Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 3/7/25 William van Wagenen: A Deep Dive on the Situation in Syria

Episode Date: March 8, 2025

Scott brings William van Wagenen on to talk about what he observed on his recent trip to Syria. They dig into what’s happened since the Jihadists took control last December, often looking to parallels in the ISIS takeover of western Iraq about a decade ago. They also look at the broader geopolitical dynamic of the region and consider how all of this will play out in the next few years.  Discussed on the show: Van Wagenen’s article at The Libertarian Institute Van Wagenen’s article at The Cradle William Van Wagenen 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 This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4 you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right you guys introducing once again william van wagonin he is a great journalist at the canary and also at the libertarian institute you might remember we published his extremely long-form articles about Obama's dirty war in Syria 10 years ago and in the time since. And now he has put together this great book, Creative Chaos, Inside the CIA's Covert War to

topple the Syrian government. And he's just back from Syria as well. And, oh, and I was going to say, we were about to publish the book. And then there was a big regime change in December. And so the book got put on hold. And William went to Syria. and now he's back again. That's how I should have introduced him. So welcome home. How are you and what all is going on in the world, William? Oh, hey, Scott.

Nice to talk to you again. It's been quite a while, but yeah, I'm doing okay. Like you said, I was just in Syria for a couple months. So that was really crazy and interesting experience. I hope you didn't get kidnapped this time. No, I didn't have. have any trouble, thank God. But, you know, today I'm sure

maybe your listeners already are watching the news, but there's a ton of stuff happening today and the situation's getting pretty bad, so I'm sure we can talk about that as well. Yeah, well, so what is happening today? Well, over the past couple of days in the coastal areas, Latakia, Tartouz, there have been, you know,

new fighting has erupted between what the new HTS-led government says are Assad regime remnants. And they've been attacking some of the Syrian, the security forces from the new Syrian government and the security forces from the new Syrian government, the HTS guys formerly, the al-Qaeda's Nistra front, they've been rampaging through villages on the coast and killing and massacring people.

So it's getting bad. there have been a lot of massacres of Alawites in the past, you know, a couple of months since the government fell in December. And then we started to see some HTS security forces getting killed. And now there's just this massive campaign. HTS is gathering fighters from all across the country. Also SNA fighters, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army from the north of the country. They're coming down to the coastal areas. And, yeah, yeah, there's just a lot of people getting.

and killed I saw maybe 140 reported maybe an hour ago and even I just had a friend from Syria tell me that HTS guys had entered his parents home and killed his dad just last night so it's getting yeah it's getting really bad and the Israelis are just are just laughing all the way as the Syrians kill each other so it's really bad situation well I was told this was the advent of multi-party democracy and secularism? Well, yeah, yeah, I mean, the new government that came to power, I mean, they are Salafis, and again, HTS originally was the Nistrafunt, and before that, al-Qaeda in Iraq, so basically an offshoot of ISIS. And so their ideology is very,

sectarian. And, you know, the Syrian government, including many Alawites, they, you know, did a lot about things to Sunnis too during the war. I mean, wars are that way where both sides do really terrible things. So there's elements of revenge against Alawites broadly. Even innocent Alawites had nothing to do with the war, and there's also, you know, Alawites again, just trying to protect themselves from the Salafists who, you know, for years have been calling for genocide against Alawites. That was a slogan early on in the so-called Syrian Revolution was, you know, Christians to Beirut and Alawites to the grave.

Those were really chants that were common early on in 2011, 2012. when all of this started. So, yeah, it's just a big mess. Man, it's just terrible. So what do we really know about Turkey and America and Israel's role in helping al-Qaeda, HTS, Hyatt Terrier, Al-Shan break out of the Idlib province there and sack the, what, four or five major cities

that amount to the nation state of Syria here last December? Well, it's hard to know the exact Israeli role. Of course, they keep it very quiet. But we know that Israel supported the Nistra front for years, especially when Nusra took control of a lot of areas along the Syrian border, or sorry, the Israeli border and the occupied Golan Heights. You know, Israeli military and intelligence officials have admitted many times that they supported Nusra. And then, you know, there's a lot of American support for ISIS when they took over

Mosul. I wrote a detailed article about that. I mean, they had all American weapons, ISIS did, and they entered Mosul under an agreement with Masoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in northern Iraq there. So there's U.S. support for ISIS that's evident. Depends on how long you want to go back. But in terms of the... the actual HTS taking over Damascus in December, in late November, just as Israel and Hezbollah reached the ceasefire in Lebanon, HTS launched the attack first on Aleppo. They had been preparing for years. They'd had a lot of weapons and training from the Turks especially.

So from the time the war that started in 2011 kind of ended in 2018, and many of these Nusra fighters and other guys from other opposition factions got in the buses and headed to Idlib. For those like six or seven years, they were just being trained and preparing with a lot of help from the Turks and from the Americans. And then when the actual assault happened, there was basically almost no resistance in many places. In Aleppo, there's basically no resistance from the Syrian army. There was a lot of talk that the Russians had betrayed the Syrian army by cutting off their communications equipment.

So they were basically in the dark and couldn't really respond to the HTS attack. And then typically the Russians would have done airstrikes to back up the Syrian army. And there were a few like token Russian air strikes, but they didn't even target HTS fighters. They actually just killed some civilians in Aleppo, like the Aleppo. University Hospital was bombed. That's a place I visited when I was there. This other roundabout at the entrance to Aleppo was bombed. But it's not even actually, to be honest, clear that the Russians even did those bombings,

even though those bombings were attributed to them. At any rate, it looks like probably like in mid-November, about two weeks before the assault started, there was like a meeting under the Astana framework. I think it was in Qatar. and the Turks and the Russians and the Iranians all met there. And it seems like there was a deal done between the Turks and the Russians to basically let Assad fall. So that's why there was basically no resistance in most of the way that HTS was coming towards Damascus. There was some fighting in Hama in the Jabal-Abidin area.

and Hama there's like a lot of Syrian military bases so that was kind of a key place and once Hama fell it was kind of all downhill from there and then Jolani got to Damascus and another group kind of an FSA group that had reconciled and joined the Syrian army with Russian assistance back in like 2018 they flipped they're led by a commander named Ahmed al-auda they flipped and so they came to damascus and actually beat uh jolani there but again due to the agreement which seemed to be between russia turkey the u.s israel um you know jolani took took power and became the president yeah so and this was the part where net yahoo took credit was because he'd been beaten up on hasbala so bad they weren't available to help back up

the syrian regime and i guess the russians are just busy in ukulean Crane was their biggest obstacle to intervening here, right, is it would have just been too little too late compared to what they were up against. I mean, it took them 10 days to seize, what, four cities? And then that was it, right? Yeah, and there had been, you know, fighting, obviously, for like 14 years over a lot of these areas. And so it was crazy that happened in 10 days.

