The Duran Podcast - US troops out of Syria and Iran maximum pressure

Episode Date: February 9, 2025

US troops out of Syria and Iran maximum pressure

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the situation in the Middle East. Netanyahu was in Washington, D.C. He met with U.S. President Trump. They had a press conference. Trump said some very shocking things during his press conference. He said things that, I believe it's accepted to say that most, if not, all of the international community has repudiated. It's shocked by what they heard from President Trump.

And we have had his White House team tried to walk it back. They have been in damage control. Hexseth, Press Secretary Levitt, Walsh, Rubio. They've been in damage control mode trying to explain. what Trump said during the press conference with Netanyahu. Meanwhile, Trump has been signaling that he does not want the conflict with Iran. He does not want a hot war with Iran, but he is going to go through with the policy of maximum pressure, which is something that we've been reporting on the Financial Times, actually read

an article on Trump's plan for maximum pressure about a month ago. So this shouldn't be a surprise to anybody that he's going this route. But he did say that he does not want a hot war for the moment with Iran. He's also talking about Iran and nuclear weapons. And that's the reason that he gives for the policy of maximum pressure. Iran must not get a nuclear weapon. He would like to negotiate something with Iran. But we had the JCPOA and he pulled out of the JCPOA,

so I don't quite understand his thinking on all of this. Anyway, let's talk about Trump's policy in the Middle East. East, if he even has a congruent, clear policy in the Middle East? Well, I don't think he's got a policy. I do think he's got a direction, which is not quite the same thing. And it may be that out of that direction, that sense of direction, we will get, we will eventually get to a policy. But I think the first thing to do is, I think one has to discuss this press conference,

which I think was an absolute train wreck. I think it was a total disaster. The first thing to say is that the things that he said about Gaza were terrible. I mean, they were awful. They were completely misconceived. The very fact that his team has had to row back on them tells you as much. It clearly hadn't been fully thought through. And, I mean, they were terrible things in themselves and the effect in the Middle East

and around the world. And I think in the United States also has been damaging. I don't think this is terminally damaging to Trump. But I think that if you watch him and you listen to him and the way he's reading things out and things like that, I think he senses himself that he's making a huge mistake. And I think he did make a huge mistake with this press conference. But having said all of that, I think we have to look beyond what he's saying and look instead at what he's been doing. And that point's actually in a somewhat different direction.

Firstly, it's important to remember that he did force on Netanyahu, a ceasefire in Gaza. Netanyahu didn't want it. The Israeli cabinet almost broke up over it. It looked for a time as if Netanyahu might actually fall. Trump, through all of these comments, has basically rescued Netanyahu. And I think he wants Netanyahu there because he knows that if Netanyahu falls, there's going to be a political crisis in Israel, given how fraught the situation in Israel is now,

that could create instability. And it might put the ceasefire in Gaza in jeopardy. So I think that part of this, this whole thing that happened, is to preserve the ceasefire in Gaza, which I think is going to hold. Secondly, he's pulling U.S. troops out of Syria, and I think this time it's for real. He tried to do that in his first term. We remember that the deep state, the bureaucracy, stopped him on two occasions. On the second occasion, they straightforwardly lied to him. And they then bragged about it in ways that I still find incredible.

But anyway, he seems to term it to pull US troops out of Gaza. And yes, he is going for maximum pressure on Iran. But he's appointed an envoy to Iran, who interestingly is Stephen Whitegolf again. somebody outside the State Department, in other words, somebody who's worked with Trump closely and their friends, the man who pushed the Israelis to agree the ceasefire in Gaza. And I suspect that Trump at some level knows that Iran is in a much better position to absorb maximum pressure this time than it was when he was president before. And I think he's clearly signaling.

He doesn't want a war with Iran. He wants at some point to do some kind of deal with Iran. Now, he's not clear, I think, in his own mind, about what that deal would consist of. And this is always the problem with Trump. He's moving in a direction towards some kind of understanding with the Iranians without having a clear idea of what that understanding is going to be. But importantly, Iranian officials, including Iran's leader Ayatollah Hamanae, have again restated Iran's opposition to it acquiring nuclear weapons. So you could see that maybe in time something could be achieved. So I think that, you know, he's made these terrible comments, but I think in his own mind, he's

probably calculates that it was necessary to do that, to buy himself political space, so that he could make all of these other moves, which are moves towards stabilization in the Middle East, as opposed to war in the Middle East. I think he did it terribly. I think he said shocking things that he should not have said. I think he underestimated. and misunderstood the effect of what he was saying. But hopefully we will get at some point past that and we will start to move towards, as I said, some kind of actual policy towards stabilization in the Middle East. Though it must be said, these comments that he's made might actually in time become an obstacle

to that. What if they become the policy? Well. What if? Because there are reports, I believe, even coming out of Israel, media that claim that Jared Kushner was the person that actually wrote up the statement that Trump was reading. Yes.

Which to me would signal that there are people in and around Trump in his family who definitely want this to be the policy going forward for Gaza. What if this does become the policy? Which it might well do. And I, you know, one has to be honest with oneself about this. I mean, even if Trump doesn't intend that now, it could very easily drift into that. There are people probably who would support it, and there are certainly people in Israel who would support it. If it is the policy, it is going to be an absolute and complete disaster.

How do you get those people in Gaza to go? You'd have to take over the place all over again. The Israeli army would have to go in and would have to fight Hamas all over again. Only this time, Hamas could validly say that it is defending the people of Gaza against a policy of displacement, sending American troops to do it. I mean, that would be the end of Donald Trump's presidency. I mean, I think the crisis that would cause in the United States would be simply off the scale. And the crisis in the Middle East would worsen hugely. and the many opponents of the United States in the Middle East would become much, much stronger.

