Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 12/5/25 William Van Wagenen on Life in Post-Assad Syria

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

Scott interviews William Van Wagenen about some of the horrific crimes taking place in Syria now that Bin Ladenite Islamists have taken over the country. They explore some of these stories and discuss the level of attention these are getting in the Western press and the broader geopolitical context behind this consequential regime change. Discussed on the show: Creative Chaos: Inside the CIA’s Covert War to Topple the Syrian Government by William Van Wagenen “The Alawite women taken as sex slaves in Syria” (The Spectator) “Inside Syria’s state-backed cover-up of Alawite women’s kidnappings” (The Cradle) William Van Wagenen is the author of Creative Chaos: Inside the CIA’s Covert War to Topple the Syrian Government. He has a BA in German literature From Brigham Young University and an MA in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. You can read his other writings on Syria for the Libertarian Institute here. Follow him on Twitter @wvanwagenen Audio cleaned up with the Podsworth app:  https://podsworth.com Use code HORTON50 for 50% off your first order at Podsworth.com to clean up your voice recordings, sound like a pro, and also support the Scott Horton Show! For more on Scott’s work: Check out The Libertarian Institute:  https://www.libertarianinstitute.org Check out Scott’s other show, Provoked, with Darryl Cooper https://youtube.com/@Provoked_Show Read Scott’s books: Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine https://amzn.to/47jMtg7 (The audiobook of Provoked is being published in sections at https://scotthortonshow.com) Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism: https://amzn.to/3tgMCdw Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan https://amzn.to/3HRufs0 Follow Scott on X @scotthortonshow And check out Scott’s full interview archives: https://scotthorton.org/all-interviews This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Incorporated https://rrbi.co Moon Does Artisan Coffee https://scotthorton.org/coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom https://www.libertyclassroom.com/dap/a/?a=1616 and Dissident Media https://dissidentmedia.com You can also support Scott’s work by making a one-time or recurring donation at https://scotthorton.org/donate/ https://scotthortonshow.com or https://patreon.com/scotthortonshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest. Reporting to the American people what's going on in this country. Because the babies are making this. We're dealing with Hitler Revisited. This is the Scott Horton Show, Libertarian Foreign Policy, mostly. When the president visit, that means that it is not illegal. We're going to take out seven countries in five years. They don't know what the fuck they're doing.

Negotiate now. End this war. And now, here's your host, Scott Horton. All right, you guys, welcome the show. It is William Ben Wagonin from the Libertarian Institute is our guest. He is, of course, the author of our most recently published book, which I won't be able to say for very long. But for now, creative chaos.

about Obama and the CIA's dirty war in Syria, the origins of the dirty war in Syria. And are you in Syria now or you're back in Lebanon? Or welcome back to... I'm in Lebanon, yeah. Yeah. So you've been, I know you spent, and for people not familiar with the background,

William has done these tremendous, extremely long-form articles for the Institute all about the history of the dirty war in Syria, back 15 through 10 years ago and then of course now published in book form and has extensive experience in Iraq as well as in Syria and you've been spending a lot of time there since the fall of the Assad regime one year ago and I know you've learned a hell of a lot and you have a brand new story that came out in the cradle I'm very jealous but business is business you do what you got to do buddy and it's all about the kidnapping and it's

enslavement of young women, young Alawite women, by the jihadis associated at least with the Alawi, or pardon me, the new bin Ladenite regime, Al-Shara's regime, which I guess even right there, and I mean this correctly, I think begs the question of that he has a real state at all and that these are actual armed forces of the state, or maybe they're just a bunch of bin Laden, night crazies and he's just sitting on a palace thrown somewhere while they're off doing whatever they do or i have no idea what but it sounds horrific for these young women and for their families and everybody going through this of course the alawites were the minority ruling cast before so they're apparently in deep trouble now william tell us what's going on well yeah since

sherat came to power uh you know just about a year ago the eighth of december will be the anniversary of Osai falling. And, you know, it was the U.S., Israel, the U.K., Turkey, and even with some cooperation with Russia, that the new president, Shara, was installed. Of course, people that have read about the war followed it in the past know that his name is Abu Mohammed al-Jalani, and he was in the U.S. prison in Buka, in Iraq, during the Islamic State days. And after his release from the prison in Iraq, which in my view was deliberate on the part

