Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 6/19/26 William Van Wagenen on What It’s Like on the Ground in Lebanon

Episode Date: June 21, 2026

Scott interviews William Van Wagenen about what he’s been seeing in southern Lebanon as the fighting between Hezbollah and the IDF drags on. They also discuss the western-backed bin Ladinite regime in Syria. Discussed on the show: Creative Chaos: Inside the CIA’s Covert War to Topple the Syrian Government by William Van Wagenen 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/43D82oY (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/4eMQblu Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan https://amzn.to/4a5fKvx 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: Tax Attorney Matt Sercely https://agoristtaxadvice.com; 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; Expat Money https://expatmoney.com/; and Crowdhealth https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/ (use promocode Horton) Sign up for the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom at scotthortonacademy.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

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 Porton. All right, you guys, introducing once again on the show, our good friend William Van Wagonen, and he is a fellow at the Libertarian Institute,

and of course he's the author of one of our latest books at the Institute, Creative Chaos, Inside the CIA's Covert War to topple the Syrian government. And that's, of course, about Obama's Dirty War, 2011 through 13 or so, early years of all of that fantastic book, highly and widely acclaimed for very good reason and very proud. I am very proud that the Liberty and Institute

was able to take part in getting that thing published into market out there. I hope the book's doing well. I hope you're doing well. Welcome back to this show, William. How are you? Hey, yeah, I'm doing good. Thanks again for having me back and publishing my book.

So I appreciate it. I always get to talk to you. Yeah, and I could have mentioned too, the massive collection of essays that we published of yours at the Libertarian Institute as well and you still write for the cradle too, right? Yeah, still writing through the cradle

and I do have a ton of articles I need to send these that I've been working on for the last six months or so. So I got a lot of material for you. It's coming soon. Okay, heads up, hunter. In coming. That's our editor,

Hunter Durences. Okay, so Man, I have some things to ask you about. I guess, first of all, let's coach up on the very currentest of current events. You're in Beirut now, but before we went on, you said you were in southern Lebanon yesterday. Is that right?

Yeah, yesterday earlier today. So yesterday, I was in Navatia, which is kind of the frontline city in southern Lebanon right now where a lot of fighting is going on in the outskirts of the city, like in the hills behind Navitia. And so yesterday I had a chance to go to a march in the city center where some of the civil defense members did a march to commemorate the deaths of three of their members

who were killed by Israeli bombing. And maybe your listeners know there's been a decent amount of coverage of what I think, but the Israelis have killed more than 100, maybe even 150 civil defense members since the war really restarted again in March in these terrible like double and triple tap strikes sometimes where they'll be go to rescue an injured person after bombing and then the Israelis will bomb the civil defense members. I guess they've been doing that in Gaza, you know, for years now,

but it's coming to Lebanon or has come to Lebanon too. So that was, you know, very very, very, very. sobering to be marching along, you know, with people as a result of that. And then, like, maybe half an hour later, we went to a town just on the outskirts of Nabatiyya called Haru. And there was a funeral for four Hasvola fighters who were killed recently. And, you know, Nabatia, a week ago, you couldn't even really go there because there was, you know, the town was mostly empty. And the Israelis were striking pretty much everybody, but because of the U.S.-Iran kind of deal, the memorandum of understanding, you know, there was kind of a scale scaling back of the violence.

But after the funeral of the four Haslullah members, again, it was really interesting seeing the processions going down the street, a lot of emotional people, men, women, crying. But just hours after the funeral, hours after we left that little town, Haru, The Israelis unleashed a new round of just terrible airstrikes in Navitia and out, you know, the neighboring towns, including Karuk. They killed a family. And there was, you know, footage circulating online of the emergency responders to the civil defense trying to ditch the family out. And I believe, you know, since last night, the new round of strikes of the Israelis killed like 49 people in Lebanon. There's also four Israeli troops that Hasbullah managed to kill.

The Israelis kind of tried to take the initiative and push closer to Napatia to try to take over the strategic hill called Ali Tel-Tammer, if I remember the name right, and for the soldiers were killed. So I don't know, there's a lot going on, but that's what I saw yesterday. And then today managed to go to a bunch of villages in the south. like further south between Tair and Nakora right on the border of Israel and Lebanon. And we went to three different villages that were really heavily destroyed.

