The Syrian Piece In The Geopolitical Jigsaw Puzzle.

First of all, a hat tip to Ray-SoCa for sparking my interest in this video interview of Kevork Almassian on The Duran. As you’ll see, my title differs from the title at The Duran, but mine is far closer to the reality of the interview—which is what gives it so much interest. Almassian is an ethnic Armenian, born in Aleppo, now residing in Germany. He presents his view of the Middle East crisis in a broader geopolitical context, and from a viewpoint that is sympathetic toward the Syrian government. I’ve prepared a summary of the long interview, which I found quite lucid and insightful. The summary mostly follows Almassian’s actual words, but I’ve put it into more readable English. My interpolations that go beyond such editing are in brackets. The summary is not complete. For example, I exclude the entirety of his remarks regarding the current situation in Armenia.

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Ceasefire failure. Armenia shift w/ Kevork Almassian (Live)

The current situation in Syria is that Syria has foiled the US sponsoredd regime change war, but the war is ongoing. Reconstruction is very difficult, especially due to US sanctions.

What do the Americans really want in Syria? American involvement is certainly not about democracy and human rights--nobody believes that. America has three major interests that involve Syria. [These interests all arise from Syria's close relations with Russia and American antagonism toward Russia.]

First, America wants to exclude the Russian navy from the Mediterranean--as a first step to excluding Russia from the Black Sea. The first thing that the Americans wanted to do after the 2013 coup in Kiev was to kick the Russian Fleet out of the Black Sea, and this is why the Russians held the referendum in Crimea and then reincorporated Crimea into Russia. Similarly, the Russians also came to Syria's aid in 2015 to maintain their position in the Mediterranean.

Secondly, the Americans wanted to remove Assad because of the Iranian Factor. Iran has established a network of state and nonstate alliances, of state and non-state actors, in the region that seriously challenged American hegemony over the region--and also Israeli hegemony. Syria was basically strategic depth for what is called the Axis of Resistance. Syria has been used as a territory from which to deliver arms to Hezbollah and also for training on its territory and intelligence support to these different factions. So the Americans had a vested interest in cutting these routes between Syria and Lebanon. And, if you look at the rhetoric of Isis, Al Nusra, and all these terrorist groups in Syria, they always say that after they finish in Damascus they're going to go to Lebanon to fight against Hezbollah. After October 7, when Hezbollah now intervened in support of Gaza, this aspect has intensified.

The Americans also have another very important interest in Syria, and that is gas. [The American priority has always been to break the gas link between Russia and Western Europe--especially Germany. The plan was to construct a gas pipeline from Qatar across Syria to Turkey, and from Turkey to the rest of Europe. This would accomplish the decoupling of Europe from dependence on Russian gas. The difficulty was Assad's close relationship with Russia and his cooperation with Iran and Hezbollah. The American coup in Kiev in 2014 was part of the plan to decouple Europe from dependence on Russian gas, by taking control over the many pipelines leading from Russia to Europe through Ukraine. The 2022 destruction of the Nordstream pipeline was the result of the failure of those other schemes to decouple Europe from Russia. Sabotage replaced geopolitical scheming and regime change.] So these conflicts are completely interconnected. Only a few days before the Russian offensive on Ukraine, we are speaking in February 2022, the former Defense Minister of Russia was in Damascus and told the Syrians, 'You are the the front line against the Americans in this conflict. You have to hold your position and wait because the outcome of the Syrian conflict will be determined by the outcome of the Ukrainian conflict. if the US loses this strategic conflict against Russia in Ukraine then this will reflect positively on the outcome of the Syrian War.' At the current moment Syria cannot drive the Americans out of the country, but if the Americans lose in Ukraine they have to prioritize their needs and where they can be stationed--whether in West Asia or in Far East Asia or in the Middle East as we mentioned.

So what is the priority of the US? In my opinion America's priority is the Pacific, the Far East Asia, the growing threat from China, as they call it. Therefore, at the moment, they are encouraging their partners in Europe to invest more in Ukraine, because the Americans want to focus on what they call the Chinese threat, from the door of Taiwan. So you see all these calculations and you connect the dots

I think the Syrians are in a very unfortunate situation at the moment. They have to wait and see what's going to happen with Ukraine. At the same time they have to try to find a mutual ground with Turkey. Turkey is a very important player. It played an instrumental role during the conflict and there is at the moment negotiations--indirect talks--between Syria and Turkey. The Iraqis are mediating, the Russians are mediating. The Syrians have only one condition from the Turks: that they commit themselves to withdraw completely from Syria. Then Syria could cooperate with the Turkish side vis a vis the Kurdish militias, for example, because the Turks say that the Kurdish militias represent a national security threat. So I think the Syrians are ready to cooperate with the Turks if the Turkish side withdraws from Syrian territory and abandons Idlib province--which is the largest safe haven for al-Qaeda terrorists around the world. This is the assessment of the Pentagon--not my personal assessment.