of the U.S., along with a bunch of other Islamic state leaders, you know, he went to Syria and helped topple the, you know, work to topple the Syrian government with, you know, CIA backing and the backing of all the CIA's allies. So once he came to power in December, there's basically, al-O-Wites have been living in in fear. I mean, there was this idea that the entire Syrian government under Assad was Alawite, or all the people in power were Alawites because Assad was Alawite. But in fact, a lot of the government was Sunnis, a large portion of the army was Sunnis. A lot of the officers, a lot of the ministers were Sunni, so it's not true that it was an Alawite regime.

But that's the way that, you know, the media depicts it, and that's the way that the Arab and Gulf media always depicted it and that's the image that they gave to all the young guys fighting in the ranks of these different armed groups, whether it was Jabhatanusra, which was Jolani's old group, which later became Hayat Tahrir Sharm or HTS. And so all the guys that are in these new, in these different armed groups that were fighting against Assad, they, you know, theoretically have been incorporated into the Ministry of Defense and into the internal security forces known as the general security in Syria. But a lot of the groups are basically function like, you know, criminal mafias. And especially in the Alawite areas on the coast

and also in the city of Holmes, these groups that are again affiliated with the formal Syrian security forces, they kind of have free reign to kidnap, kill, murder, al-Alo-whites without any repercussions. And And again, these aren't like Alawites that fought in the regime, you know, with the old regime or these are just regular civilians that are regularly getting murdered and kidnapped. And obviously the women who are getting kidnapped have nothing to do with the war. But there has been this just wave of kidnappings ever since January and it intensified after the huge massacres of Alawites in March. and it's been a big problem and there's been a decent amount of Western coverage about the issue

Reuters has done did a big story about the kidnappings Amnesty International has done a report on the kidnappings. There was mention of it by a UN report that looked into the massacres in March and there are a lot of Alewhite activists who have been doing their best to kind

of raise awareness on the issue but Um, the biggest probably story was when, or the time I got the most attention was when a former BBC journalist called or named Paul Wood published an article in The Spectator magazine out of Britain, out of the UK in July, the highlighted one particularly, um, terrible, terrible kidnapping case of a woman who was kidnapped and then gang raped. Uh, and then, uh, her death was faked. And then she was sold to an emir, like a fighter, one of the commanders in the current military. Anyways, Paul Wood documented that case, and that article got quite a bit of attention. And there's been, once it started becoming known that these women were getting kidnapped, the Syrian government and their affiliated media, which includes Al Jazeera, for example, but also like local Syrian media and Syrian journalists,

they've just started this campaign to basically deny that any of these kidnappings are taking place and then finally back in just in about a month ago, in beginning of November, the Interior Ministry of Syria came out with an investigation or they announced the results of a so-called investigation claiming that they looked into 42 cases of kidnappings. And there had only been one real case, and the others were fake.

They were all fake kidnappings. The women had run off with their lovers or had disappeared for different reasons, but the kidnappings aren't actually happening. So the article I wrote details some of the more prominent cases of women that really were kidnapped, but the Syrian government and media had denied were kidnapped, and I talk about the way that they deny it. So if you like, we can get into the methods. they're using, but it is a terrible problem. And again, all these groups that form the current Syrian

military and that are doing these kidnappings, they again, they're all former members of HTS, which again, formerly was Jabhatanusra, which it was an offshoot of the Islamic State or ISIS. And of course, we all know, or I imagine everyone knows the story about how ISIS took so many Yazidi women as sex slaves from Sinjar in Iraq back in 2014 as part of the genocide that ISIS carried out again in coordination or with assistance from Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani and his Peshmerga. But that's gotten, you know, got a lot of attention at the time that these Yazidi women were being kidnapped and enslaved and raped and forced into these marriages. but the same thing is happening in Syria now.