So, again, it's pretty clear it was done through some type of an agreement. And I think, you know, Netanyahu, even when he took credit, he said that the, Israelis had threatened to bomb any Iranian or shoot down any Iranian planes that tried to come and help. And then as you mentioned, Russia is weakened by what's happening in Ukraine. And then Hezbollah was weakened by that brutal two-month campaign in Lebanon. I was in Lebanon in Beirut for that. So saw a ton of the destruction in the Beirut suburbs and other places. And, yeah, Hezbollah was just really weakened. So it was no accident that that HTS assault began on November 27th, like the morning that the ceasefire

between Hezbollah and Israel went into effect. So Israel has just been really, you know, sad to say that they've just been so successful at taking out their enemies one by one. You know, before October 7th, there was this idea of the unity of fronts that there was access of resistance that between Iran, Hezbollah, Syria, Hamas. And they could all potentially fight Syria at the same time and attack Syria or from all fronts or fight or sorry, fight Israel on all fronts. And instead the Israelis have just taken out one front after another and managed to just like delay, you know, take care of one enemy first in Gaza, then take care of another one in Lebanon and take care of another one in Syria. And I guess we'll see if Iran is really next. But so I think that, you know, this is all part of a broader campaign by the Israelis for, you know, to defeat their enemies, to expand and create a greater Israel, to annex Gaza, to annex parts of southern Lebanon, to annex parts of Syria.

And just like Bezal Smotrich talks about, you know, they want it in the end, they've always wanted to go to Damascus. That's part of Zionist ideology. So it hasn't happened yet, but they're already pretty close. They're not far away. Well, yeah, I think this is just a huge win for them. Finally, I mean, the Palestinians are still there and the Shiites in southern Lebanon are still there. I guess maybe that's less and less true. They are cleansing southern Lebanon. I'll let you go on at length about that. I'm anxious to find out all about that and all about their recent annexations of territory in Syria and threats of more and all of that too. But Just getting the Alawites out of there. Iran's friends is like everything to Israeli strategy here, even if it's the bin Ladenites. And this is what even David Wormser said back in 1996 was, yeah, yeah, yeah, Islamist fundamentalism. Well, you know what? We're going to need better allies against Islamist fundamentalist terrorists than the Baathists. And even after September 11th and Iraq War II and then the Caliphate and Iraq War III and all that, that same. logic remains from the American Hawks. Better Al-Qaeda than Iran's friends. And so here we are. Like, they actually followed through. And I guess this was the frustration 10 years ago, William, right? Was that dang Al-Qaeda went east and conquered Western Iraq. And that was embarrassing and bad. And they had to blow it up again. But they were supposed to go west and take Damascus. And it would

have been fine. And that's what they got this time is what they wanted back then. So, but then, back to the news this morning these guys are no different than ISIS. They are bin Ladenite cooks who drag men alive through the streets in the worst form of lynching when it happens in Texas you know this is like the worst thing

you can do and I see people getting executed just in my feed this morning on X of what's going on in Latakia and the rest. So I guess if I can lead into a question tell me about this guy Jolani

Clearly, he's been to Swiss finishing school and has been, you know, trained by American and Turkish public relations experts that he should cut off heads less and suicide bomb less. And here he took the capital city, so he's got no real need to do suicide attacks against anyone at this point. But so they essentially told him to tone down the worst of the crazy and then we'll support you and you'll be all right, right? But then the thing is, is he is still crazy and all the people around him are still a bunch of been like. Mladenite kooks who had just as soon cut a kid's head off. They don't care. These guys are, we saw how they were 10 years ago. They are suicide bomber types in the bin Ladenite mold.

And so how moderate can we expect these people who were never moderate rebels to be in power? Even after what's happening, even after they're done vanquishing the Alawites, then what are they going to do? Yeah, I mean, I, I, I, I, I, I guess real quick to go back to a previous point. I just kind of view what happened in Iraq that that was part of the Israeli or the U.S. strategy because they always, you know, according to the Annan plan, they always want to divide Arab countries into ethnic enclaves that are weak and destroy any powerful Arab army. And so I view what ISIS did in 2014 as part of that Israeli strategy. Again, there's tons of collaboration between Masoud Barzani and the Kurds and ISIS, both to take over Mosul and to do the genocide of the Yazidis.

Remind the people who's Masu Barzani. And he's kind of the main Kurdish leader in the northern autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq. And Masu Barzani has been close with the Israelis. The Barzani family has been close with the Israelis for decades, Israeli until. intelligence is really strong in Kurdistan, and that's always been part of the Israeli project is to encourage an independent Kurdish state. So anyways, I just view, maybe our views differ a little bit. I just view what happened in Iraq is a very deliberate U.S.-Israeli Kurdish policy

and the rise of ISIS there and everything they did, especially to the Yazidis. Masu Barsani really wanted to incorporate Sinjar into an independent Kurdish state. So he had to get rid of the Yazidis and everything. ethnically cleanse them. But he used ISIS as a proxy to do that. That way he could kind of avoid blame and claim that he's fighting ISIS and beg the West, the Germans, the Americans for weapons when, in fact, Masoud Barzani's been a major sponsor of ISIS and before that Al-Qaeda in Iraq. But as far as Jalani, mean, again, yeah, he's- Well, actually, we'll hold the Jalani thing. Yeah, that's all really interesting and important.