Again, now the Israelis are not bombing him, but just a ton of destruction. So, you know, we saw and talked to some people and some families that were trying to come back. But it's most people just checking on their homes. People aren't really going back to their homes to try to live there again because the ceasefire is so sketchy. And there's so much destruction. It's like a lot of people, they just couldn't even live there. They'd really have to wait until water and power comes back

and the chance to even rebuild their homes. There were so many flattened homes. So again, just very sobering and a reminder of how much destruction and damage the Israelis are trying to do. I guess it's no secret. They say that that's what they're trying to do, just wipe out these villages near. in southern Lebanon.

So that, it's been an interesting couple of days. Yeah, so we have seen, you know, video which the IDF has released boasting about just like in Gaza, where after they, you know, drop a few bombs and force the villagers to flee, then they come in and just wire all the houses with TNT and just hit the quondure and just, you know, these are tiny little villages. but in many cases very old or even ancient ones that they're coming and just completely obliterating to create this so-called buffer zone

or security zone in Lebanon south there. But so, you know, just like in a lot of cases with these wars, all the defenders have to do is not lose rather than inflict an actual defeat on the invader, but just outlast them. And so on that kind of a basis, I wonder how you score or even on whatever, on a outright, you know, nose to nose fighting sense. How do you rate what's happening between Hezbollah and the IDF now? Are they just, you know, completely the locals in retreat or are they holding their own against the Israelis?

You know, it does seem like they're holding their own. And sometimes I wonder about that kind of definition of success for groups like, say, Hamas or Hasbola, if they can just outlast the Israelis, at least based on the Gaza example, because, you know, Hamas still exists, but Gaza is basically destroyed. So I don't know if the same thing will happen in Lebanon. I certainly hope not, but I think the chances are better that you're right. Hezbollah will be able to outlast the Israelis because they do have a lot more fighting ability than Hamas had. And the Israelis have taken, you know, some big losses since they, you know, re-invaded or tried to invade even further after March 2nd.

And a big difference has been the FPV or first person-viewed drones that, you know, have these, you know, copper wires that allow the Hezbollah members to fly the drones and they can't be jammed. I know those are used, of course, by the Russians and the Ukrainians both, but that's been a big difference maker. Hezbollah did not have those in the last war in 2024. And then when the Israelis invaded again on March 2nd, Hezbollah didn't use the drones for the first, like, three weeks or so. they were kind of waiting for the Israelis to like enter, you know, Lebanese territory so they'd be more exposed. And then about three weeks in, they did start using these drones that have been able to kill and injure a lot of Israeli soldiers and inflict a lot of damage.

In fact, there's one Lebanese journalist that I spoke to who's very well connected, who said that right now the drones are kind of doing to the Israelis what the Israelis. had hoped to do with the pager attack back in September 2024, the kind of set off the beginning of the last war. And, you know, the Israelis, of course, they infiltrated this company that was selling pagers to Hezbollah, which Hezbollah had started using because they were worried about using cell phones because those communications can be monitored so easy by the Israelis.

But again, the pagers were exploding in the hands of these Hezbollah guys. and the Israelis, their idea was to not even necessarily kill the Hezbollah members, but to cripple them and injure them in these very visible ways, so that for another generation after the incident or after the terror attack, there would be Hezbollah members who had lost their eyes, lost their hand, and everyone would see them in the streets in Dahlia, and remember what the Israelis did, But this Lebanese journalist said that the FPV drones are kind of doing the same thing to the Israeli soldiers because they don't often kill the soldiers who are in these name or armored vehicles or in tanks, but they definitely injure them and cripple them and maim them similar to the way the Pager's to Hasbola.

And he's saying that, you know, hopefully for, you know, the next 10, 20, 30 years, they'll be injured Israeli soldiers in Tel Aviv and occupied Jerusalem. them all these different places that will kind of show the evidence of what as Bola did to them. So I don't know how it will turn out. I mean, as you said, the Israelis have been obliterating some of the villages right on the border. But also these FPB drones have prevented a lot of that. Like the Israelis previously were bringing bulldozers in and having even non-military guys,

just contractors demolishing homes freely. But the drones have prevented them from being able to keep just bringing bulldozers. those are in to demolish things. Yeah. So they'll get into the airspace. Hey, you guys. You want to catch up? You want to learn all of what I know about American foreign policy?