Because Syria has continued to support Hezbollah after the October 7th events, America has reactivated ISIS beyond what has been the case for some time.

At the end of the day the Damascus government will come to some terms with the Kurdish side on the eastern banks of the Euphrates, because the Americans cannot sustain their presence there. America has no end goa,l there is no big strategy for them. Even the US special envoy to Syria told the Kurds, 'Look, you have to come to terms with Syria. Find the middle ground with them and compromise.' So until this compromise comes about the Americans will stay there, and their stay is very destabilizing.

The outcome of the conflict in Syria ultimately depends on the conflict in Ukraine. The Russians have to prioritize Ukraine at the moment, but once that's sorted they can then start thinking about Syria again.

Hamas wants a permanent ceasefire and exchange of hostages, the Israeli forces out of Gaza completely, and reconstruction and aid. This is something that Israel will not accept. In my opinion what Israel wants is what they call complete annihilation of Hamas and what Ben Gvir and Smotrichi and other officials call "voluntary migration" of the Palestinians. Of course this means ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from Gaza. I think Professor Mearsheimer explained this eloquently and perfectly in his last lecture in Australia when he said that Israel knows that it's an apartheid state and it knows that they cannot sustain that in the long run. So they want to solve this, but instead of giving the Palestinians equal rights so that the apartheid system would fall, they have decided to ethnically cleanse the two million Palestinians from Gaza. But they can't do this alone. They need the cooperation of Egypt. In the first days after October 7th, if you remember, all these officials who now say that they're for the Two State Solution were in Egypt trying to convince Sisi to receive 2 million Palestinian refugees. The plan was to build 10 cities in the Sinai Then they started discussing--even here in Germany in the Parliamentary committees which is secret talks--how many Palestinians Germany can absorb, and how many Palestinians can France absorb. So they were ready to cooperate with Israel to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from Gaza, but the Egyptians said, 'No.' Egypt know that once they receive two million Palestinians and the Palestinians try to carry arms and go back to Gaza, then Israel will say there is a security threat coming from the Sinai and they'll want to create a buffer zone inside Sinai, which is something they have done before. The Egyptians are aware of these calculations so they rejected it.

Hezbollah has basically created a buffer zone in northern Israel. Tens of thousands of Israelis were forced to leave these areas, and these settlements are under daily attack. Hezbollah has basically blinded Israel, because they've destroyed the intelligence and spying equipment, the technologies and the radars. As a result, Israel is now basically blind in the north. So they have employed the various types of drones to see Hezbollah's movements. Hezbollah now has exhibited the first time use of an air defense system. Basically, it's an Iranian weapon, and they forced an Israeli F-16 to leave the airspace of Lebanon. This is a game changer, because the Israelis have been used to bombing Lebanon, Syria, and the other countries with no opposition. Now you have Hezbollah opposing this.

So Israel, in my opinion. stands on three legs.

The first is deterrence, and Hamas and Hezbollah have challenged this deterrence.

The second is Israel as a safe haven for the Jewish people around the world. Hezbollah has destabilized this image. Israel is no longer a safe haven for the Jewish people in northern Israel.

The third leg is foreign aid. US foreign aid and the German foreign aid and other countries are giving foreign aid. This explains why the student protest in the US is very dangerous for Israel, because those are the future whether we agree with them or not. In the future those students will hold positions in universities, in academia, probably in the political field.

The timing of October 7 is very interesting. In my opinion it's not a coincidence. Hamas picked this time to attack Israel because the third leg that we were speaking of--foreign aid--Hamas recognized that the US is heavily involved in the Ukraine war and America sees its war on Russia as existential for the unipolar world.

Therefore America has invested so much of their military aid, their intelligence focus, their military focus, everything is on Ukraine. So Hamas comes along during this time and opens a new front in the Middle East and the Americans now have to diversify their efforts between the Middle East and Ukraine. Now they have to send billions to Israel and the rest to Ukraine, so I think the timing is very interesting to see that Hamas tried to diversify the focus of the Americans. If they're reading it correctly, when Russia wins this strategic conflict with NATO in Ukraine we are going to see the birth of a multipolar world. And, under a multipolar world, how can the United States continue its unconditional support to the Israelis? This is questionable, and the Americans have to see that the imminent threat to their dominance around the world is going to be China. So if we put all this into one basket we see that time is not playing in favor of the Americans and the Israelis in the region. Hezbollah knows this. Therefore they are escalating every time the Israelis escalate.