And so, first of all, certainly everything that you're saying there, like, I don't know about that, but I, of course, trust your journalism. And we've talked off the air about this, about what you found out about this, the Iraqi Kurdish leader backing the Islamic State to get his dirty work done. And I guess, you know, my thinking is based around at the time that they didn't really mind that ISIS was playing such hardball with Baghdad because they needed Baghdad to be afraid and need us, hopefully more than their Iranian friends next door and co-religious next door, which was stupid. But that was part of it. But then once Baghdad, he was up there declaring himself the caliph, you know, at the grand mosque in Mosul and all that. They had to blow that up again, and then they did. They allied with the Shiites again, in fact, even flying directly as air cover for the Kud's force into Crete in the war to destroy the caliphate that they built. So I guess my impression always was, and this is like John Kerry in the secret recording, this is what he's lamenting, right, is that, well, we saw the rise of ISIS, we thought we could manage, we thought we could use them to pressure Assad to step aside, but then they went east and took over Western Iraq.

And so what are you going to do? Al Nusra can't take Damascus without ISIS. So we're going to just call it quits here because we're stuck out of options at that point, right? So it seemed like at that point Baghdaddy was not necessarily doing exactly what the State Department wanted him to do. But maybe I'm wrong. Well, I guess it's like if you can create the caliphate or create the rise of ISIS, then that gives you the pretext to intervene and move in and then and then take over territory that ISIS previously occupied and then say, oh, well, yes, we're now the U.S., now we're occupying

Eastern Syria because we conquered it from ISIS or the Kurds could say, oh, yeah, now we're occupying Sinjar because we conquered it. And you're right that we're back in Iraq for the long term because of that. And I don't think it's much of a surprise, you know, especially in hindsight, but even at the time that they sacked Mosul in June and Obama didn't start bombing them until August. So he was given ISIS plenty of time to consolidate in the West and to threaten Baghdad. Not that they could really take Baghdad, but to make Baghdad nervous and need V for Vendetta dictator to, you know, why they need us kind of thing. Yeah, and the only reason I know a lot of this is because I spent so much time talking to Yazidis.

And so, for example, Yazidis are always say that the U.S., when they started doing those airstrikes, like Obama announced that I'm going to go in and degrade and destroy ISIS, and then James Foley was killed. And so that was all over the news and cemented in the minds of everybody that ISIS was our enemy. But Yuzites, I'm talking so, talk to so many Yazidis that say, we were begging the U.S. for air strikes, begging them, including in Cocho. where the biggest massacre of the Yazidi genocide took place on August, like, 14th. It's the 12th or 14th, I forget. And for months after that, Yazidis were saying, look, they're begging for airstrikes to stop massacres. And the U.S. refused. Obama, Ben Rhodes, all these guys refused to launch the airstrikes.

They were just sitting there watching the massacres take place on through their satellite feeds and their drone feeds. And Yazidis would say the Americans, sometimes they would bomb, but they would just bomb like, open areas. And so even probably the biggest expert on the Yazidi genocide is a guy named Matthew Barber, who was on the ground at the time in Tohook when the genocide happened. And he's doing a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, and he helped found the Syria comment website that Joshua Landis runs that everybody knows about. But Matthew Barber always talks about how he was involved in the lobbying efforts to try

to get the U.S. to take some action to save Yazidis. And a lot of these women that were taken as sex slaves in August, they would be held in these safe houses near Talafer or Mosul or different places. And, you know, some of the women had managed to, like, sneak cell phones underneath their clothes with them. And so they were calling and telling their relatives where they were. And Yazidis, who had previously worked as translators for the U.S. Army, you know, during, like, 2008, 2009, those times, they were calling U.S. officials and saying, hey, if you can just drop, you know, one bomb near this house, there's like 30, 40 Yazidi women only being guarded by like three, four ISIS fighters. If you can just drop a bomb near the house, the ISIS fighters will flee and these women can escape. Please do it, please do it. And the U.S., they never would. They never would do it. And so then after about three, four months, finally the women all got sold off in the ISIS markets to different.

different places to Turkey, to Syria. A lot of them were sold and actually held captive in Kurdistan, like in Halabja. And anyway, so the U.S. war against ISIS was kind of a fake war. These air strikes were, for the first several months, they were kind of fake. And it wasn't until later, probably late 2015, that the U.S. really then tilted and then partnered with the YPG or the offshoot of the PKK, which they rebranded as the Syrian Democratic forces. Eastern Syria, that was when they really said,

okay, now that the caliphate has expanded and has been created, now we can go ahead and destroy it. And with our Kurdish partners, we can occupy these territories directly and take control of Syrian oil and then use that as leverage against the Assad government moving forward. So anyway, I do see it as just all part of, the plan i guess rather than um kind of bumbling or mistakes or things like that wow i don't think

anybody said it was a mistake um uh other than in the most ironical sense you know um well look i mean first of all they use the attacks on the azidis as their excuse to start a rock war three and um but the way i remember it and this is a question is this true that by the time the Americans got there at Mount Sinjar, that the remaining Yazidis told them to beat it. The ones who wanted rescuing were already saved by the Syrian Kurds from the YPG who had come and evacuated them out of there. Was that right?

