, that's kind of what happened. You know, he, the far right didn't lose those parliamentary elections because people like Macron. They lost because the left decided to make this tactical line to the center.

And then Macron told them, you know, basically you get nothing in return, and here we are. Having read about this, having actually talked to a couple of French friends, I'm where you're, there's no clear way out of this. I mean, they basically have no government, can't pass a budget, things are shitty, Macron's heading into, you know, he's a lame duck. So there's going to be a bit of political paralysis in France, and you hope that that doesn't just kind of fuel extremes, but that's usually what does happen.

So yeah, it's concerning. And there's not a kind of clear way through this. I think people are going to start to position themselves too for the next presidential election. Because in France, that's the big reward, right? So all these parties have more incentive to kind of be on the outside, throwing rocks in and planning to run for president than they do kind of trying to make the National Assembly work for the next two years from Macron. So I'd expect a lot of volatility in Europe because France is a mess. Germany has elections coming up, you know. So this is, this is a, at a time when, what did Trump tell Macron, there's a lot of,

a lot of energy, weird stuff happening in the world or something like Europe is not sending their best. No, they're not. Ben, you want uncertainty. Let's talk about Romania. Yes. This past Sunday, citizens of Romania were supposed to vote in a runoff election for president. So this was two weeks after everyone was shocked by the first round result, where a relatively unknown far-right. nationalist candidate named Kaleen Georgescu came out in the lead and the first vote.

But on Sunday, Romania's top constitutional court canceled the second round vote and ruled that an entirely new election needed to be held. This all happened because Romanian intelligence services declassified documents that showed Georgescu's campaign had outside help from a state actor, which everyone thinks was the Russians. They found there were 25,000 sleeper sell social media accounts that just like burst into action two weeks before the election to promote Georgescu, leading him to get, or I assume helping him in part to get tens of millions of views. The European Commission even ordered TikTok to preserve all of its data on the election. This decision, I think the establishment types are okay with it,

but the liberals in the far right, I think understandably view this is a trampling on democracy. It's not clear yet when a new election will be held most likely in the spring of 2025. I'm struggling with this one. Obviously, I don't want the Russians interfere. elections, but I don't know. This seems to have been kind of undemocratic and made everybody mad. It's odd. I mean, this is how a deep state should function time. Yeah, this is an effective fucking deep state. This is how you deep state. This is how you fucking deep state. Is Sally Yates running the constitution? Yeah, where's cash withel on this one? No, in all seriousness, this is a interesting one because this guy is a kook and a right wing nut job and a per Russian guy. And the

Russians have gotten more and more aggressive. I don't know. I mean, I, they clearly could have handled it better, you know, like this kind of came from on high out of nowhere and it's the intelligence services in the courts and so it does feel kind of deep steady. At the same time, I kind of have some admiration for people just saying, you know what, like enough of this, you know, because the Russians are doing this. We talked about in Moldova, they activated a similar, you know, they were paying for votes in addition to kind of having. So there is something to the idea of just saying, you know what, fucking,

you know, we've had enough of this. Like, we're not going to let you kind of rig our elections. We're not going to let you kind of take advantage of all these gaps

and social media and corruption to kind of swing things in your direction. I just think there could have been a more transparent process to get to that kind of decision, you know?

And we'll see. I mean, ultimately, Romanians will vote on this. And if they don't like how this is done, you know, they'll have another shot

of voting for, I guess, another far right. Canada, if not this one. But I have to say, like, you know, this is something that you should be doing more of is that there's got to be some option between just living in this reality where, you know, the Russians can explode your entire media environment right before your election to swing the results and canceling elections. It speaks to the need for different tools because, you know, somewhere in between not doing anything and canceling the election is probably the right answer.

And the Romanian's at least established another end of the spectrum for how to deal with it. Yeah, you're going to need some government regulation. I mean, clearly Elon Musk is not going to help. God knows what the TikTok algorithm is going to do, you know, what the Chinese might be saying or doing to sort of put their thumb on the scale. And the investing, I mean, maybe the services could come out of this is they, maybe they did see some stuff that's even beyond. I mean, they should share it all. You know, this should all be transparent, out in the open. Because, you know, it is a reality that the Russians are messing around.

