Threat of Strike at India's State-Operated Ports Adverted for a Second Time

The strike notice was withdrawn for India's 12 state-operated ports (Paradip)

Published Dec 12, 2024 2:38 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

A strike that had threatened to disrupt cargo operations at India’s 12 state-owned and operated ports and which could have had a broader regional impact has been adverted. A collation of six unions representing more than 18,000 workers had set a December 15 deadline for the implementation of the agreed wage pack reporting it would otherwise begin an indefinite strike on December 17.

While the country’s privately operated ports, including the container terminal at Mundra, were not involved in the dispute, experts warned a strike would have had wide-reaching implications for the Indian economy and regional shipping. Bulkers would have been especially impacted.

The 12 ports, which include operations in Mumbai, the Nehru Port, New Mangalore, Cochin, and others, handled more than 500,000 metric tons of cargo in the previous eight months of 2024. Overall cargo volume is up 2.6 percent at those ports while container volume was up over 8 percent to 8.8 million TEU.

The strike threat came after years of failed contract negotiations.  The unions initially set an end-of-August deadline for a strike and it was only adverted after a marathon three-day negotiating session. 

The collation of unions was demanding an 8.5 percent wage increase over five years starting from January 2022 when the prior contract expired. They also wanted a cost-of-live adjustment and won a new performance-based bonus system. Job security as the ports modernize was another issue during the negotiations.

The Indian Ports Association however failed to implement the agreement leading to the December deadline. It said there were issues with the agreement that had to be resolved but they have finally been settled and the agreement could move forward. 

The unions however have accused the IPA of being “lethargic” and delaying to implement the agreement despite having won agreement from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and approval from the Union Cabinet in October. 

The Ministry of Ports, Shipping, and Waterways was reported ready to issue the order on Wednesday to the IPA to implement the wage agreement. A spokesperson for the union confirmed that the implementation would proceed and that they had withdrawn the planned industrial action.

VIERNES 13

 9 December in Anarchist History: 

The First Intifada

by subMedia / December 11th, 2024

On this day in anarchist history, December 9th 1987, we remember the start of the 1st Palestinian Intifada, a years long decentralized uprising of Palestinians against Israeli colonial occupation.

Sparked by an incident at the Erez Crossing in Gaza where an Israeli military vehicle crashed into a line of Palestinian civilian vehicles, the 1st Intifada quickly spread throughout Gaza and to the West Bank.

For six years, Palestinians, rallied, rioted, withheld taxes and staged armed attacks. While leadership of the Intifada was largely based within Neighbourhood Councils, the corrupt PLO used it as a bargaining chip for peace talks with Israel. While calls of the Intifada were for the total withdrawal of Israel from all Palestinian lands the PLO called for a two-state solution including the formation of a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank. The two-state solution would never come to fruition and the brutality of Israeli occupation has continued to this day.

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SubMedia is directed and produced by Frank Lopez. Read other articles by subMedia, or visit subMedia's website.

Uruguay: Frente Amplio wins presidential election

Friday 13 December 2024, 

by Latin America Commission, New Anti-Capitalist Party


On Sunday 24 November, the Frente Amplio (FA) won the second round of the presidential elections in Uruguay. The pairing of Yamandú Orsi and Carolina Cosse won 49.8% of the vote against 45.8% for the right-wing Partido Nacional. A clear victory. The coalition-movement, as it statutorily defines itself, won in 5 of the 19 departments, whereas previously it had only won in the 2 largest cities, Montevideo and Canelones. The FA won 16 out of 30 senatorial seats and 48 out of 99 deputy seats.

On Sunday 24 November, the Frente Amplio (FA) won the second round of the presidential elections in Uruguay. The pairing of Yamandú Orsi and Carolina Cosse won 49.8% of the vote against 45.8% for the right-wing Partido Nacional. A clear victory. The coalition-movement, as it statutorily defines itself, won in 5 of the 19 departments, whereas previously it had only won in the 2 largest cities, Montevideo and Canelones. The FA won 16 out of 30 senatorial seats and 48 out of 99 deputy seats.
Social security at the heart of the debate

The first round of parliamentary elections took place on 27 October, and above all the plebiscite against social security reform. The majority current of the FA, the MPP (Movimiento de Participación Popular) led by former president Mujica, received the most votes. In October, this sector had opposed the referendum in defence of social security organised by the PIT-CNT, the central trade union confederation, and supported by the PC, PS and PVP, all parties with working-class bases. The plebiscite against pension reform failed to win a majority, but almost 40% of Uruguayans voted ‘Yes’.