And again, there's just been this campaign on the part of the government and pro-government journalists to just deny that it's even happening. It's such a damn dirty business. American foreign policy over there. It's just something else. You know, well,

this is the same guy, just for people who are, somewhat new at this, who met with Donald Trump in the Oval Office just a few weeks ago, who Trump previously had said in a statement on Air Force One, oh, he's very strong and handsome and has a strong past and all this stuff. And it's the consensus among the GCC that is the Saudi monarchs, right? The Gulf Monarchs and, of course, the Turks and the Israelis, and this is our guy as we've beaten this dead horse,

infinite item because he's against Iran and Hezbollah and that's all they care about because Israel really is for the Americans anyways all they care about and I guess even the Turks get along with the Iranians but if they can isolate them out and and increase their influence in Syria they'll take it all that good neighbor policy is out the window under Erdogan right has been for a long time um and so but all this chaos all these people being kidnapped and raped and suicide bombed and head chopped and God knows what this whole time. You say, yeah, they're part of ISIS. Yeah, that is al-Qaeda in Iraq, the worst of America's enemies from Iraq War II,

Zarqawi and his guys, the head chopper, suicide bombers. This is his guys we're talking about here. When Trump says a strong past, he means that this guy has openly admitted to American government media, frontline PBS, that he bought Americans in Mosul and Ramadi. And that's what's so strong about his past, but as long as he hates the Shiites, then good. So then that raises the question, what about the Shiites and what about the Christians? And what about all the other, and I know there are a few different kinds of Christians in Syria as well. And that this was at least part of the appeal of botism this whole time was that the Alewhite dictator family protected all of the different minorities and had sort of the consensus of the different.

minorities and then according to what I understand from at the time that at least substantial some substantial plurality or even majority of Sunnis also supported the all the white regime the Baathist regime for that same reason just because their Sunnis doesn't mean they're all been Ladenites and wanted a head shop in revolution and to be ruled by this Jolani guy but anyway so I've said a mouthful there but I'll let you talk about it All right, you guys, now it's the next day. William had a little bit of internet trouble,

but we're going to follow up here and finish up with our interview. And again, the subject is this great article, terrible article, at the cradle, Inside Syria's state-backed cover-up of Alawite women's kidnappings. And that is, of course, at the hands of the bin Ladenite, so-called armed forces of the new state of Syria. Ah, man, what a thing. So it's been a year, and where we had our internet problems yesterday and got cut off, I was asking you, so what about the Shiites and what about, obviously, there's been

a lot of fighting with the Druze, and I know you've covered that, and what about all the different kinds of Christians? I think there were four or five different major Christian sects there in Syria. or something, how are they varying under the new bin Ladenite regime? Well, maybe to start with the Christians first, you know, the situation is not great, but it's not as bad, I would say, as with the Druze and with the Alawites or with the Shia. But even just today, in a suburb of Damascus called Duela, the Christians there tried to put up a Christmas tree

and some guys apparently showed up, you know, waving ISIS flags and, you know, scared a bunch of the Christians there, freaked everybody out. And that's even more important given that Duela is the location of the Mar-Elias church where there was a suicide bombing a couple months ago early in the summer. And there were like 28 Christians who were killed in the middle of mass in that church. And the Syrian government immediately like 15 minutes after the church was bombed, the interior minister came out and said, oh, this was ISIS that did the bombing. There's no way, of course, that the government could know that ISIS had done anything like 15 minutes after the attack happened,

but they immediately declared that ISIS had done it. And in the following day, they claim that They raided a bunch of ISIS cells in eastern Damascus and arrested a bunch of guys responsible. But all those rates were just fake. And it turned out that the guy, the suicide bomber, who killed all the people, was actually a member of the general security, like the new internal security forces of the new government. And so anyways, the Christians are, you know, are not, they're scared. there a lot of them are just looking to leave the country a lot of them would like to emigrate but at the same time the situation um for the drus and then especially for the alawites is

is much much worse so um i don't know i guess we could talk about each of each of those communities if you like but yeah sure go ahead well with the alawites uh made me to start you know again uh ashara al-asad was an al-oite and There was this narrative throughout the entire war, starting back in 2011, that was promoted by the opposition that the entire Assad regime was all the whites. And that just wasn't true. There were a lot of Sunnis in places of high power within the government, defense ministers, all kinds of different top positions in the government and in the military.