And just because Trump has called it a hoax doesn't mean that it's particularly dangerous in these smaller European countries where, you know, them throwing their weight around can really matter. Yeah. Finally, Ben, BBN Yahoo took the stand today in one of his many ongoing corruption trials. The trial focus on these three different cases sort of folded together. But they all feature bribery, fraud, kind of breach of trust. The gist is BB has been exchanging political faith. for gifts or favorable media coverage. It's like cigars, champagne, that kind of stuff.

The charges are not new. The investigation was opened eight years ago. He's indicted in 2019. In the trial began in 2020. We're not going to have a verdict until 2026. And even then Netanyahu could appeal to the Supreme Court. So we're going to be in this for a long time. And the funny thing about this is I saw Netanyahu on TV talking about how eager he was to tell his side of the story to the Israeli people.

It's like, buddy, you have punted this case or all of these cases for nearly a decade. You were not eager to do anything. It is the first time, though, in Israeli history that a prime minister has testified as a defendant at his own trial. I caught an interview Ben on CNN with Barack Ravis from Axios, who had been watching the proceedings. And he said that, like, three different times, some officious courier ran in with a big folder marked top secret and, like, Netanyahu, like, ostentatiously reviewed some very urgent matters of state. just to remind everybody that he's too important to be there. But I don't know. It would be fun.

It would be fun to see this fucker go down. Well, yeah, part of what these guys do is they delay, delay, delay. It's pretty smart move. Yeah, and so then it's like, well, this happened so long ago. You know, it's just just kind of pure wearing down and exhaustion. If people want to see, I think I mentioned this before, but the BB files, a new documentary, which has the tapes of his depositions, again, Again, if you want a good primer on how this all came to be, Google BB files, it's out on streaming.

It was hard for them find a platform, shocker. Oh, really? Yeah. So they kind of went to this new one. But the reality is he's clearly guilty. I mean, not to prejudge. He doesn't even deny a lot of the audience. He doesn't deny a lot of this stuff.

I mean, they were pressure. And it wasn't, yeah, some of it is just kind of lurid, you know, cigars and jewelry and, you know, champagne and stuff like that. But some of it was literally like forcing media. companies to do his bidding or else, you know. Yeah, in exchange for regulatory help. This was really massive corruption. It wasn't just these gifts that are the most kind of tawdry piece of it. And, you know, maybe someday B.B. Nanyahuak should be held accountable.

Well, I'm not holding my breath. But, I mean, keep in mind, he's getting arrest worn out on him from the ICC. Yeah, well, so does you have Gallant, the former defense minister, or I guess was at the White House today. So that's a kind of fuck you from the U.S. to the ICC. Interesting image. One of the quick policy thing, Ben. I saw CNN had a report that the Biden team is now working with the Trump team together on the Gaza ceasefire talks. I wanted to mention this because I think both of us assumed that Trump, his preference, was to have Biden completely fail and then have a kind of deal gift wrap to him on day one.

But CNN says that Trump wants to start his second term with the conflicts in Lebanon and Gaza wrapped up and the hostages released, even though he said, you know, unmute the press that he doesn't believe many of the hostages are alive still. But that was an interesting kind of twist. And I saw Basilel Smotrich, the finance minister, said Trump let Israel pursue three goals. One, overthrow Iran. Two, prevent a Palestinian state. Three, stop rebuilding Lebanese villages on the border. This was an interview with Bloomberg. So great.

Fun agenda. Yeah, I mean, two things. First of all, out the door, and I talk about this in the interview, but, you know, Israel has invaded Syria. I don't know what else to call it. I mean, they just destroyed the entire, you know, Syrian Navy overnight. And they say it's because they're, you know, it's like preemptive precautionary measures, but it's huge amounts of military force. And once again, the U.S. is just doing nothing. And, you know, I'm not surprised by that. But I make that point because I do think that Israel will see that they may want to just kind of get this all out of their system before Trump comes in. Then there's some period of calm. And then they probably go back at like, say, the West Bank or something. I thought it was interesting, Tommy, to your point about the coordination. Sheikh Mohammed, the prime minister of Qatar, who's obviously been in the center of these negotiations, said publicly. He was asked, I think, you know, by Yalta Akim and Sky, he's like, yeah, we're