These results - parliamentary elections and plebiscite - imply a ‘distance’ between the leadership of the FA and the aspirations of the workers. This estrangement is not yet formal because the popular classes still have hope in the Orsi-Cosse government, which is natural just after their victory. The number of blank votes, around 38,500 (bearing in mind you need around 24,000 votes to be elected as a deputy), is undoubtedly a first expression of this. Some of the spoilt votes may reflect the desire of some left-wing voters to put in a ‘Yes’ ballot paper on 27 October, as a way of expressing their rejection of the two candidates.

Recomposition of the left

Yamandú Orsi has confirmed his willingness to open a dialogue on social security, but the statements made by the future Minister for the Economy, Gabriel Oddone, have set the tone for the next government: ‘between the economic proposals of the Frente Amplio and those of the Republican Coalition (the right) there are not two radically opposed models of the country, but rather differences in priorities’ (El Observador, 25 November 2024).

There is the beginning, albeit rather timid, of a recomposition of the popular movement and the left. Will the popular movement stand still while the government solves the problems? Will it continue to take initiatives like the plebiscite on social security if its expectations are not met? Will social movements behave in the same way as they did under previous left-wing governments? Will there be political space for the recomposition of an anti-capitalist left?

These are all unanswered questions. The answer will depend on the measures taken by the FA government and the balance of power that political activists within and outside the FA, as well as the workers’ and people’s movement, succeed in imposing.

P.S.


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Attached documentsuruguay-frente-amplio-wins-presidential-election_a8780.pdf (PDF - 904.8 KiB)
Extraction PDF [->article8780]

Uruguay
Tribute: Ernesto Herrera (1949-2024)
“Latin America has once again entered a period of strong social and political turbulence”
Dead ends and limits of progressive governments
From the crisis of progressivism to the progress of the crisis
Who’s who in Latin America’s upheaval

Latin America Commission, New Anti-Capitalist Party



International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.

Jeffrey Sachs on the Fall of Syria and Need for Peace in Palestine and Ukraine

By Jeffrey Sachs, Zain Raza 

December 11, 2024

Source: acTVism Munich

In this episode of The Source, we interview world-renowned economist, UN advisor, and best-selling author Jeffrey D. Sachs about the latest developments in Syria. Specifically, we explore the geopolitics behind the recent events in Syria and the role of the United States. We also assess the significance of the recent meeting in Paris between US President-elect Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, during which he called for an immediate ceasefire in the war in Ukraine. Finally, we examine the reasons why the United States decided to undermine the decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, despite their support for the court when it decided to issue an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

This transcript may not be 100% accurate due to audio quality or other factors.

Zain Raza (ZR): Thank you for tuning in, I’m your host Zain Raza. Before I begin this interview, I would like to update you on the progress of our recently launched crowdfunding campaign that aims to raise 55,000 Euros by January 10th so that we can continue our independent and non-profit journalism in 2025. In our last year’s crowdfunding campaign, we raised 53,000 Euros thanks to 1,700 donors. And in this year’s campaign so far, we have managed to raise 10,400 Euros thanks to 340 donors, which is around 20% of our target. This is the fastest start to any of our crowdfunding campaigns since we launched our organization in 2014. As a comparison last year, at this time we had managed to raise 3,090 Euros. So if you’re watching our videos regularly and have not donated so far, please take a few moments and just donate a small amount of three to five Dollars or Euros. If all of our 155,000 subscribers just donate that amount today, we will not only be able to reach a crowdfunding target with ease, but also go much beyond that, which can improve our capacities going into 2025. Today I’ll be talking to Jeffrey Sachs about the latest developments in Syria, Israel and Gaza, as well as the war in Ukraine. Jeffrey serves as the Director for the Center of Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he holds the academic rank of University Professor, the institution’s highest academic rank. He’s also a world-renowned economist, best-selling author, and a global leader in sustainable development. Jeffrey, welcome back to the show.