Alawites had an outsized influence, for sure, based on their, you know, the size of the population and based off their family ties to Assad. But most Alawites had no relation to that. Many are extremely, extremely poor. Aloites living in the countryside on the coast. A lot of them, you know, don't have cell phones. They barely had electricity. They're very, very poor people. But there was this narrative that was promoted, and especially by Jolani's guys, because they are, you know, Sunni extremists who follow Ibn Taimiah, the medieval Islamic scholar who had declared or issued a fatwa or a religious ruling saying that Aloites are apostates and they should be killed and their property stolen. So this was the ideology that undergirded Jolani's group throughout the years of the war. Jhaphatan Nusra, which later became Hayat Tahrir Shahm, HTS, and again is the group that now controls the country. But all the fighters for Nistra and then later HTS, and then also with ISIS, the same thing. All these guys have had this ideology smashed into their brain that Al-Oites and Shia deserve to be murdered.

and their property taken. So after Jolani came to power a year ago, you know, immediately there started to be killings, kidnappings, murders of al-Alo-whites. And then that kind of reached its apex in March, on March 7th, where there was kind of a very small al-O-Wite uprising

in response to all of the violence, violations, the killings, and kidnappings that they had been subjected to in the months before. And Jolani's basically rallied tens of thousands of fighters, sent them to the coast, to Latakia, to Jablah, to Hama in the countryside, parts of homes. And they murdered at least 1,600 Aloiites, probably a much larger number. and we can get into that massacurphy-like, but in my opinion, it was very clearly premeditated. Yeah, please do. I think is this the one where they said that they were ambushed

and then the retaliation from there? Yeah, so there's, the government basically said, look, these Alawite insurgents ambushed our security forces, and so we had no choice but to go and put down this insurgency and there were just kind of like individual violations that happened resulting in the massacres. But there's a lot of evidence that, again, it was planned in advance, and there was a lot of, like, tricks being played to kind of float information in the media

to claim that there was this big, powerful al-Aloid insurgency that had backing from Iran, backing from Hezbollah, backing from Bashar al-Assad himself in Moscow. So Al Jazeera spread this. There are even these videos that I'm sure were fake of a particular officer from the old Syrian army that was allegedly leading this group of al-Oid insurgents claiming they were going to overthrow Jolani. But there's a lot of indications that this guy, basically his armed group, just existed on the internet. And again, all that provided a pretext for Jolani to send literally tens of thousands of people. to the coast and carry up these massacres. There were massacres that happened in like over 50 locations.

And they're very systematic. You see the same thing in every village where the murders took place. Jolani's guys would go into a village, take unarmed men, sometimes women, but mostly unarmed men, including like kids oftentimes and elderly people. They'd pull them out of the house saying that, oh, telling the women, oh, we're just going to take these guys for a quick investigation.

investigation, and they would, you know, walk him down the street, you know, 50 yards and just shoot them in the head. And then they would, they would loot every village. So all of this, you see the exact same pattern across like 50 different locations. There were some really horrific things happened. There's one very famous case of a man whose son was taken, the fighters came and took this man's son from his home. They killed him and they cut his heart out. And then called the father from his son's phone and said, do you know where your son is? And he said, no. And they said, well, here is where he is. And by the way, we literally cut his heart out. Like, they were just really barbaric, barbaric things that happened. And again, there's

indications that that was all premeditated. And as well, there's indications that the Israelis played a role. And if you'd like, I could get into that. But, um, because there's a lot of people who are doing with the Israelis. Yes. Okay, so start at the beginning of everything you know about that. Well, so for example, on the 2nd of February, well, I should mention that first, when Assad was toppled and Jalani took power, Netanyahu immediately went to the border of Syria to Mount Hermon that the Israelis immediately occupied. And Netanyahu celebrated and said, you know, look, he basically took credit for installing Jalani and power. And as you would know, if you read my book or your writings on the Syria war, you know,