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Yeah. In the case of those woundings, I think it'll backfire on both sides, right? The wounded, you know, Lebanese Shia and the wounded IDF veterans will all be, you know, marked as heroes with their disabilities and whatever, rather than. serving as an example to the rest of them or whatever these people are telling themselves you know what I mean these are

you know ready made martyrs for their own sides obviously that's very possible yeah I guess I guess the point is that Asbollo especially thanks to the FPV drones to keep the Israelis at bay and inflicts some damage on them for

trying to push deeper into Lebanon so we'll see if that if that continues but again I worry that if This war keeps going on for too long, and the Iranians don't bring it to an end one way or another. It will be like Gaza, where Hamas just kind of negotiated for two years. And we all knew the negotiations were a joke. Even in the Israeli media, they were reporting that Netanyahu just kept sabotaging the negotiations. And then Hamas just kind of kept that charade going for two years.

And then all of a sudden gave up the Israeli hostages for no, for some, Palestinian prisoners to a return, but basically for no guarantees that the Israelis would ever withdraw or stop bombing. So I do worry that if the Iranians aren't able to bring the war to an end somewhat soon,

that eventually southern Lebanon will just get chewed up and like Gaza was. But I don't think that's the case yet, but as time goes on, maybe that becomes more likely. I don't know. Yeah, it's really hard to say exactly,

you know, I mean, they say that they have a ceasefire now. negotiated, you know, presumably with pressure by the United States on Israel to knock it off since they already ruined the signing ceremony that was supposed to take place today. But we don't really know what's going on behind the scenes there. You know, I hasten to emphasize. But so like on the ground now, you know, and I know that this goes back to the founders of Zionism, that they always wanted to conquer southern Lebanon up to the Latani River,

a century before Hasbalah was invented in the early 1980s, you know, that was the plan. But then now they're fighting, I totally correct me if I'm wrong. I'm sure,

you know, Jason Ditz does the best job of keeping up on all of all, keeping up on all of this at anti-war.com. And I am remiss in keeping up on all of his latest pieces about this. But I guess my understanding is that, again, tell me I'm wrong. I'm sure I'm wrong, but that the Israelis essentially control the land south of the Latani River,

which I know kind of bends, you know, and heads more north or whatever, but they control the land mostly south of the Latani River, and now they're encroaching on the next kind of region north or the next major border north would be the Zahari River, and that's where they're like pushing their luck and getting closer to Beirut. But can you give us the details there? Oh, and I'm sorry, I meant to mention, too, that all the headlines on anti-war.com, at least yesterday, I think today, well, there were a bunch more about it yesterday, about the Israeli government, various officials saying, hell no, we are not leaving no matter what and Trump can go to hell, you know, and all of that, that they're determined to hold on to the territory they've got.

So, I mean, that's more political. If Trump puts his foot down, they've got to do what he says. but anyway, that aside, just in terms of the facts on the ground, am I right that they really already do control that big of a swath of southern Lebanon? And then I guess even in the demands of the Iranians, it seemed like there were some weasel words in there where they were saying, you know, they were demanding an end to the bombing of Beirut. And I'm sorry, I forget, there was one other thing in there.

But it wasn't so broad as just all of Lebanon. I don't, I didn't think. I'm not sure. You know what I mean? Like, did they demand the full withdrawal of Israel for all of Lebanon? Or was there a little bit of, of maybe recognition that there's no way they're going to get at this point, or what do you think?

Well, yeah, good question. So as far as the control goes, you know, it's that the Israelis control, I think about 6% of Lebanese territory, where it's like direct control, where they are physically like present occupying. So that's, but it is still quite close to the border. Like 10, at the most, the deepest places, maybe 12, 13 kilometers, I believe.