talking to Trump people. We're briefing them in the negotiations. We're negotiating with them. Didn't the Trump people ask Qatar to welcome Hamas back? Yeah, so they're undoing. Probably being worried about Trump coming in. They kicked Hamas out. And then the Trump people are like, no, no, no, like they bring them back. We need a place to talk to them. So it does feel like there's going to be this effort to at least have the announcement of some sea. But the question is also, what is this ceasefire? Like, our hostages return, is there a rebuilding plan for Gaza? Who's in charge of Gaza? There's still all these details. So this is such a Trump thing because it's like, oh, if I can declare there's a ceasefire there, it's closing that, you know,

account. But again, what's Trump's plan for who runs Gaza? Like, it's probably, you know, we're not what the Palestinian view of that is and may not be what Saudi Arabia's view of that is. So this is not as simple as even just making an announcement that there's some agreement. And we know what Jared Kushner's view, which is... Waterfront property. Rick Rennell will be like the manager of the White Lotus and... That's the strip, you know? That's a good job for him.

He's managed the property. Okay. Without the pressing end, we're going to take a quick break and we come back. You'll hear Ben's interview with Darene Khalifa, who is a Syria expert at the crisis group. She is met with the top leadership of HCS. She knows this stuff inside and out. So stick around for that. Okay.

We are very pleased to be. joined by Doreen Khalifa, who is a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group. She's spent many years working on Syria. She's previously worked in conflict areas with MC International and other aid organizations. Doreen, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me, Ben. So I just want to begin by asking you, I've seen your work here and there over the years. You've been, like so many people, deeply engaged in trying to understand and follow the Syrian Civil War. What has the last few days been like for you personally?

How do you put it into context, doing all this work for so many years on a conflict that seems so grinding and frozen at times and now all of a sudden it's over? It's been insane. It's really hard to find the words to describe what just happened the last few days.

I mean, I think I haven't slept for a week now. I think a lot of people following Syria, all my Syrian friends haven't slapped, it is still so hard to believe that this regime that dominated for decades, that killed all those lives, that gave everyone the impression that this is what it is,

that we all have to live with this regime forever. It's just no longer there. Yeah. I'm still processing all of that. I think everyone's still processing all of that. I mean, I'm very joyful, like everyone else, anxious and nervous about the future of Syria. but my heart is just joyful.

It's a beautiful moment. It's a historical one. And I think we should possibly be happy that this rid's dream is over. It's gone. Yeah. It is truly extraordinary. And I think people are going to take some time

to just be able to absorb that this happened. Well, you've been following the different factions involved for a long time. And I guess I want to start by asking you, you know, you're someone who's spoken. to Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, who emerged as the kind of principal face of the rebel offensive, although there are obviously other factions involved. What can you tell us about those interactions? And based on those interactions, have you been surprised by the person you've seen seemingly so

comfortable, kind of taking a certain kind of leading role here? How would you characterize Jolani and your experiences with him for our audience? Right. So the first time I met Jolani was almost five years ago. We, crisis group was the first interview him, I think. It was his first interaction probably with a foreign organization. I sat with him for over four hours, over a meal, discussed everything, including his history, his time in Iraq when he came back, what his vision is for how they plan to govern areas under their control, which was at the time a small fraction of northwestern Syria. It was also during a time where there was ongoing and repeated regime in Russian-backed offenses on Syria.

So the war was ongoing. It was very, very bloody. Over a million people had been displaced in just the first few weeks of my meetings with him and the time I was doing field work there. So a lot was happening. A lot was changing. He really struck me. as someone who has thought through a lot of different scenarios in his head. So back then, Turkey hadn't interfered or intervened militarily or significantly in Syria the way it is today. He had no idea whether or not Turkey would, so he had no guarantees for international protection whatsoever, but yet he was very adamant about continuing to fight. It didn't seem like he really had a choice.

but he was also talking about governance and opening up to different sects and opening up to different political parties. And I mean, it was a really striking conversation because I had built this image in my head of what a transnational jihadist would look like, what a former ISIS and AQ person would look like. And this young Syrian man just showed up and talked to me for hours and was very chatty and I'm Egyptian. He made fun of Egyptian.

which is a common thing among Arabs. I made fun of my accent. Yeah, so it was a very interesting conversation, super insightful for me. I think he wasn't sure why he was meeting with me. I wasn't sure why he was meeting with me, but I came out of it knowing a lot more about him and about his group than I did before.