Jolani was receiving support, covert support from the U.S. and Allied intelligence agencies and the Israelis, you know, stretching back to at least 2012, probably even earlier. And so the Israelis were happy when Jolani took power. But then immediately they started, you know, saying, well, Jolani is a terrorist and trying to kind of discredit him, which again is not sincere given their past support for him. But in February, so Assad fell in December 8th of 2024. And then a few months later in February of 2025, Netanyahu traveled to Washington to convince. U.S. officials of, you know, the policy that Israel wanted in Syria, and there was a Reuters report about it. They said that Netanyahu went and he presented a white paper to U.S.

officials. And it got a lot of kind of coverage because Netanyahu said in the white paper that Israel actually wanted Russia to keep their bases in Syria, the Davin Naval base in Tartus on the coast, and they have an air base in Jubla, also on the coast. And the Israelis, again, were lobbying for the U.S. to allow the Russians to keep their bases there. And the reasoning the Israelis gave was that they wanted to keep Syria weak and fragmented. So, of course, that's been their long-term strategy for Syria, and it was a big reason they launched the Dirty War in 2011 with the U.S. to begin with. But Netanyahu, again, had plans to advance that agenda beyond just toppling Assad.

So then the additional evidence is that just two days later, there was a Drew's, a prominent Drews representative of the top Drew's cleric named Sheikh Hickmichel-Hidri. One of his relatives and representatives was in Washington, D.C., and had me, meetings with U.S. officials. And this representative of the Druze, he was told that an insurgency was being planned to topple Jolani. And basically, it was essentially, he was told

that the Israelis were the ones who were promoting this idea that the Druze would partner with the Kurds and partner with Alawite groups to topple Jolani. It's like, OK. So then what happened is there were some al-a-white insurgents who, again, were facing all these massacres and killings at the hands of Jolani's guys after December, they were getting promises like people from abroad, unknown people through social media and different apps, contact them, and saying,

hey, if you guys do an uprising, we will support you. You will have support from the Kurds. You will have support from the Druze. You'll have support even from the international coalition, in the U.S. And so when some clashes erupted in a town called Dahlia, on the 6th of March, these Alawites thought, hey, this is the time. There was even a Russian jet that flew overhead, and they viewed that as a sign that, you know, the time to rise up had come, and they were going to get this external support. So they did start attacking some Syrian security forces, but they quickly

realized that there was no help. No help came, neither from the Kurds or the Druze or from the U.S. coalition. And again, that just gave then the Jolani government the pretext to mobilize literally tens of thousands of fighters and send them to the coast and just massacre, you know, at least a thousand six hundred al-a-whites, but probably many more. Hey, guys, Scott here. You know, you've probably noticed when I'm interviewing. somebody or somebody's interviewing me. I've got this great bust of Dr. Ron Paul in the background on my bookshelf here. Well, you can get one like that too. They're available again from the great artist, Rick Casale. Just go to my website, Scott Horton.org, and look in the right-hand margin.

Click the link through there and use promo code Horton. You'll save 25 bucks and get free shipping, at least in the lower 48 states. And he does custom work as well. The audiobook, I know. People are always asking me, when are going to be done with the audio book for provoked. Well, the fact is, I had to put it on hold for a bit while I'm working on the Academy. But the fact of the matter is, I have published the H.W. Bush chapter and the Bill Clinton chapter, which is already, I think, nine or 12 hours, an audiobook worth just right there. And I have finished recording all of W. Bush, all of Obama, and about at least half of Trump won. Although I still have a lot of editing to do on all those before I can publish them.

but you will be the first to know if you sign up and subscribe at my substack where I am publishing this audio in pieces until I get the whole thing ready together for Audible eventually. So sign up at Scott Horton Show.com. That's my substack, Scott Horton Show.com. Hey, you guys should buy my books. You know, my first one was called Fool's Air and Time End the War in Afghanistan. It was really good and it all came true too.

Watch me predict the end. Right there in the preface of the thing. Also, enough already time to end the war on terrorism. That's all the wars from Jimmy Carter all the way through the first Donald Trump administration. And then my latest is provoked how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. Tucker Carlson says it's the definitive take. Expanddesigns.com. That's my friend Harley Abbott's company.