So that's where they have like a physical presence. And that's still well south of the Latani River? So that's still well south of the Latani River in most places. Uh-huh. So today I was way far south of the Latani River. earlier today. But the problem is, is that in those areas, the Israelis don't have a physical presence,

but anyone there could get hit with a drone strike or an air strike, and they've destroyed through bombing a lot of those areas. So the question is, what type of control do you mean? But then secondly, again, because of these FPV drones, the Israelis aren't able to just kind of freely operate, even in the areas where they do physically control in the way they were able to before March 2nd

where again they could just like drive bulldozers into towns and demolish all the homes and have the soldiers just play around and walk into a house and put on the women's underwear and march around and make videos and post them to the Internet. So the Israelis aren't able to do that anymore again because of the drones.

So it's kind of hard to say like It's like there are these different types of control or different ways that Asbollah you could say control territory versus the Israeli, so it's kind of murky. And then as far as this space between the Latani River and the Zahari River, that's just air strikes, no IDF presence on the ground? Yeah. So, and again, even in most, a lot of places south of the, um, right, Luttony River, there's no Israeli presence.

I mean, again, I could see where I was today. You could basically see right to the final hills before Israel. And again, these areas have been bombed really bad, but there's no Israeli presence, and there are some people that are trying to come back now, again, at least to check on their homes, not necessarily to stay there permanently again yet. But it's that, you know, kind of 6% that's like 10 clicks,

maybe away from the border that the Israelis still physically control, and that seems to be what they're saying that they will never relinquish control of. So we'll see if they're, if Hezbollah can prevent that or not. Yeah. Hey, y'all, me here for expatmoney.com, the great Mikhail Thorough. And of course, they do their big conference every year in October. But all year round, they've got great advice for you,

such as this Plan B residences and instant citizenship. and Americans are fleeing. Price inflation and the police state and all kinds of things, blowback terrorism, and they're getting the hell out of the country. And if you decide that's what's right for you, then we can learn from Mikhail Thorup about what other countries are available to you and where you might go to protect your assets, to buy property, to even get citizenship in other countries.

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Use promo code Horton and your monthly fee will only be $99 for the first three months. Join CrowdHealth.com promo code Horton. All right. Well, listen, I mean, as I'm sure you're aware, Donald Trump's got a new idea which is that because the Israelis are so brutal with their, you know, deliberately inflicted collateral damage taking down an entire apartment complex, it's just to get one guy, as the president put it,

that he says it'd be better if we just sent the new al-Qaeda regime in Syria to fight Hezbollah instead. And I thought, well, I mean, as they always said, and as we always said, they said that, yeah, that's why America backs Al-Qaeda in Syria, because they hate Hezbollah more than that. That's the deal. And that's what Israel wants.

I mean, why even fight Hezbollah if it's not for Israel? But Trump is just saying, you know, I think al-Qaeda would do a more humane job in there than the Lekud. But a couple of questions there. First of all, is there any will in the bin Ladenite regime in Damascus to attempt to invade Lebanon to fight? Hezbollah? And do they have anything like the capability? I guess there's a giant bunch of questions there raised about just what has the United States and Britain and their friends

been doing to train up an al-Qaeda army in the new Syrian state there? What the hell is going on there? Because obviously the Syrian Arab army, they didn't take possession of it. It just dissolved and no longer exists, right? So now there's a new al-Qaeda-based force. How professionalized is it and how much support has the West given to those efforts? And is it really ready to act? Or Donald Trump's just spitball in there? Well, it does seem, I can't remember the report, but there do seem to be like some reports that he really did ask

Shera or Jolani to do that. We'll see if it happens. But there has been like some buildup of the new situation Or this like near the Lebanese border. And, you know, the new Syrian army, it's basically a jihadi army. It was built on these jihadist factions like the former al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat Tanistra, which became Hayat Tahrir Sham and others, Ahran Asham, some of these Turkish-backed jihadist groups called the Amshad, for example.

And it really is. jihadi army and there's no al-a-whites in the army there's no Christians, there's no grues and if Trump you know Trump said oh like you like you mentioned that oh maybe Shara's jihadists go in they would be more precise about it but obviously that's not the case because we have precedent where Jolani's forces in March of 2025 went into the Syrian coast and carried out out these brutal, horrific massacres of Aloitites where they just went village to village, pulled the unarmed men, some teenagers, occasionally children and some women, but mostly men.