And since then, we've been talking to him repeatedly. So we talked to him before they started this offensive, and he was very clear that they were. going to start this offensive. And that's why I've been repeatedly saying to people that this who ask if this came as a surprise, I'm like, no, they've been saying to anyone who's listening that they're going to do this, but no one's been listening. Everyone's been looking somewhere else. Everyone's been rightfully focused on Gaza and Lebanon and Ukraine and elsewhere, but no one's been paying attention to Syria this last few years. The regime and the Russians

have been sending suicide drones to areas of northwestern Syria, killing a lot of civilians. So they've really been provoking them. And what Jolani was saying is that this is not sustainable. If we don't go on the offensive, the regime will. We know the Russians. We know the regime. They're never going to commit to the ceasefire indefinitely, let it know perpetually. So if we don't do it now, they are going to do it. He was also looking at the broader geostrategic dynamics. And he was calculating that Iran that has been significantly weakened throughout the war in Gaza and Lebanon, that Russia's bogged down in Ukraine, that Turkey probably feels more embalden than it was prior to the Ukraine war vis-à-vis

Russia. So he thought this was his opportunity to do something. And again, he spoke very openly about it with us, with others, with Turkey. And I did also interview him a few days into the offensive after he liberated Aleppo. I published a few comments from that. And he said three interesting things. One, that he is willing to dismantle his group entirely. And two, that he knows that he needs to govern the parts.

At the time, it was just Elapo, really. He said, we're going to govern this differently. We need to respect serious diversity. We need to respect that there are different sects and different groups with different religious backgrounds. And they need to be dealt with. they need to be all included in the process and that we need to have a civilian government running things. All these things struck me as someone who really knows what the world wants

him to say and is saying it. Yeah. Well, that's what's so interesting to me because it's very interesting to hear him talk like you. You know, I came to know the Nusra front and things that they did that were quite brutal, but in the context of a civil war. And he appears to be a very different person in what he's saying at least and saying pretty interesting things about you know how islamic governance can coexist with respect for minority rights and individual rights you know definitely a more evolved you know kind of jihadist worldview as it relates to governance and you get from the Taliban different even from what you would have gotten from the Muslim brotherhood in Egypt a decade ago I guess the question for you is how much do you think h.

has like a thought-out plan based on, you know, these conversations you've had for this transitional governance beyond just telling people what the kind of international media wants to, how much you think they have an actual plan for a transition to a civilian government. And also, importantly, how do you see them currently interacting with different factions, whether it's different opposition factions or whether it's, you know, they're working with the remnants of the Assad regime? What do you, I know it's early days, but what do you make of what you've seen in the last couple of days? You know, absolutely, it's early days. But to the latter part of this question, their interactions with different groups and different factions

has been quite smoother than I thought. Because what happened during the offensive is HTS and Jolani were not the ones who actually entered Damascus first. It was different rebel groups and then he came after. So I was pretty concerned that there would be clashes among the factions. That didn't happen. People just seem to assume that he's the commander in charge and let him take all the fame. He has been meeting with different minority groups.

He's been meeting with different faction leaders, with different opposition groups. Anyone really who would want to interact with him, he's been meeting with them. That excludes a huge segment of the Syrian opposition, especially the Asper opposition, who have been reluctant to interact directly because of his terrorist designation. because of the group's terrorist listing. Understandably, so they have a lot of concerns and fears about their legal status in wherever country they're at. But so far, all the interactions, all the reports I'm getting from all sides, really,

that it's been quite positive. Now, to the question of whether or not they have a transition plan, if you're all my honest answer, I would be very surprised if they have one. my sense is that they had no clue that they're going to get a left vote, let alone the entire country. So they knew what they wanted, but they had no clue that it was going to happen or that it was going to happen that quick. So now they're scrambling to figure things out, and they've been doing, people have been criticizing them for a few things they're doing, and I think they're going to continue to do a lot of mistakes in this transition period. That is going to get a lot of heat.