Jeffrey Sachs (JS): Thank you very much. Good to be back with you.

ZR: I would like to start this interview with another crisis that has recently erupted in the Middle East, namely in Syria. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, also known as HTS, launched an offensive in northwestern Syria less than two weeks ago and successfully overthrew the government of Bashar al-Assad. Despite being backed by Iran and Russia, Assad was unable to repel the offensive by HTS, which in turn was backed by Turkey. As we speak, Israeli forces are conducting airstrikes throughout Syria, destroying major airports and other strategic military infrastructure, including in Damascus. Furthermore, Al Jazeera is reporting that the Israeli army has taken over territory in southern Syria to create what they call a security buffer zone. Qatar, Iraq, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have just come out and condemned Israel’s dangerous land grab in the Syrian Golan Heights. Western leaders have welcomed the fall of Assad. Germany and France, for example, have expressed their willingness to work with the various Syrian groups, while the US, according to a White House official, has confirmed that it is in contact with the various groups. As for Russia, according to Al Jazeera, satellite imagery has revealed that Russian naval ships have just left their base at Tartous on Syria’s coast. Can you start by giving your assessment of the fall of Assad and then talk about why the West, led by the US, broadly supported and welcomed this offensive and victory by HTS?

JS: Well, this is the culmination of an effort that goes back decades, but in practical terms, at least to 2011, of the United States to bring down Assad. And this is at the behest of Israel, so this is really a US-Israel-Turkey operation. Of course, Turkey has somewhat different aims to extend its own power and to fight the Kurds, which the US supports, so we’re not at the end of that story. But this is essentially a US-Israel-Turkish operation. This isn’t something that just happened because of Turkey or something that just happened because of HTS internally or just the collapse of the Assad government. This is a longstanding effort. The reason that it occurred so rapidly, it seems clear in retrospect, is because of the weakening of Hezbollah in recent weeks, which, of course, was the target of Israel’s arms in southern Lebanon. But it seems clear that the Hezbollah forces that were supporting Assad pulled out of Syria to reinforce Hezbollah in Lebanon, and that created the opening for HTS and for the Israelis from the south to move in and invade Syria. So this is, of course, interconnected with Israel’s broader war, and Israel’s expansion into Syria is also consistent with Israel’s broader war, which is to recreate the Middle East under Israel’s regional power and ultimately to defeat Iran, which has been Netanyahu’s strategic aim for decades, and this is a part of that longer-term effort. So the US talking to the other side and so forth, this is not something that’s just happened or the US is catching up with events. This is a coordinated US-Israel-Turkish operation, and it’s a major event, but it almost surely opens the way to a wider war and to more instability and to the carving up of Syria, rather than to some new, stable, peaceful, democratic government. Dream on.

ZR: Let me dig deeper on that. Depending on which media outlet or government spokesperson one listens to, some describe HTS as an opposition force or simply as a Syrian group, while others use terms such as rebels or jihadists. In Western media, we are currently seeing round-the-clock images and videos of people on the street celebrating the fall of Assad and creating a narrative of a people-led, grassroots revolution that just successfully overthrew an authoritarian regime. What is largely missing, however, is the background of HTS’s leader, Abu Mohammad Al-Jolani, who is one of the founding leaders of al-Qaeda in Syria, Al-Nusra, and a former deputy to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. According to Amnesty International, HTS was responsible for the systematic killing of entire families in Alawite areas of Latakia. Al-Jolani recently gave an exclusive interview to CNN, in which he presented himself as a modern man, and stated that he has transformed himself since the early days when he was in his 20s. Although HTS is still on the terror list of the US, the UK, Turkey, as well as the UN, they are now being welcomed and approached [by Western governments], as I mentioned earlier. Is this a similar policy that the US played, for example, in Afghanistan? And do you think this could possibly backfire, not only against Israel, but also against the United States, given that these people have come to power?