Yeah, I mean, the U.S., they just dropped kind of like token amounts of water and food on top of Mount Sinjar when, you know, huge numbers of people had fled to the mountain to the top of the mountain to escape ISIS. And so again, the U.S., it was just very cosmetic, whether it was dropping food and water or whether it was bombing ISIS, it was just, like, totally cosmetic. And one way you can know that it was more premeditated between the Kurds and the Americans. What happened is by looking at what happened before ISIS invaded Sinjar. So after ISIS had taken Mosul, and I've written an article.

talking about how there was a deal between ISIS and Barzani to take Mosul. But after ISIS took Mosul, Sinjar was surrounded on basically three sides or more by ISIS. And Yazidis, between June when Mosul fell in August when the genocide actually happened, they were scared to death and many of them wanted to leave Sinjar and escaped like the Kurdish region to Erbil or to Dohuk. But Masoud Barzani's Kurdish Peshmerga wouldn't let anybody leave. They wouldn't let people leave Sinyar, even though these Yazidis just saw their territory surrounded by ISIS. And many of them said, we need to leave and escape. On top of that, the Peshmerga was going house to house and confiscating weapons of Yazidis

and taking their weapons away and saying, oh, don't worry, we'll protect you. The main Peshmerga commander in Sinjar, he said, You know, to the last drop of Kurdish blood, we will protect the Yazidis. He was saying that on TV. And they did the same thing to the Christians in the Nineve Plain in towns like Bartella, Karakosh. They took all their weapons away. And then both in the Nineve Plain and in Sinjar, as soon as ISIS invaded in early August, the Peshmerga in a totally organized, totally organized fashion, they turned around.

they fled Sinjar and just let ISIS walk right in and just start mastering and taking everyone as sex slaves. So again, they're just looking at what happened immediately before the ISIS genocide of the Yazidis and also the ethnic cleansing of the Christians in the Nineve Plain. They disarmed both communities. They trapped them both, prevented them from escaping, and then let ISIS come in and massacre the Yazidis, take the women that's sex slaves and, again, ethnically cleanse the Christians. So to me, that was part of a broader plan on the part of the U.S., and Barzani, and Turkish intelligence, too, to allow ISIS to take over large portions of Iraq, which would give both the Kurds and the U.S.

the pretext to then come in later and, you know, reconquer or retake or liberate that territory from ISIS. And then the Kurds could, you know, hold on to Sinjar as part of a potential Kurdish state. You know, right after the Yazidi genocide, Masoud Barzani was talking about doing a referendum to declare Kurdish independence. He finally ended up doing that, you know, three years later in, was it, 2017. And then there's kind of same pattern again in Syria, where ISIS took over eastern Syria, Raqa, Der Azor. areas. And then it just gave the perfect pretext for the U.S. partnering with Kurds again to come in and take that territory from ISIS and then have an excuse to just stay there, you know, until today, occupying the oil fields and, you know, U.S. forces are still in

attempt on the Syria, Jordan, Iraq border, always under the pretext of fighting ISIS. And it just gives them all this strategic territory that, of course, comes in really handy now. Well, and I think the point always was blocking that land bridge in the name of ISIS, really being there to block the Shiites to prevent Iran from being able to use Syria to back Hezbollah and all that because that's Israel's interest. But let me ask you this. Exactly. Exactly. Yep. Hey, y'all, let me tell you about Roberts & Roberts, Brokerage, Inc. Nobody trusts the U.S. dollar anymore. Foreign governments are stocking up on gold instead of $100 bills.

One, they know they need to, and two, that means you need to too. Interest rates are up, but for some reason not much for savings accounts. Park your money there and watch Uncle Joe Biden just counterfeit its value away. You can see how the Fed is afraid to raise rates to beat inflation for fear of popping the current bubbles, at least before the election. So more inflation it will continue to be. Gold is your shield against monetary and price inflation, just like it always has been. Now Tim Fry and the guys over at Roberts and Roberts are recommending gold over silver

since the world's almost 200 governments are putting their own pressure on the price, which should help everyone else who make similar calls on their own. Of course, Roberts and Roberts can help you with platinum, palladium, and silver as well as gold. Don't let the Fed and the war party inflate all your savings away. look up Roberts and Roberts at R-R-R-B-I.C-O. That's R-R-R-B-I.C-O. Hey, you guys, the audiobook of Provoked is out. Okay, well, I've started posting the chapters at my substack,

Scott Hortonshow.com, and my Patreon, patreon.com slash Scott Horton's show. You, of course, already bought and read the book and gave extras to your friends and reviewed it positively on Amazon.com. But now you want to listen to me, read the dang thing out loud, right? Subscribe today. Scott Horton Show.com. Hey, y'all, Libertasbella.com is where you get Scott Horton's show and Libertarian Institute shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and stickers and things,

including the great top lobstas designs as well. See, that way it says on your shirt, why you're so smart. Libertas Bella, from the same great folks who bring you ammo.com for all your ammunition needs, too. That's libretasbella.com. Hey, y'all, got kids or nephews or anything? You know about the Tuttle Twins books, right? Libertarian lessons about life, liberty, truth, and the state. It's really great stuff.

And hey, did you guys know I'm a Tuttle Twin? Or, well, I'm a character in their world now. Skater Scott, local vert dog, and anti-government know it all. They introduced me in a short book last year, and I hear they're going to develop my character's story a bit more in the future. Cool, right? Anyway, they're now celebrating 10 years and having sold millions of these books. And now they're giving away free magazine at TuttleTwins.com slash 10 years.

There's no shipping charge, they're not going to ask for your credit card. It's just a free magazine. The gimmick is that inside the magazine, they've got a really great deal to get all the books, the best deal they've ever offered, which you will certainly want to take them up on. So go to tuteltwins.com slash 10 years for your free magazine,

and someday, hopefully soon, you and your kids will be reading all about the libertarian antics of cartoon me, along with all my new pals. That's tuttledwins.com slash 10 years. Yeah, okay, but so let me ask you this, because I always wondered this. I don't know, I probably, I don't think I predicted this out loud then, but I remember, maybe I did, or at least asked experts about it at the time, but I was always curious.