But they pulled these unarmed civilian men out of their homes and would just line them up in the street and blow their brains out with no resistance, nothing. And they did the same to the Drews. In July 2025, actually with a green light from the Americans and the Israelis, Jolani was given a green light to send his army to Swayda and the massacre Druze. They carried out horrific atrocities. And they filmed them all, as they did among their atrocities against Seattleites. In Swayda, a lot of guys filmed themselves beheading their victims. That was one famous case where there was an old guy in a wheelie.

chair and they just burned them to death and they took a picture of it. And a lot of the guys that invaded Sueda for Jalani, they were just openly wearing ISIS patches, you know. And in Syria, that's not that common. If you travel around Syria a bit, you'll occasionally see off of the, you know, guys in the new army and they just wear ISIS patches because it's like a cool thing. So these guys are total maniacs. And I know there was one group of fighters I talked to once that were formerly from

from Jepa Tnastra. And I even asked him, well, hey, now that you've taken over Syria, you know, do you think you guys would ever go and try to, you know, liberate Jerusalem for the Palestinians? And one guy told me, yes, but

we need to fight Hezbollah first. So I think there really is the will. You know, there would never be actually, like you mentioned, the U.S. and Israel are the creators of al-Qaeda. They're the ones that put Jalani in place. They're the ones that built his organization by providing them weapons. You know, David Petraeus basically was responsible for that, starting in 2011.

And they created Nistra and what became the new Syrian government. And Trump has openly said, you know, that he put Jolani in power, and he openly talks about how he was in al-Qaeda. He doesn't try to hide it even anymore. But these guys do. I think, have the willingness to go and try to enter Lebanon and to fight Hezbollah. But they don't have, like, heavy weapons. You know, the Israelis destroyed most of the heavy weapons of the Syrian army.

When Jalani first came to power, the Israelis, like, carried out this huge bombing campaign in the first days after Jalani fell. In fact, I went into Syria at that time across the border, and there were still bombs being dropped in outskirts of Damascus and the Mesa. military airport was still burning from the Israeli bombing. So the Israelis will never allow Jolani's army to actually have like heavy sophisticated weapons like a regular army would,

but they have been getting additional weapons and armored vehicles from the Turks. And so it is, you know, I think it is a danger. You know, how to estimate what the odds are, I'm not sure. But I think there definitely is the will on the part of his army to fight if they're called upon to do that. against Hezbollah. And so how much of southwestern Syria has Israel occupied,

and what's their current relationship with Jolani? Well, you know, publicly they constantly say they're against Jolani. They call him a terrorist. You know, the Americans and the British don't call Jolani a terrorist anymore. They just kind of drop the pretense. And the British basically have an office in the Syrian presidential palace, and they do all of Jolani's PR. So if you ever hear him give a speech or anything like that,

it's everything he says, which sounds very nice to Western ears about moderation and protecting minorities. This is all just written by, you know, British public relations people. That'd be funny. If like really this whole thing is just an old cold war between the British and the French,

and they're just trying to get, you know, dominance in what was predominantly, you know, the French part of the spoils after World War I. It just has nothing to do with America or Saudi or Muhammad or nothing. It's all just some ancient grudge or the Europeans. Who knows? Well, the British certainly supported al-Qaeda and Jolani very strongly. But the French did too.

The French even supported ISIS. From the beginning. Yeah, they did. Yeah, we knew this. I knew this from Eric Margulies in 2011, said, hey, I just got back from France, and guess what? They're helping to organize the revolution

over there for these guys. You know, they're running the damn thing. They admitted it to me. So, like I was back to the first year of the war. Yeah. I'm sorry, because I interrupted you with that BS. The point being, I'm sorry, you were on track talking about Israel's relationship

with Jolani. Now, oh, I guess I should have mentioned in case people are interested in this, too. You can go and look it up. Netanyahu proud and his bulletproof vest standing at the border and taking credit for helping Jolani seize power in December of 2024. Just as Resip Erdogan took credit

and just as the Joe Biden regime, if not Biden himself, took credit for helping al-Qaeda finally oust the Assad regime at the end of 2024. They're terrorists now, though. So what's the real relationship between Israel and al-Qaeda? Well, again, it's a good. good relationship and it goes back to like 2013 2014 2015 even when

Jolani's guys from Jephaten Nuspa which again at the time was the official Al-Qaeda affiliate his fighters in southern Syria were crossing over into Israel if they were injured to get treated in Israeli hospitals and they were getting their salaries paid and they were getting weapons from the Israeli military and that's been now admitted in the Wall Street Journal and in the Israeli press by some Israeli officials that they supported them. So there's always been this under-the-table covert support from the Israelis for Al-Qaeda, again, from the Americans too.