JS: What we see on social media may have absolutely no reality to it on the street. So, nothing that we’re just seeing clicking on CNN, God forbid, or some other mainstream media shows us anything. We can remember the celebrations of the fall of Saddam Hussein, the celebrations of the fall of Gaddafi, and so forth. It’s not hard to stage 50 people celebrating, waving flags, and maybe they are waving flags, but I would be very surprised if we don’t see a lot of bloodshed and a lot of war in Syria in the days ahead. Now, the fact that Al-Jolani is part of Al-Qaeda means that he’s been on the CIA payroll, that’s all. This is a CIA operation. The whole attempt to bring down Assad from 2011 was Al-Qaeda. And of course, there are occasionally breakaway groups like ISIS, which may not be on CIA payroll, or actually may be on CIA payroll, we never quite know. It’s not like the books are open and that there’s a shred of honesty to any of it, but the CIA MO [Modus Operandi] of using radical jihadists dates back at least to 1979. It may have been an innovation in Afghanistan with the Mujahideen. Maybe it was even before that. The Soviet Union on its southern rim is Muslim to a large extent. This means that the CIA, back to the 1940s, was working with Islamic groups and Islamic militant groups to try to destabilize the Soviet Union. Remember that the core of the CIA, going back now to its founding in 1947, is to try to destroy Russia or the Soviet Union. And that basic goal has not changed. The end of the Cold War didn’t really change very much. It went from a fight against the Soviet Union to an attempt to dismantle, or as they say in Washington, decolonize Russia itself. That’s why we have war in Ukraine. That’s why the war in Ukraine is not disconnected from the Middle East. This has been the CIA MO for decades. Whenever you see jihadists, think CIA. This is what’s going on. That’s not some crazy talk. This is contracts. We know it. This is Osama bin Laden. It gets embarrassing once in a while for these people. They don’t like when the American contractors turn around and blow up Americans, but that’s part of the operations, actually, it turns out. Yes, Al-Jolani no doubt has been part of this US-Israel-Turkish gambit going way back. Al-Nusra, we know, was part of Turkey’s operation. We know that Operation Timber Sycamore, that was an Obama-era finding to overthrow Assad, directly involved jihadists. So there’s nothing new under the sun in this.

ZR: So how do you think this will look out geopolitically? Russia has lost its naval base there. Turkey has posed a threat now with this group against the Kurds. Iran has been further weakened. Do you think Western hegemony led by the United States has made significant gains here, and that would in some ways stabilize the region, or do you think we are heading for an all-out war?

JS: I think most likely we’re seeing an expanding war. I don’t think the long-term trends are towards Western hegemony. Russia will win in Ukraine or we will get an escalation to nuclear war, depending on how crazy the Americans are. The war in the Middle East shows no sign of camping down. Remember that all of the wars in the Middle East that we’ve seen since the 1990s are a Netanyahu strategy, actually. It seems weird. How can one say that? If you look at the list in Netanyahu’s book in 1996, Fighting Terrorism, or you look at the Clean Break strategy, which was US political consultants advising or drafting Netanyahu’s game plan in 1996, or you look at the list of countries that the Bush administration planned to conquer after 9 /11, this is a long-standing playbook. There’s a famous episode of General Wesley Clark, the former NATO commander, being shown a piece of paper just after 9/11 in 2001, when Clark was at the Pentagon, and the paper said: We’re going to invade seven countries in five years. The list was Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Somalia, Libya, and Sudan. Well, low and behold, every one of those countries has been the object of a US war or a US proxy war since then, with one exception, partial exception, and that’s Iran. Which is the big prize that Israel wants to pull the US into a war with Iran, which could easily become a world war. Now, what has happened with these six wars? What’s the state of Libya? Ongoing civil war. What’s the state of Sudan? Ongoing war and starvation. What’s the state of South Sudan, which is broken apart by the CIA from Sudan? Ongoing war. What is the state of Lebanon? War. What is the state of Syria? War. What is the state of Iraq? US occupation and instability. In other words, has Netanyahu’s plan solved anything? Did it create Western hegemony or did it create a bloodbath in the region? I’d go with the bloodbath interpretation. I think Israel has rather maniacally destabilized the Middle East. The US pathetically has carried out Israeli foreign policy. So much of this is known and not talked about, but it’s really an unpleasant reality. Netanyahu laid it out. We’re going to keep control over Palestine. That’s going to lead to resistance such as Hamas and Hezbollah, and we’re going to take out all the governments that support the resistance movement. It was spelled out very clearly in 1996 onward, and that’s what the US is doing. Somehow, it’s not even military for rent, by the way. We fund it. Israel says: Go to war here, and we go to war there. It isn’t solving a single problem, but it is killing a hell of a lot of people. And I don’t believe anything is going to be solved in Syria. I could be mistaken, but it would be the first time. And again, on social media, which may or may not be true, could be fake news, could be old reruns, we’re now seeing postings of people being killed in cold blood. All this morning, US time, we’re seeing sites of people being shot in cold blood, ostensibly these hours, ostensibly in Syria. I can’t verify it, because nothing is verifiable very easily for me on the web, but it rings true that we’re entering a period of instability. And of course, with Israel invading and saying it’s not invading, and the United States saying, well, they’re terrorists, but they’re not terrorists, it’s just an ongoing idiocy where you can’t find one honest word from the US government.