So I never really understood why Erdogan didn't send his forces in on ISIS's heels when they took over Mosul. It seemed like that was the smart bet was, because he, after all, you know, the Saudis and the Turks were the biggest fight. direct financiers of the Islamic State at the time and seemed like that made perfect sense to use these cooks as his shock troops to actually take the territory and then his army would just come in and expand the borders of Turkey into northern Iraq and start reestablishing his real caliphate based in Istanbul right but then or Ankara so but that never happened and I wondered why did you think that the Americans told him not to or that was not his plan at the time or still isn't because it seems like he's a pretty ambitious guy and he was back in those ISIS guys for some reason yeah I think well he did do that to to a certain extent so a lot of Yazidis say as well that the Turkish consul in Mosul was basically the real governor of the of Nineveh province so Athelanujafi was a Iraqi Sunni Arab who was the governor, but he was known to basically be taking orders from the Turkish consul.

And so I think on the Turkish end, they had such direct support, or they provided such direct support and had such direct collaboration with ISIS that they felt like ISIS could basically govern Mosul as a proxy. And then, you know, they would eventually try to incorporate Mosul into Turkey again because it was part of the old Ottoman Empire. So that, you know, the neo-Ottomans like Erdogan, they still talk about Mosul. as really belonging to them. But they did actually try to intervene and take some control directly because as soon as ISIS took over, they established a big military base in this kind of small mountain range, just barely north of Mosul,

in the hills above a Yazidi town called Bashika. And so the Turks had a military base there. I think they even still have it. And until just recently, you know, maybe until at least a year ago or a year and a half ago, the Hashid Ashahabi was like showing up and like covertly like shelling the base and people in Bashika were getting mad because the missiles from the Hashid Ashahbi were sometimes hitting the city. And then Erdogan also tried to establish his own like Sunni type of popular mobilization or Hashidashabhi army as well. but the Iranians came in with the Shia Hashid Ashahbi and then the Americans came in so Turkey kind of got squeezed out

I mean they did get that base in Bashika and to this day you know now the Turks are occupying large parts of northern Iraq with basically with the cooperation or permission of Masu Barzani's KDP so that was kind of the game that everyone was playing is that if ISIS comes in and takes over this territory then everyone thought they could be the one to go in and then retake control of those areas.

But there was a lot of competition, you know. So the U.S. had to join in on that because Qasem Soleimani and the Shia were going to go liberate Mosul. So the U.S. had to jump in on the same side and it's like, oh, we're going to help too. And so they could be the ones to kind of control the outcome and squeeze out the Shia. And the Turks jumped into establishing that base in Bashika. the Iranians in Qasem Soleimani and their Shia forces, Iraqi Shia forces, were the ones that, you know, kind of most successful in controlling that area later. But, of course, the U.S. was successful in doing that in Syria, in Derezoor, Haseka, Maraca, et cetera.

And that's why those areas are still under U.S. control today because it was much harder for the Iranians to intervene in those areas of Syria. I mean, the Russians tried with the Syrian Army, and they, you know, moved towards, they were retaking territory from ISIS, and they basically hit the U.S. and SDF forces at the Euphrates River. So the Syrian Army and the Russians, they got the territory south and west of the Euphrates River, but the U.S. and the Kurds got the territory north and east, and the U.S. and Kurds, you know, were lucky enough to get all the territory with most of the oil. And there's that Syria analyst Hassan Hassan, who writes some interesting stuff, but he's kind of in bed with the neo-conservatives. But he described that as basically like he likened it to the race to Berlin in World War II where the U.S. and the Allies were racing to take Berlin and the Russians were racing and they got there kind of at the same time and divided the city.

there was a similar race to Berlin or a race to Der Azur between the U.S. and the Kurds on the one hand, and then the Russians and the Syrian army on the other to try to get that, retake that territory from ISIS. So anyways, to me it seems like the U.S. was deliberately supporting ISIS, as were these other allies, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, as you mentioned, because it gave them then a pretext to come in and conquer that territory from ISIS and then just maintain a permanent presence. And as you mentioned, the real reason was to prevent the Iranians and the Syrian army from controlling it. And that would give the U.S. leverage moving forward.

So even if they didn't topple Damascus, at that time, it was okay because they still had this major pressure they could put on the Syrian government by way of controlling the oil fields, combined with the U.S. sanctions, the Caesar sanctions, combined with having allies in Idlib, you know, the Nusra Front controlling Idlib. and creating the largest al-Qaeda safe haven since 9-11, as Brett McGurk said. The U.S. had all those tools to just keep the pressure on Syria. And then, of course, in December, we saw that that strategy proved totally successful. And one thing that was interesting about being in Syria is that seeing the effect of those sanctions. You know, you always kind of read about sanctions like in Iraq. In the 90s, they killed, as everybody knows, maybe half a million Iraqis, mostly children and women. But then similar sanctions were put on Syria and, you know, by visiting there and seeing

how impoverished people were and hearing people talk about the changes that happened, especially after 2019, like Assad lost tons of support between 2019 and 2024 because those sanctions were so crushing and they didn't have access to the oil. And also the Assad government was behaving largely like a mafia, I mean, as the economic situation got worse. They just kind of stole more and more from people. Mahara al-Assad had the fourth division that was setting up checkpoints all across the country. And so just to drive from like Beirut to or the Lebanon border to Damascus, you had to pay like $50 in bribes, whether in cash or in cigarettes to the soldiers. If you were trying to import anything, you had to pay these huge

fees at all the checkpoints. And between the sanctions and Assad, government being so corrupt and just stealing from people, you know, Assad was very popular in 2010, 2011, but as the war went on and the atrocities committed by the opposition forces, including Nusra and ISIS, and then the corruption that took hold in the Assad government and all the people they detained and put in the prisons who were killed, you know, by 2024, I mean Assad just didn't have any popularity left, even though in 2011 he was very popular and people describe that period before the war as they say syria was like heaven you know and now it's it's it's like hell man sorry long long winded answer i'm sorry for that no that's what

i'm here for man for real um so all right well while i get my head together about that tell us about your new book so in the in the book you know i uh It was largely finished writing it a couple years ago, and then I've been really slow about finishing getting the final touches put on it. And then, of course, all these events happen, so it's getting delayed a little bit more. And I learned some new things by being in Syria for these last couple months by being able to just freely talk to so many people that I need to, you know, make some adjustments. But it talks really about the origins of the war and the origins of the U.S. and Israeli project to topple the Syrian government as part of, the Arab Spring. So the Arab Spring protests were planned by the Obot.