But now that when Jolani came to power, again, even though, like you said, Netanyahu took credit for it, but they still keep up this rhetoric that the Americans and the British have dropped, but the Israelis keep up the rhetoric that he is a terrorist, and the Israelis try to claim that they are worried about the minority. in Syria like the Alawites and the Druis. But again, it's because their ultimate goal is to keep Syria weak and divide it, which is even admitted in a Reuters report from February 2025, where they talked about that as being the Israeli strategy.

So the Israelis, again, they occupy parts of southern Syria, and they occasionally abduct Syrians, and they do these raids, you know, where they have a convoy of four or five, military jeeps that go deeper into Syrian territory. And there's a video of like Jolani's security forces, you know, basically running into the Israeli convoys on the same road and the Syrians will just withdraw. They won't confront them. They won't do anything.

They just withdraw. So there is a task that basically permission for the Israelis to take and occupy as much land as they want. And then, again, regarding the issue of minorities, because the Druis, for example, now or openly like in Swayda, pro-Israel, the main Drews leader, Hick Mitchell Hitchery, he openly says that he wants to be allied with Israel and his kind of militia or the National Guard. They get weapons from the Israelis. But again, the Israelis, or as I mentioned, Jolani's jihadists, they went in and massacred a lot of Druze in July of 2025.

But the Israelis actually gave him the green light to do it. Like Netanyahu in the months before that, he was constantly saying, oh, if Jolani's guys go into southern Syria and try to attack the Druze, we will protect the Druze. We will not accept any Syrian military forces in southern Syria. We're going to protect the Druze. And then there were these negotiations in Baku, Azerbaijan,

like two, three days before these big massacres where the Syrians and the Israelis were sitting down together talking. And then all of a sudden, the Reuters report comes out that said, oh, the Syrians thought that the Israelis gave them the green light. And so that's why they went to southern Syria, and that's why they massacred the truth. Anyways, the point is that the Israelis and the Syrians were constantly talking, arranging all this stuff.

But by having the Druid, the Dalani's shot is going to massacquer the truth like they did, and then having the Freilians, finding it to protect it, but after like four days, after the massacres had already, largely been completed, then the Israelis could say, oh, we're protecting the Druze. And the Jews are so terrified of Jolani's jihadists that they say, okay, we have no choice but to ask the Israelis for help. We have no choice now to make sway to basically try to be autonomous or even independent or to even have us become Israeli citizens because we're so scared of these jihadists.

So the Israelis wanted the massacre to happen so that the Jews would have no other choice but to say okay we need Israel as our protector and again that just allows the Israelis to keep Syria divided and weak and not unified which has kind of been their strategy for 30 years you know or longer yeah hey guys Scott here for Matt Sersely at agoristtaxadvice.com and he's a great tax lawyer and he hates the government as much as you do and he wants to help you keep your money and his service is for small businesses and for high-salary professional types who are looking for ways to protect their earnings from the national government and its depredations.

So check them out. Matt Sersely at aggris tax advice.com. Hey, y'all Scott here for Moondos artisan coffees. You know, they told me if I kept drinking so much coffee, I would turn into some. And then I finally did. And there it is. It's Scott Horton's show morning breakfast blend there from Moondos artisan coffees get it. They hate Starbucks because Starbucks supports the war party.