And he is the webmaster for the Scott Horton show, as well as. as the Libertarian Institute. He is the guy that redesigned the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity website. He's done a lot of great work for other friends of mine. And unlike a lot of webmasters and web developers and different guys that I have worked with over the years, the thing is about Harley Abbott and his team is they do what they say they're going to do when they say they're going to do it and are just extremely reliable and extremely knowledgeable. and 100% vouch for the great Harley Abbott over there.

You got a website, you need it fixed up, you need a new one, you're setting up a business, working on any kind of online project like that. Check out expanddesigns.com. Yeah, I mean, but was that a deliberate double-cross? They set them up just to get them in trouble with the new regime? Well, that's what I believe, because it also is really clear in what happened to the Drews a few months later,

which we can talk about, or we should talk about, of course. But yeah, the idea is that the Israelis, it's an old mafia tactic. You know, if they could work with Jolani, have Jolani send his guys to murder thousands of Alawites, then the Alawites, of course, will think to themselves, look, we're terrified. We can't live with these crazy Islamic extremists who think due to Ibn Tami's teachings that we should all be murdered, how can we live with these people? They're going to massacre us again as soon as they get the chance. So what we need is some international protection.

We need a federal system in Syria, just like we need our own autonomous region in the coast, just like the Kurds already have in the northeast. And we will take support or ask for protection from anyone, including Israel. So that's exactly what happened. Al-Oi started, you know, again, reaching out to Israel saying, look, please protect us. We need help. And then the Israelis immediately were saying, oh, look at these minorities. They're being murdered by this terrorist, Jolani.

Of course, it's totally true. But then the Israelis portrayed themselves as, you know, the protectors of the minorities in Syria. And again, this is despite the fact that there was an Israeli general about three weeks after these massacres in March. There's an Israeli general who is speaking in Hebrew to Army radio saying that, look, Syria benefits, or sorry, Israel benefits from the chaos in Syria. Israel benefits when the Sunnis are killing the Druze and the Sunnis are killing the Alawites. But even though we're promoting this chaos, you know, we just need to be quiet and do it, you know, quietly and not talk about it or talk about the fact that we're doing it. He said that on Army radio.

So again, there's even more of it. It's because when you look at what happened to the Druze, again, the massacre of Alouettes happened in early March. But then in July, there was this major, Jalani sent his guys again to Sweda to attack the Druze in Sweda in southern Syria. And they did the same type of just insane atrocities against the Druze that they had committed. against the Alawites. I mean, they were beheading people, you know, going into houses and murdering entire families. There's one case where an old handicapped guy was sitting in his wheelchair, and they came into the house and burned him alive in his wheelchair.

There's on film, there were three young Drew's guys who were taken up to a high apartment in their apartment building. forced to go out onto the balcony and to climb over the balcony and jump off. And as they were forced to jump off, Jolani's guys opened fire and shot and killed them. And they filmed it all. And, you know, it's all on the Internet. I mean, they just did terrible things. There were snipers that were shooting, you know,

Drew's women and children as they were fleeing in cars trying to get away from the battle. Again, systematically looting and burning homes, just like they had done on the coast of the Altheweights. So then the Israelis said, oh, we're going to protect the Druze, and they started carrying out air strikes against Jolani's forces and killed quite a few of them. And then again, started proclaiming, look, we're the saviors of the Druze. And again, that convinced the Druze after surviving that kind of a massacre, the Druze said, look, we can't be part of Syria anymore.