Well, they started planning them under the, under Bush, and then the planning continued under Obama. And this is kind of overlooked, although it was reported in the New York Times and the Washington Post. The Obama administration had a series of meetings in late 2010 between the CIA,

the National Security Council, the State Department. And they issued presidential study directive 11, it was called, and it talked about toppling all the Arab governments, including the governments already allied to the U.S. Through color revolution style protests, and they trained all these activists to use technology like Facebook and things like that. And so they launched the Arab Spring. So my book goes into all the details of that. and then in addition to launching orchestrating and sparking these protests throughout all those Arab countries in Syria, the U.S. took it a step further and they released a bunch of al-Qaeda leaders or Islamic state leaders from the prison in Iraq and Buka and sent all these guys to Syria even in late 2010, which the great journalist Theo Padnos, detailed in his book about, you know, how he talks, how he details his experience being kidnapped by the

Nusra front for two years. He details all of that, how these Al-Qaeda fighters entered from Iraq to Syria in late 2010, preparing for launching an insurgency under the cover of the protests. And so when the protests erupted, again, with the backing of all these U.S.-trained activists, the Al-Qaeda guys had infiltrated into Syria, and they joined with local Salafist groups, supported by these sectarian solifist preachers based in Saudi Arabia, like Muhammad Sorosin al-Abidin, and they were attacking Syrian security forces, kind of carrying out false flag style of killings, very similar to what we saw in Ukraine in 2014 with all the snipers in the Maidan. And that just blew things up. So my book talks

about the buildup to that, and then basically the first two years of the war in really pretty close detail, talking about all the propaganda, a lot of the false flag massacres. And it really culminates in talking about the false flag massacre in Guta in 2013. Assad was blamed for this huge chemical attack in Damascus suburbs, supposedly using Sarin. and that was meant to trigger the Western intervention that the Israelis and Saudis and the Turks wanted and the CIA wanted, but Obama got cold feet. And then from there, Western intervention was kind of off the table, but they continue to flood the country with these Salafist al-Qaeda militants. And it kind of went from there. But yeah, the book covers the buildup to the war and all the preparation on the U.S. and the Israeli side.

And then those major events and all like the propaganda and the false flag incidents that took place in the first two years that built up to the chemical attack and the failed Western intervention in 2013. And all that, I guess, you know, you would you would refer to as Operation Timber Sycamore, which is the name the CIA had for the big operation. And then so tell us about the new chapter. The new chapter is going to be essentially just an afterward or a whole new thing or what? Well, after, you know, after being in Syria, I mean, talking to a lot of people, I just realized that a lot of people disappeared in the government prisons. And, you know, there have always been reports about that, but a lot of them came from these human rights groups that had been supported, you know, funded by the U.S. and Qatar. and so I was skeptical of the reports but after being there

I just made it a point to ask people if they had known anyone who disappeared in the prisons and a lot of people said yes a lot of people I talked to said yeah I have a brother or I have a friend or I have a relative who was picked up at a checkpoint and I didn't have anything

in the book about that and so I wanted to include something about it Like I mentioned before, the outside government was very popular in 2011, but in the course of the war, I mean, you know, both sides just ended up doing terrible things to each other, and that included the Syrian government side too, and the mafia kind of nature of the Syrian government became much, much worse throughout the war. I mean, that always happens. You know, wars cause, you know, don't make people do nice things or behave in nice ways. At any rate, I wanted to include a chapter of that. A lot of people were abducted and kidnapped and killed by the opposition side, by Nistra, by ISIS. But I didn't have anything about the government prisons. And I just talked to so many people who had relatives disappear that I wanted to add a chapter about that. Okay.

And then, but the book still stops at the lead up to the last war. So you don't really cover what's happening now other than what you've learned. from people recently about what happened then. Is that correct? Yeah, I mean, I have, there is a brief afterward. Hey, you got to draw the line somewhere, or at least I've heard that. I don't have any experience with that, but apparently authors are supposed to stop writing eventually. Well, you gave me some good advice not to write a 600-page book, so I cut it off.

And, yeah, so I don't, you know, again, because the book ends basically the end of 2013 with the failed Western intervention after the chemical attack. um the rest of the war i i don't cover so i just you know have like basically one little afterward talking about what happened you know just barely in 20 24 um so it puts just a small amount of closure on it but the main thing is like that issue with the prisons was really bad and people disappearing uh was really bad starting in 2012 2013 during that exact same time period So that fit into the to the chronology or the time frame of the book that I had already written. But I just, that aspect was missing.

And I felt like it would be too one-sided to just ignore all those people disappearing in the prisons. All right. So please talk to us for a little bit if he could about Israeli encroachments into southern Lebanon and into Syria itself. I think they took a mountain and everything, right? Yeah, so, I mean, again, that's the thing is that the Israelis, you know, why I believe the Israelis were, you know, behind supporting HTS and taking over the government or taking over the country along with the Turks and the Americans. I mean, the Americans immediately recognized the government and took the $10 million bounty

off of Jolani's head, which kind of indicates it was just fake and for show to begin with. But the Israelis, as soon as the government fell in the Syria, Syrian army collapsed. They did this massive bombing campaign, like 480 air strikes within like 48 hours, to just totally decimate what remained of the weapons of the Syrian army. And that's something that actually the Israelis were hoping to accomplish with the Western intervention back in 2013 after the Guta false flag attack. Seymour Hirsch talks about how the target set that they had established. was meant to eliminate the last vestiges of the entire Syrian army, like it was going to be this huge, huge series of strikes back in 2013. And when Obama got cold feet and realized he was getting kind of pushed into this trap and he would get blamed for everything if it went wrong, he backed out. But the Israelis finally got the chance to destroy the Syrian army