But it's all very positive, you know, doing mistakes in a transition and getting criticized for it. It's like a million years different than where we were last week. So, I mean, I hear a lot of concerns from people and I say, well, I think this is what a political process looks like. It's people yelling and screaming at each other because of missteps others are taking. And they seem so far quite open to receiving feedback. be it positive or negative, it's mostly negative, but they take things into account into consideration. So a few days ago, they hired an interim prime minister that was running their civil administration in northwestern Syria and the parts they controlled prior to the offensive.

They got a lot of criticism for it, saying you're people telling them you're imposing your guy on us. So they declare today that this is an interim thing and it ends in three months. and after three months, we're going to start a whole process and it's going to be more inclusive and it's not going to be our guy. So it's things like this, but it's obviously too early to say if they're going to continue to be responsive or not. But yeah, all the indications so far are promising. And what do you see in terms of the international dynamic? I mean, I guess we'll go through some individual countries here like the U.S. and Israel in a moment here. But given how massive the challenges are in Syria, the country that has suffered so much destruction, there's so much

poverty, at the same time that they're trying to do this transition, there are all these basic needs that people have. What kind of support would you recommend other countries, whether they're Gulf Arab countries or European countries or the United States? What are the most important things that the rest of the world can do to try to help make this a successful transition. And I should add, what do you worry about? Because part of the challenge in Syria over the years is so many other countries have these interests and have these kind of proxy forces. Other countries can be spoilers too.

But let's start with the affirmative. What do you think positively the rest of the world should be doing here to try to help this succeed? Honestly, I think the U.S. is the big elephant in the room. I think first and foremost, the U.S. needs to reconsider. sanctions and designations on all of Syria. I think there's hardly any party in Syria left that's not either sanctions or designated. The whole country is under U.S. sanctions. And that is a huge impediment for peace and security. It's a huge impediment for just delivering

aid, for delivering assistance, for reconstruction, for engagement with the parties on the ground. And that just needs to be reconsidered. As I mentioned before, for a lot of Syrian Americans and a lot of Syrian diaspora want to go back home and they want to engage with the de facto authorities and they want to be able to be part of this transition and are concerned. The amount of sanctions on the country is just such a huge problem. And that really needs to be reconsidered. And I have in the past written about potentially the U.S. considering its sanctions on HDS in particular. And my argument was that the U.S. can't treat sanctions as punitive measures for life. They need to be able to set clear

benchmarks for reversing them. If this is a tool for behavioral change, then you have a group shouting, yelling, and screaming, we have changed. Please engage with us. Please tell us what is it that you expect us to do? So I think this is really an opportunity for the U.S. to say, all right, these are 10 things you need to do in the next phase. And if you do meet them, we're going to consider lifting these sanctions entirely. And obviously they're going to always have the right to stop them back on them if they don't, if they reverse some of the actions or if they misbehave. But I don't think that just keeping them as they are now and not engaging directly with these groups are going to help with this transition or help just address the massive needs

that you pointed to. Yeah. No, I wholeheartedly agree with that. Well, on the kind of interference side of things. We've seen, you know, multiple countries that are militarily involved in Syria right now. Israel has been launching a lot of strikes on what they say are chemical weapons, storage facilities, but they've also kind of moved some troops in around the annexed Golan Heights because they say they can trust Syria to keep a border agreement. The Turks have taken some shots at Kurds because of their concerns there about Kurdish forces, including some of the U.S. is backed. and the U.S. has taken strikes concis. I mean, how concerned are you that there's this kind of lack of sovereignty for Syria as

is undertaking these transition and out of these different military interventions, which ones, you know, do you see as potential flashpoints here in the days to come? Yeah, well, let's just clarify that Syria lost its sovereignty over a decade ago. Yeah. I mean, five foreign militaries have been operating in the country, I think, since 2016. had the Americans there, the Turks, the Iranians, the Russians, that in addition to all these foreign militias that have been operating on the ground. So that's not a new thing. Now, I am concerned about this free-for-all that's happening right now. I think there is a sense that everything's

up for grabs and everyone should try to secure their own interests militarily and do it as soon as possible before, you know, before the lines are drawn again. And that's obviously very probably I think Israel is, as you said, they've been bombing facilities. They've also been moving troops on the ground. And that's incredibly problematic. I understand that they have security concerns about a formal fight off shoot controlling Damascus. But again, their policy of just bombing anything and everything that they've been adopting this last year is not going to get them far. And it's going to create an non-existing enemy at the moment because this group has never said anything about Israel whatsoever.