We have to have our own separate region here in the south. and we need help from Israel. And of course, I made even more sense for the Druze because their borders are a lot closer to Israel, and also there are a lot of Druze in Israel itself and Druze in the Israeli army, for example. So there are already quite a few connections between the Druze in Syria on the one hand

and the Jews in Israel on the other. But here is where the trick came. Just as Jolani, like in the days before Jolani launched the attack on Swayda, His foreign minister, Shibani, was in Azerbaijan, having meetings with, guess who? The Israelis. Jolani had a delegation of people directly negotiating with the Israelis in the days before this attack took place. And again, there was a Reuters report that said that the Jolani felt he had a green light, from both the Israelis and from the U.S. Special Envoy, Tom Barack,

to send his forces to Sweda. And, of course, the Reuters article spun it like, oh, then, you know, but Jolani misunderstood. He thought he had a green light, but, you know, he really didn't. And then there was another report a couple of days later, saying that later, Jalani had another green light to send tanks to Sweda from the Israelis. And then again, even though the Israelis, you know,

had given him permission to send his forces to the South, then they, you know, they did these airstrikes. So again, there's all this collaboration between the Israelis and Jolani's and for these massacres to take place. And again, Israel is the one that benefits because the minorities suddenly are like, oh my gosh, after surviving these massacres, we can never live with these people. We need autonomous regions protected by the international community

and specifically by Israel. And all that serves the Israeli goal of dividing the country, which they've been trying to do since, you know, the 80s with the Yanon plan that I'm sure you're aware of obviously you're aware of sure yeah and everybody go read that the Odad Yanon plan about splintering all of Israel's neighboring states apart and all that so talk to me about Turkey I mean they're a big brother to the north here and Recib Erdogan is nobody's fool or wilting flower or any kind of thing and he supported first of all he supported ISIS all during the worst part of the caliphate

I don't know if he maybe called off some of his support at American assistance in 2015 or 16, but certainly in the rise of the caliphate, he supported him all along. And after the war was won temporarily and the flotsam and what was left of the Jihadis were all rounded up and bust off to the Idlib province, they were essentially under Turkish protection that whole time through I guess second half of Trump won through Biden up until one year ago

the very end of Biden's term so for just about you know eight years straight there almost and then finally they did their own October the 7th and broke out of their pen and sacked Damascus at that point

but so And you know what? It is a site to see for people who aren't familiar. Go ahead and Google it. Netanyahu visits border, takes credit for Jalani taking over Damascus. I mean, it's right there. That's world history, man. You can't pretend that that didn't happen.

It's the same reason that Ben Shapiro said it was great. Yeah, sure, these guys will kill Christians and other minorities, but at least they hate Hezbollah. And that's what's good for Israel. So that's a big part of it. But I don't know, even where to begin. How much is there actual land in Syria's traditional borders that were Turkish troops actually control the territory there?

Or no? And then how much influence do they have over Jolani and the new regime there? Well, they have a lot. Turkey does occupy some parts of Syria directly with their own army. That's up in the north. They've established basically a buffer zone. in northern Syria, claiming that they need that to protect themselves from the PKK. And the PKK is basically the Syrian Democratic forces, you know,

which partners with the U.S. to occupy the northeast. That's the Kurdish leftists. The Kurdish leftists. They're the YPG in Syria, the PKK in Turkey, and then they have PJAC, I guess, in Iran, if that's still a thing. Yeah, so they're all basically the same organization. And so the Turkey does have some troops. But again, as you mentioned, when the major war in Syria ended in 2018,

most of the violence ended because the Syrian government with Russian facilitation have these basically did these reconciliation agreements with the Jolani's Jabhachinistra guys and the different so-called rebel groups, where if they gave up their heavy weapons, they'd be allowed to get on these buses and be sent to Idlib. And so that's all the fighters basically that were opposed to Assad, all the jihadis. They basically were collected into Idlib. And from there, under Turkish tutelage, funding, training, arming, that's where they, you know, trained and prepared over the next six years to go ahead and do the operation that happened a year ago.