So they're Moondos artisan coffees and they got Scott Horton flavored coffee there. It's Ethiopian and Sumatra mix and it's so good. And it's free to me as long as you keep buying it. Just go to Scott Horton.org slash coffee. All right. Well, now. So Jolani may have proudly fought Wizard Garkei against Americans in Iraq War II and led the suicide bomber brigades during the dirty war

in Syria. But he doesn't dress like Abu Bakr, Abaddaddy, and he didn't go to the mosque and declare himself the caliph, this or that. He instead wears a business suit and calls himself El Presidente. So my question to you is, when are the next regularly scheduled elections scheduled to take place in Syria, William? Well, yeah, that's a good question. So again, at the beginning of the so-called Syrian Revolution in 2011, all these basically Western-funded activists were saying that the revolution was about democracy and freedom and all this stuff. Even though everyone who had guns on the ground, including the Free Syrian Army,

they were all solopist, religious extremists, including Jabhatanist, of course, ISIS. So this was just kind of rhetoric about democracy that never had any reality behind it. And so when Jolani finally came to power in December 2024, they announced, oh, we're going to have a Syrian transitional government. And, you know, in the Western mind, we're thinking, oh, that means because, you know, maybe they need a year or two and then they're going to have elections and democracy.

And yeah, you know, the Syrian revolution, just like they said. But again, there's no trend. The Syrian transitional government is not transitional in that Jolani is going anywhere. It's just a branding thing, again, made up by the British. Jolani is going to remain in power. And secondly, there is really a transition going on, but it's not going to be towards democracy.

It's going towards Syria becoming a fundamentalist religious state. Because, again, it's already been a year. half, there are no political parties, there's no discussion of creating political parties. And people don't understand this, but the Syrian state, when Jolani took over, they kept, you know, certain state structures in place, like municipalities and things like that. But they would bring, like a sheikh, a religious person, someone from HTS, someone from Idlib, basically, and they would put that person, give them a big salary, and put them above all of the local officials. So any town or city you go to in Syria now, there is a sheikh who basically runs the city,

and you still have these employees that are part of like the secular bureaucracy, but there's a religious sheikh at the top who basically decides everything that happens. And so now, for example, in Jabla, a city on the coast, there's the sheikh who runs Jabla. He was responsible recently for kidnapping an Alawite woman. And the case got a lot of attention. And the Syrian government had to come out and do this kind of fake campaign and force her to make some videos claiming she had not been kidnapped. And she had not been basically taken as a sex slave. but that was done by the sheikh who is in charge of Jabla.

But in every part of Syria now, it's like that. So Syria is moving towards an Islamic fundamentalist state. There's all these campaigns. For example, in the mosques in Syria, you'll see posters on the mosque walls that say, encourage women to wear any cop, you know, not only in hijab, but to cover their face entirely. There are lots of places where they give away books from this medieval an Islamic scholar named Ibn Chimiyah,

whose ideology kind of undergirds all of these jihadi Tafiri groups where he says that Aloites and Druze are apostates that should be killed and their property taken, which is why so many Aloites continue to get murdered today and kidnapped. And then when the families go and say, look, my son was just kidnapped and murdered, or my daughter was kidnapped and she's disappeared. or they go to the local police and the local authorities

and over all these, the extremists for Midlip, and the police just basically tell them to fuck off where they say, hey, stop talking about this. Otherwise, you know, you're going to be in big trouble. So, again, Syria is moving in that direction,

but in the Western media, they make, or anytime Jolani makes a visit to France or to Britain or the U.S., they make it out like, oh, yeah, he's going to be there. Then there's going to be, you know, Democracy, you know, any day now. In fact, Jolani himself even gave a speech at a mosque where he said, he talked about how he was going to become essentially like an Islamic monarch, you know.

So unlike Baghdadi and ISIS years where he came out and just openly said these things, that Jolani is doing the exact same things, but he's just doing it like a more subtle, gradual way. Whereas the ISIS and Baghdadi, they imposed these rules immediately and they openly, um, open the advertised that that was what they were doing. All right, well, listen, man, I'll let you go. Be safe there, even in Beirut. I know it's a potential war zone at any time, but especially when you're going traipsing around the south there, man.

You protect your neck, William. Okay, thanks. I appreciate it, man. Thanks again for having me on. Always good to talk to you, Matt. Absolutely, you too, buddy. And everybody again now, that's William Van Wagonin. And check out his great book on Amazon.com right now.

Creative Chaos, all about Obama's dirty war in Syria back then. And thank you again, Ben. The Scott Horton show is brought to you by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, Roberts & Roberts, Brokerage, Inc., Moondos Artisan Coffee, Tom Woods Liberty Classroom, and APS Radio News. Subscribe in all the usual places and check out my books, Fools Air and Enough Already, and my latest, Provoked. how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine.

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