ZR: I would like to draw our attention to the latest developments taking place in Ukraine. Last Saturday, President-elect Donald Trump called for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine, a day after meeting with Ukrainian President Zelensky and French President Macron in Paris. He made the following remarks on social media, and let me cite him here. Quote: ”There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin. Too many lives are being needlessly wasted, too many families destroyed”, unquote. This came a day after the United States approved a $1 billion military aid package for Ukraine that includes long-term supply of weapons. What do you make of Trump’s cause for a ceasefire negotiation? Is it even realistic now, given how much political capital, credibility, and even lives Zelensky and NATO invested into this conflict?

JS: Well, if Trump were actually to follow through on the point that this Ukraine war needs to end, it can end. The way that it can end is relatively straightforward, I’d say completely straightforward, which is that Trump needs to declare NATO is not expanding to Ukraine, and on that basis, the US is committed – and that doesn’t mean just now or the next five years or the next ten years, that’s permanent – and on that basis, the fighting can stop because Russia’s security interests are going to be recognized, and then the rest of the issues on territory, on demilitarization zones, on mutual security, on missile placements and other concerns can be addressed. But the core of this is the US attempt to grab Ukraine under the US military alliance. This is a plan that goes back to 1994 in the Clinton and White House and was spelled out by Zbig Brzezinski in 1997 in his book, The Grand Chess Board. I often point out that American foreign policy has not changed year to year by presidents. It’s deep-seated. All these wars in the Middle East go back to the 1990s. The attempt to expand NATO goes back 30 years this year. So this is what we’re playing out. If Trump is aware and acts on that awareness, to recognize that the key to ending the war is to end the reason for the war, and that is this completely misguided US hegemonic aspiration for NATO to be everywhere in the world. I say like the board game Risk. You’re trying to put your peace everywhere, this is how I characterize US foreign policy. If Trump recognizes that that doesn’t serve American interests, the war can end basically immediately. If instead he says, well, we need a ceasefire and NATO is not Russia’s business or part of Ukraine will join NATO, and some of his advisors peddle such plans, the war won’t stop. In other words, the war will stop if the reason for the war ends. It won’t stop unless the reason for the war ends. Russia’s winning on the battlefield. So the question is whether the US will escalate or whether it will remove the cause of the war. But there won’t be just a ceasefire. It’s not Russia’s interest.

ZR: Let us now look at Israel’s assault in Gaza, where the death toll has exceeded 44,600. In November, Human Rights Watch published a report holding Israel responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity. And this month Amnesty International also released a report which documents how Israel is violating the Genocide Convention with specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza. And let me quote their General Secretary Agnes Callamard here. Quote: ”Month after month Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them”, unquote. End of November, the ICC, International Criminal Court, issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas’ military commander Mohammed Deif. Regarding the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, the ICC stated that they were responsible for the war crime of using starvation as a method of warfare, and are guilty of crimes against humanity through murder, persecution and other inhuman acts. The US fundamentally rejected these warrants, accusing the ICC of drawing a false equivalence between Israel and Hamas, as well as employing a flawed process to come to this conclusion. When the ICC issued arrest warrants for Russian President Putin for the war crimes of the illegal deportation and transfer of children during the Russian war in Ukraine, the US welcomed it. Now that the ICC has issued arrest warrants against their ally in Benjamin Netanyahu, the US is objecting, even though both the US and Germany rhetorically champion a rules-based order that the claim is continuously violated by actors such as Russia and China. Can you comment on the United States’ reaction, as well as what implications this will have on international justice?