This is what I have contended. Israel requires American global hegemony for its continued existence in its current form. When that hegemony comes to an end—following defeat in Ukraine and the loss of King Dollar’s reserve currency status—many current geopolitical realities will change. Israel’s Middle East co-hegemon status will be one of the things that changes.

The Israelis threaten Lebanon with invasion. I think that if the Israelis were able to do it, they would have done it from the first day, because when the October 7 happened the first thing that the Israelis told the US was that they were going to open a front against Hezbollah. The Americans were completely against it. They said this is now their first red line. Israel cannot go into Lebanon because they know that Hezbollah has established a mutually assured destruction equation. Israel can turn Lebanon into the stone age, but at the same time Hezbollah will be able to destroy every airport, every port, and every military facility in Israel--including in Dimona. Hezbollah is completely different from Hamas and they have gained enormous fighting experience in Syria. They have been fighting against the most brutal terrorist groups that you can imagine. I have eyewitnesses from who fought in the Syrian Army. They tell me stories about Hezbollah, how competent they are and how disciplined they are and how effective they are on the ground.

We're not dealing with very sane officials in Tel Aviv, but at the same time the Americans are holding the card here against Israel, telling them that this is a really dangerous miscalculation if they go into Lebanon.

I personally agree with the Americans, that the Israeli shouldn't go to Lebanon because this is going to be very destructive for Israel. Do people in Israel, does the government in Israel, understand how bad, how critical the situation for Israel has become? I'm going to say straight away I think this is the most difficult situation that Israel has found itself in that I can remember even during the 1973 War.

The Israeli officials at the current moment are irrational. I also mean these hardcore Zionists in the US. They are irrational. What they're basically preaching is an Armageddon in the region, and they speak about it openly, like it's something that we can tolerate in the region--to blow up the entire region because they want to build the temple, they want to kick out the Palestinians, and this type of rhetoric is very poisonous. The Zionists in the US and Israel are hardcore ideologues, and you cannot mix rationality and hardcore ideology. You can make big miscalculations if you're a hardcore ideologue, and this is something we see with many politicians and congressmen and congresswomen in the US. They talk about wiping out countries, they talk about eliminating entire populations from their territories.

In my opinion Hezbollah has outsmarted the Israeli side, but Israel cannot tolerate this. This is why I say I don't rule out an Israeli invasion of Lebanon, because two of the three legs that Israel stands have already been really, really challenged by Hezbollah and by Hamas. The only tool they have left is enormous military power to inflict as much damage and destruction on their enemies in order to deter them, but with Hezbollah this doesn't work because Hezbollah can also destroy Israeli cities, unlike Hamas.

The Iranians believe that the presence of the US in the region is actually part of a divide and conquer strategy. The Americans adopted this strategy between Iran and Iraq and then they turned the Gulf countries against Iraq. In this case they turned the Gulf countries against Syria, so there was massive destruction in the region resulting from conflicts that have been fought for the sake of the US. Now the former Qatari foreign minister was on Qatari National TV and he used the term "tasked." He said, "We in Qatar were tasked to overthrow the regime in Syria." So they were tasked by the United States, and this conflict has killed half a million people--probably even more--and you have millions of refugees. By contrast, when the Chinese started to invest more they brought the Iranians and the Saudis together. After October 7 every step that Iran has taken they have coordinated with the Saudis, and they told them, 'We're not targeting you, we don't want to target your interests in the region, this is strictly about the American and the Israeli interests in the region. When they retaliated against Israel they had been telling the Saudis for two weeks what they were going to do. The importance of this retaliation from the Iranian side lies in just one thing, and that is: 'I can hit you if I want to hit you and in the places that I want to hit you, and especially the military air bases of the Israeli side.’

Q: Benjamin Netanyahu will address the US American people on the 24th of July in the US Congress. Will he warn them of a surprise coming—a Pearl Harbor again?

KA: I think he will speak to the congressmen and congresswomen who are already on his payroll. I have this brilliant site called AIPAC Tracker--guys, if you're on Twitter and X follow this page called AIPAC Tracker and they will tell you how much money every single congressman and woman have received from the Israel Lobby. You will be surprised that many of them are arch supporters of Israel and they have received only a few tens of thousands of dollars. I thought in my naivity that these congressmen and women are millionaires. Some of them are, but to my surprise many of them have received $30,000 or $40,000 or $50,000 from AIPAC and they have become an arch supporter and servant for Israel instead of serving the interests of the American people. The discussions that I have watched in Congress in the Senate in the past year they have spoken more about Israel than they have spoken about their own issues in in the US, like what's happening in the southern borders, for example.

This is a brilliant example of the principle of leverage with regard to the role of money in politics. The total amount isn’t necessarily the final decider. It’s the money at the margin, the money that makes the final difference that matters most.