So it would be an absolute disaster. And I'm afraid when you say things like that, things which some people would support, then it's not impossible that you could find yourself being dragged along and having those words of yours become a kind of chain. which pulled you in a direction you don't want to go, and which will lead you to disaster. That's assuming, of course, that I'm right, and he really doesn't want to go there.

I was watching him, and I was listening to him as he read out that comment. And my own sense was that he was very, very nervous and unhappy about it. But there we are. He also opened himself up to criticism, even impeachment, from his enemies in the United States. I mean, he used a lot of political capital in order to bolster Netanyahu, if you could call it that, to keep him in position if it is as you say it went down.

So he used up a lot of political capital and he opened himself up to a lot of criticism and even the calls for impeachment from various opponents. He'll survive this. I mean, I don't think he's in danger of anything there. But, you know, you're two weeks into your presidency, and you've already opened yourself up to these attacks.

And it is a kind of own goal because it's going to have been handled. It wasn't a good. Much differently. Absolutely. Can I just say, a very, very strong two weeks. I mean, he's made some. very strong moves over the last two weeks. He's acted with great skill and great deafness. And now he makes this huge mistake. And it was a huge mistake. I mean, he could have bolster Netanyahu.

He could have secured Netanyahu's position. He didn't need to say this. I mean, if Jared Kushner was the person who was behind him, which I think is likely, by the way, then I think he needs to be very careful before he accepts advice like this again. Because he's, he's very careful. it was incredibly ill-conceived. But as I said, hopefully, you know, my perspective, I mean, I hope that my perspective is the correct one, that this doesn't become the policy, that the fact that he secured the seized firing Gaza, that that will continue, and that he will try to build on that, and that he will pull the troops out to Syria, and that he will pursue some kind of dialogue with Iran, though it's very difficult to see exactly what the Iranians would be willing

to give him, which he might want to achieve. And of course, that's going to be a very, very difficult thing, a very difficult one to pull off, to put it mildly. I want to talk a bit about the situation in the Middle East, actually. Okay, let's assume that Trump is able to get the U.S. troops out of Syria. We've been through this song and dance before. So, you know, we remember Trump's first term where he tried to get the troops out of Syria and the resistance and the lies and the deception

that he got trying to get the U.S. troops out of Syria. But let's say the U.S. does manage a way to get out of Syria. You had Erdogan meeting with Al-Jolani. It looks like the remaining part of Syria. So you have one part of Syria, which now Israel is controlling. You have the Al Jolani, who's now president, he self-declared president of Syria, his part of Syria, which now looks like a protectorate of Turkey, of Erdogan. And then you also have Turkish part of Syria. So the U.S. leaves. Yeah. What happens there? What happens to the Kurds? And what happens with the dynamic between

Turkey, which is now obviously expanding. Israel, which has expanded into Syria and now has Turkey right next to it. And Iran, all these three powers in the Middle East with the U.S. out. And you have this new dynamic in a broken up Syria that has been created. and the Trump administration in the United States with maximum pressure on Iran and all of these things. Absolutely. And there's another power because now one of Al Jalani's ministers has now come out and said that, you know, Russia is welcome to stay in its bases in Western Syria. I mean, he, you know, they're basically seeing a Russian attitude has changed. The force they could stay. Where you've got a few things to sort out between? So it looks as if those Russian bases are going to. to stay in Syria after all. So there's going to be a Russian presence. Well, we have now. The

Americans are leaving. We have a very unstable situation right across Syria. People are underestimating the amount of actual violence that is continuing to go on across Syria. It turns out that most of Al Jolani's best fighters were killed during the Russian bombing in the days leading up to the fall of Aleppo and Damascus. So HTS is not a strong military force. He's now doing a deal with Erdogan so that the Turkish army goes into Syria. So Syria, absolutely, you know, Al Jalani's part of Syria is going to become a Turkish protectorate. That sets up the situation for a collision between Turkey and the Kurds.

and that is going to happen. It's going to be a conflict between the Kurds and Turkey. There are reports that Israel is going to back the Kurds. So that sets up the situation for a conflict between Israel and Turkey, potentially, too. And the latest word that I'm hearing is that Erdogan is now looking for allies. and surprised, surprise, he's turning to Iran because, you know, the Iranians still have, you know, lingering presence and influence here. So the whole thing, nobody can ever be sure. I mean, this is, as you say, it's a broken place.

It's like one of those old kaleidoscopes, but it's all shattered and the pieces are all over the place. Nobody can say, for sure, how this will reconfigure. But I think that Erdogan has an awful situation on his hands. And he's going to find that Syria is a trap rather than an asset. But he's so deeply committed now, he can't pull back. And we could start to see, as a result of all of this pressure, Erdogan is going to make approaches to the Americans because the Americans are pulling out of Syria and they're no longer protecting the Kurds anymore.

But he's going to need regional allies and logically those may be the Russians who he clearly because of course it's Erdogan who's making these decisions to keep the Russian bases in Western Syria. And he might also start looking to Iran. I mean, I've heard it on pretty good sources now that, in fact, Turkey is reaching out to Iran and is providing supply routes for the Iranians to continue to send supplies to Hezbollah in Lebanon. And it's largely because this whole situation in Syria has become so unstable and so difficult for Erdogan himself to handle and control. Okay, we will end the video there.

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