So in Idlib, for example, until Assad fell, they used Turkish money. Anyone living in Idlib had a Turkish cell phone, that there were no Syrian phone numbers or cell towers there. They were all Turkish cell phones. Idlib is full of just basically a dumping ground for, like, excess Turkish products, produce, food, all these different things. So Idlib was basically a colony in Turkey. And then now that Jolani or after Jalani took power a year ago,

you know, it's pretty widely acknowledged that MIT, the Turkish intelligence service has offices in the big five-star hotels in downtown Damascus and that they are basically, you know, like Jolani's handlers. I mean, the British have advisors and officers in Jolani's office as well. but the Turks have a lot of influence. But from their perspective, again, Israel is trying to divide Syria into these weak ethnic enclaves that it can dominate. And a lot of people think that the Turks are opposed to that, that the Turks, because they are close with Jalani,

that they want to keep Syria unified and take over the entire country. but there's just no evidence for that. Like everything that Jolani does is leading to the country being divided up and the Turks will be quite happy to keep control of Idlib, basically. They'll be happy to take control of Aleppo. Erdogan is a neo-Ottoman, so he's always talking about how Aleppo really belongs to the, you know, is really a part of the old Ottoman Empire and should be restored to a new Ottoman Empire that he's trying to build.

Erdogan talks the same way about Mosul and Iraq. And the other thing that people need to remember is that Erdogan, even though he talks so strongly against Netanyahu, for example, he's always saying there's a genocide in Gaza, and he's always saying that Netanyahu is a criminal for what he's doing in Gaza. But at the same time, Erdogan has always collaborated very, very closely with the Israelis and the Americans. And again, Turkey is a NATO country. And there's an old clip that I, you know, came across recently where, from, like, 2006, where Erdogan is speaking to members of his own political party, like in, like, a rally just to his own supporters. And he says that he is, like, if I remember the wording right, a partner in the project for a new Middle East. In other words, he's a partner with the U.S. and Israel for their project to remake the Middle East,

which again included the Arab Spring in general, but also, you know, especially toppling the Syrian government. And there's a ton of collaboration between Erdogan and Netanyahu in terms of getting oil from Syria and from the Kurdish region in Iraq, getting oil from there, including oil sold by ISIS, for it to go through the Kurdish region and then into Turkey through the pipeline there and then put onto tankers and then sent to Israel

from 2014 on the Israelis were getting huge amounts of Israel from the Kurdish region all with the collaboration of Erdogan and again a lot of it was oil being sold by ISIS

if you'd like I can give me more details about that but then also Erdogan has continued to collaborate with Israel the entire time through the Gaza genocide all of Israel is now getting most of its oil

from Azerbaijan, which is, you know, Israel's close ally. But all that oil comes through a pipeline from Azerbaijan through Turkey and then again to the Sejan port on the coast and put in tankers and is sent to Haifa as well. So quite the rhetoric, Erdogan is an Israeli agent. It's pretty obvious and that's important to point out. So again, the Turkey won't mind dividing up Syria. You know, the Israelis will get the south with the Druze.

And even they'll try to connect Canatra that they've occupied and the Golan Heights that they've already been occupying, they'll try to connect that area to Drew's region, but then also the Israelis and the Americans effectively control the northeast through the Kurds, through the SDF. And if Turkey gets to keep the north and the northwest, you know, it's a good deal for everybody. Everybody just takes their piece of the pie, you know. Yeah. All right, we better go. Thank you so much for your time. everybody, please check out William Van Wagonen

at the Libertarian Institute. First and foremost, of course, Libertarian Institute.org and at the cradle and his really important new piece. I mean, this has really got to go viral. I mean, think of this. We got an al-Qaeda regime backed by America in Syria and, of course, acting like bin Ladenites

committing these horrible crimes against people. We got to let people know that, yeah, this is as bad as it sounds. This article is at the cradle, which is the cradle.co, the cradle.co, inside Syria's state-backed cover-up of Alawite women's kidnappings by William Van Wagonin, and you can see it behind me here. Check out his fantastic book. It's the best book, and I've read quite a few of them, I don't know, six or eight or

something, or probably not 10, six or eight books about Syria. This is the very best book about the Syrian Dirty War. It's called Creative Chaos. by William, our latest at the LibertyJane Institute, and you can find that at Libertjian Institute.org slash books. Thank you again, ma'am. Okay, thanks, Scott. Appreciate having me on.

Thank you for publishing my book. So I appreciate that. My pleasure to do it, believe me. The Scott Horton show is brought to you by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, Roberts & Roberts, Brokridge, Inc., Moondos Artisan Coffee, Tom Woods Liberty Classroom, and APS Radio News.

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