On the contrary, they've been emphasizing that they've completely denounced any transnational objectives and ties, that they're never going to be conducting any transnational operations, that they're going to respect neighboring countries' security concerns. So what they're doing is really going to create an enemy of not just one group, but all the Syrians. With Turkey, and I think this is another flashpoint, so as you pointed out, Ben, northeast Syria is currently controlled by a Kurdish-led group called the Syrian Democratic Forces. They're the U.S. partners on the ground that have been fighting ISIS for almost a decade now. I visited areas under their control repeatedly. I mean, they are quite good in governing the area, but they're also

connected to what is called a Kurdistan Workers Party, like the Kurdish militant group that has been fighting a war in Turkey for over 40 years now and is listed by the U.S. and by Turkey as a terrorist organization. Back to my point that everyone in Syria is listed as a terrorist at this point. But they've had decades-long problems with neighboring Turkey. And one thing we've been telling this group for years is that, you know, you can't think you're going to be able to control a third of Syria and all its national, all its natural resources while being in like regular war with a NATO member with a giant country on your border. You need to sort out your problems politically. And I think now more than ever, there is a chance for Turkey for the Kurdish

group to sit and sort out their security concerns politically. And the U.S. has a big role to play. They provide military protection to the group. They're a tricky ally. I don't think any country is better suited than the U.S. to try to mediate and sort out a detente between these two groups. And to avoid further conflict, it's just not going to be in anyone's interest. It's not going to be in Turkey's interest when a new wave of refugees come its way because of this war. And it's not going to be in Syrians' interests when Turkey rules in militarily and causes even more destruction and displacement. Yeah. Well, you point to a lot of different challenges. Is it your sense, I mean, somebody ultimately has to kind of help steer all this to kind of return where we began

with HTS and Jolani. Is it your sense that they're really the focal point right now? And their capacity to kind of navigate relations with the SDF, relations with religious minorities, be they Christian or Alloite, that for the time being the next three months, we should kind of really be watching people like Jolani and NAD HGS as the key actors here? Or do you think there's some more decentralized process that is more likely to take hold?

I mean, that's a really good question. I think there is a dilemma now because there is the sense, that HTS needs to dismantle itself. It needs to be more inclusive. There needs to be a broader body that represents the different factions and different groups and everything. But at the end of the day, people want security today. They want services today. They want the lights on. They want the garbage is collected. They want a focal point to reach out to. What they want requires some sort of centralized authority that is capable of imposing law and order as soon as possible. as effectively as possible.

So I think HDS is going to find itself in the position of kind of trying to cater to these two things. But the reality is they're going to remain the dominant group on the ground, at least until this transition period that who knows how long it will take be. I know that a lot of people in Western capitals want to wish them away because of the terrorist designation and because of their track record in history and would like to see more liberal friendly figures, but I mean, it is what it is. The reality is they're the ones who did this. They're the ones who got rid of this regime. Of course, with the support of other rebels, but we can't

wish them away. And I think it's something also Chris's group's been saying for a while, you know, if we can just wish the bad guys away, things sort of have been much easier. But at least on the spectrum of bad guys, they're more responsive than most and willing to compromise than most. Yeah, well, look, I really appreciate you staying up late with us from Cairo. I share your basic point is that, you know, whatever is coming is already much better than the Assad regime. And so a little messiness and little arguing may not be your ideal choice, but it's better and we should all be trying to make it work. So thank you so much. People should follow your work, should follow crisis groups reports and really wish you the best.

And again, just to go back to where we started, having met so many people over the years who've worked on this, I'm aware of just the flood of emotions that you must be feeling. So I hope you're able to take some joy in that as well. Thank you so much, Ben. Really appreciate you having me. Thanks again, Doreen Khalifa for joining the show. And congrats on again. Yeah, thanks. Thank you, Wansoto.

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