and make sure that there would not be any strong Arab army in Syria in the first. foreseeable future. When Jolani invaded and the Syrian army was not there, you know, there was no one there to use the air defenses or to use anti-tank missiles that they had built up in Kunaitra and all these areas. So then the Israelis occupied additional territory in Syria. Of course, they already occupied the Golan Heights back in 1967. And there was a demilitarized zone that was established in 1974. And so the Anyways, the Israelis took the opportunity also to just, you know, take more territory in the, in the buffer zone to capture Mount Hermon, which is right on the border. And that's the strategic, you know, heights in the area. So now they can, you know, easily overlook Damascus and hit it with artillery. And they took areas in the Yarmouk Basin, where there's a lot of water, areas that ISIS had actually occupied previously when, you know, Israel was supporting ISIS. in Nusra on that southern border back during the war in 2013, 14, 15. So, again, the Jolani taking over Syria, it's just been a godsend for the Israelis,

and it's, again, in my view, part of their project or something, they help facilitate. So now what's interesting, of course, is that rather than just letting Jolani take control of the full country and try to establish some stability, They're continuing to support the Kurds and telling the Kurds not to reconcile with the Syrian government, the new government under Jolani. And also the Israelis, like today, for example, the foreign minister, Gideon Saar, he's coming out and making these really aggressive statements calling Jolani a terrorist. And look, this is the true face and look how evil they are, et cetera, et cetera, because of all these massacres of the Alawites that are going on. So even though Syria has totally supported Nusra for all those years, and they supported them taking over Syria in December,

and it's been a godsend for them to occupy new territory. Now they're trying to make sure that the Syrian government under Jolani is not given any legitimacy and is demonized, in this case, fairly, for mass-occurring Alawites. But you can see that the Israelis, they don't want to let Syria just recover and become a prosperous country again, they're just going to keep it weak, keep it divided,

make sure that the civil war keeps going on because that's what they need. They need Alawites to kill Sunnis. They need Sunnis to hate Christians. They need Drues to hate Sunnis. They need Kurds to hate Sunni Arabs. This is how Israel maintains their hegemony in the region is just to make sure every country around them

is totally divided and balkanized. and um well as it says in the yannan plan the ussr is about to conquer the whole world so this is their only option that is the basis of that entire stupid thing but um so um you know i'm not sure if you're aware of this but uh you need to be i guess we all do that this is the narrative in the wall street journal israel sees growing threat in islamist trying to unify syria so they may not have a sense of irony but they do have a great sense of humor in a way, you know, that like, oh no, everybody, look, somehow a bunch of al-Qaeda types got sway in Damascus. And so now, as you said, we got to completely

decimate, and which just right there, what does that tell you just in body language, that they didn't decimate Assad's army and Navy and weapons stores and all that the whole time. But as soon as al-Qaeda took over, which is exactly what they wanted to happen, and bragged about helping happen by bombing Syria and Hasbalah so much and all of these things, as we already discussed, as soon as al-Qaeda takes over, they say, well, this is the excuse, now we have to bomb their military out of the face of the earth, now we have to occupy all this land. Part of this article in the journal, or maybe it's a separate article in the journal,

is how, of course, they have to protect the Druze from al-Qaeda, or al-Qaeda will kill the Druze. And so that might be news to the people of Sheba Farms and the Golan Heights there, are on the Golan Heights and the rest of that. Oh, the Israelis are your wonderful, uh, beneficent protectors and, and, uh, security force here, but that's the way they're spinning it is just like you were saying about ISIS 10 years ago.

Oh no, look, Al Qaeda, more excuse to intervene. In fact, I've been predicting this for a long time that, or well, since December. Once Damascus fell that, are they really going to just allow this? I mean, maybe if Erdogan, like we were talking about before, if Erdogan just ends up coming in to take over the whole thing, then that'd be one thing. Are they really going to let this guy Jolani or worse rule Damascus for the medium, long-term type situation here? I don't see how that's really any more tenable than leaving Baghdaddy in there, you know?

Yeah, I mean, they could get rid of him now that, you know, his usefulness, I mean, I guess he's still useful to them because if they keep up with the terrorism rhetoric, and the rhetoric of now Israel is going to protect the Alawites and Israel is going to protect the Druze. You know, again, it just gives them the continued pretext to keep the sanctions on, to keep occupying more land for the Israelis to say, oh, we can't withdraw from Syria because there are these terrorists on our border

and we need a buffer zone. So Jolani still serves a purpose for them to be in there, but of course, you know, that could change and they could dump him, you know, maybe like the U.S. dumped Noriega. back in the day, you know, that could happen any time, but for now, there's still the pretext and, you know, they're just playing these different groups off of each other. And, you know, like recently there's been problems, there's a little bit of problems between the Druze and

Jermana and the Damascus suburbs and HTS. And luckily, they managed to negotiate it and solve the issue. And there's just a little bit of fighting and HDS backed off. But, you know, the Jews remember a lot of the massacres that HTS, committed against them during the Nistra days, and they know that HTS views them as Kufar or unbelievers. And so when Israel comes out and says, oh, look at these terrorists, you got to be careful of them. And, you know, if you want, we could protect you, you know. I mean, we could just bring Jeremiah under Israeli control. We can bring Sueda under Israeli control.

And then look, you Drews, can go visit your relatives that are living here in Israel. without any problems, they're living peacefully. They joined our army and, you know, I don't think that's what most of the Jews want. Most of them want to stay, from what I understand, want to stay as part of Syria. But the more this violence continues, and the Jews, they're seeing this violence in the coast against Alawites. Today, I mean, there's so many, so many videos of Alawites just being massacred, totally unarmed people, just getting gunned down. and the HTS guys putting it on video and putting it on the internet and the Jews see that and so the message it sends to them is like

okay you know what choice do we have but maybe to shift our allegiances to Israel because we don't want that to happen to us I mean the Jews are better armed they have you know they have more power than the Alawites do but it's the same thing with the Kurds too the Israelis continue telling the Kurds in northeast Syria hey are you sure you want to do a deal with Jolani and dissolve your security forces, dissolve the SDF and join the new Syrian army.

Don't you see what's happening on the coast of the Alawites? You know, you courage you're going to be next. And so the Israelis, like I said, they're just, I mean, they're just gloating and they're so happy about everything that's happening right now. Yeah, anyways, it's just really depressing to see. So how weakened is Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and what's the future there? Well, I mean, I'm not like a military person, so I don't know, but the mood of just people that I, you know, speak with and talk to in Lebanon.

And as I mentioned, I was there during the two months of the bombing and saw a lot of the places that were bombed. I saw the place where Hassan Nasrallah was killed and Hashim Seifedin shortly after him. And I mean, they're definitely weakened. I mean, a lot of their guys were killed. The Patriot attack was tough. The psychological blow of Hassan Asrallah being killed. I mean, the Shia in Lebanon are very steadfast, I guess you'd say, and they are committed to resistance to Israel.

But they definitely got hit really hard. I mean, a lot of cities were really heavily bombed, Nabatia, major destruction in Navatia in Teer or Soir, and then, you know, the Damascus or the Beirut suburbs themselves were hit really hard. And right now with the new U.S. backed president, Joseph Ayun, Iran is even having trouble sending airplanes full of cash, not to like try to restore Hezbollah's weapons or build them up again, but just simply to pay money to the Lebanese whose homes were destroyed. You know, after 2006, the Iranians were really good about that. They went into all the places in the south and all the places the people who'd had their homes bombed and they

paid people and basically made people whole. And from what I understand, they're trying to do the same thing now, but they can't even get the money on planes through the airport now. So for now, I mean, the resistance in Lebanon is in a in a tough spot. It's not going away or anything. It's not like Hezbollah was defeated. They did fight really well against the Israeli army on the ground, prevented major, the Israelis from taking major territory. But the Israelis took more territory in southern Lebanon after the ceasefire than they did in the course of the fighting. And they keep saying they're going to stay in at least five points in the south. And they've totally demolished and raised a bunch of villages near the border. Places on the border in southern

Lebanon look like Gaza. So I don't know, it's kind of a, it's kind of a gloomy, uh, a picture down there. Man. All right. Well, listen, I know you've got to go and I got to go here. Um, but, uh, tell me, when do I get the final draft of this thing so I can publish it? Hey, honestly, I was just did a ton of work on it, uh, yesterday. So it should, it should honestly be in, uh, in a couple of days.

I really think I'm basically done. So, yeah, a couple days. I'll get you the last chapter and then we'll be good to go. So thank Ben for me, by the way. Yeah, well, absolutely, you thank him yourself, but I'll thank you. I will thank him too. One of the coolest parts of being a institute is I get to publish all these great books by great authors like you. And I'm, as anyone who knows me or, you know, has followed this show closely knows, I've said for years, your stuff is absolutely the very best stuff on the Syrian Dirty War.

And I read a few books about it, too. But yours is by far the best. Your writings for the Institute over the years on what was behind it all and how it all happened and all the rest of it is incomparable from anyone else. And there are a lot of really great people on Syria. Just you're greater. That's it. And so I just can't wait to put this book out. It's going to blow everybody's mind. I can't wait. In fact, I think I might have told you before, but maybe I didn't. But I'm just as jealous as hell because it's so much better than I could have possibly done if I tried to write a whole book about it. And I wrote a couple of really good goddamn chapters. But then again, I relied on you a lot when I did too and your old articles that you'd written. But what's cool is when I read it, I read it as a word doc in the exact same format as my own writings you know here my own book and everything else so it looked just like i had written it but i just hadn't it was you and it's just so so good that i'm green with envy and

also just uh excited to be on the leaf that i get to publish a thing and help you brag and boast about it and get it out there so um it's such fine work and i am so appreciative of all your efforts and the risks you take to go over there to find out what the hell's going on and all your great writing and your time on the show and all of that, William. So how do you like that? Thank you. Well, I appreciate it, man. I mean, you're the one who first gave me the chance to write. I published my very first articles with you when, I mean, I guess I'm still a nobody,

but I was really, really a nobody back then. And you were very generous to let me publish like these long, crazy long articles that I'm sure no one else would have let me. So you've always been super supportive and helpful. And, you know, I've spent a couple of months in Ukraine myself, and so I'm jealous of the book you wrote. Oh, well, good. Turnabouts, fair play. I'd like to know what you think of my book. Have you had a chance to read Provoked? I haven't had a chance to read yet. So when I finish the Syria book, that's the first thing I'll do because I'm very fascinated by what happened in Ukraine. And of course, if it passes your muster, I'll be pretty proud of that. Well, I've listened to a ton of your lectures and you're speaking about it.

And you still have that photographic memory pulling out quotes about the most obscure things from everything that's happened in the past, you know, 20, 30 years there. So I'm really looking forward to that. And because, yeah, I'm super interested in what's been happening in Ukraine, but I've never had the time to invest in researching it. But again, I'm jealous that you've written such a detailed book. All right. Well, anyway, listen, we're both really great. But the point is that that's why people need to donate to the Libertarian Institute. If you were able to possibly bear listening to us compliment each other for the last five minutes here, then you're definitely the kind of person who wants to spend every last time you possibly can supporting the Institute. Essentially, all of it just goes to pay my guys. We don't have much overhead. Although, you know, it'd be nice to have a great institute build. headquarters someday. That's not where your money's going now. It just goes for me to pay my guys so they can do their work. Simple as that. Bang for your buck. A hundred percent bang. And we got matching funds right now up to $25,000. So if you're one of the people who know and understand

and value the likes of William Van Wagon and his work, help support the Institute. And then also you'll get to read his book because I'll be able to publish it here and hopefully a matter of just a couple of weeks. So how do you like that? And thank you again, William. Okay, thanks, Scott. Appreciate it. Good to talk to you, man. The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.