JS: The American values are that America should dominate the world. That’s what the rule-based order means. It’s not even anything else, because the US has never, in all of this absurd propaganda, ever defined what the rules-based order is. It’s like an old jingle on a commercial. Rules-based order, rules-based order, you could put it to music. It’s a joke. The US has no internal legal or ethical or moral consistency. When you’re trying to rule the world, you overthrow governments, you launch wars, you assassinate people, and in the case of the war in Gaza, you are complicit in genocide. So the US is complicit in genocide. If the ICC had more power and would not be crushed, it could indict US officials the same way. The US is part of this morning till night, night till morning. It arms Israel. It provides intelligence for Israel. It provides the financing for Israel. It strategizes with Israel. It supports Israel. It vetoes resolutions in the UN. This is what it is. And yes, Israel is committing genocide. And the US is complicit in genocide. Will the US say so? Of course not. Is it a surprise that the US is duplicitous? If anyone is still surprised, sorry, you don’t get it. This is the normal story of foreign policy. And there are people who defend it. It’s an anarchic world and you do what you can. It’s a struggle for survival and you want to come out on top. I don’t believe that that is the route to safety or security. I believe it’s the route to global annihilation because it will end up in nuclear Armageddon if we continue on this path. So I’m not a fan at all of what the US is doing, but I’m not surprised by it either. What has the US done for one minute to show one iota of concern for the ruthless slaughter of tens of thousands of people? And by the way, the number of 44,000 is the count of the bodies that have been pulled from the rubble, not the estimated 10 to 15,000 whose bodies have never been recovered, nor probably another 100,000 or more of people who have died from exposure, from starvation, from lack of medical care, from lack of anesthetics for children and surgery. The scale of brutality and the scale of the loss is horrific, but it’s not an accident. The government of Israel is quite straightforward, though usually in Hebrew to its own supporters, that it wants the Palestinians out of there, that it wants to make Gaza completely unlivable. It’s not a secret. They don’t say it in English in public when they think that someone might care what they’re saying, but boy, do they say it in the rallies, do they say it on the TikTok postings, do they say it as these extremists celebrate the deaths of the Palestinians, and that’s how the ICJ case is built. They’ve left a complete record of genocidal intentions. Not to mention the actual genocidal outcomes, but under the convention, intentions matter, and the intentions are very clear.

ZR: To my last question, I want to specifically ask you this, as you have appeared both in the mainstream media and alternative media to comment on the most breaking political issues of our times. In your view, why is it essential today for people to support media outlets such as ours that do not take any money from corporations and governments and believe in the principle of independence?

JS: Please do so. And happy to give a shout-out for you and for others trying to make real information available. I’ve watched the collapse of the US mainstream media. The New York Times, you read only to find out what absurdity they’re claiming each day. You cannot read The New York Times for information. It’s a propaganda page for the US government. Unfortunately, this is basically true of the main cable networks when it comes to these wars. It’s true of the other major print publications. You can read them to find out what narrative the US government is peddling, but you will not find the truth on them. So we need to use the ability to reach out in creative ways such as you’re doing to bring voices of people who see things, hear things, know things, have been engaged in things to tell more completely what is going on.

ZR: Jeffrey Sachs, world-renowned economist and bestselling author, thank you so much for your time today.

JS: Great to be with you. Thanks a lot.

ZR: And thank you for tuning in today. If you watched this video until the very end, please take a few more moments to support our crowdfunding campaign. We are an independent and non-profit journalistic media outlet that does not take any money from corporations or governments. We don’t even allow advertisement, all with the goal of providing you with information that is free from any external influence. You will find the links to all of our donation platforms in the description of this video. We thank you for tuning in and for your support. I’m your host, Zain Raza. See you next time.


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Jeffrey Sachs

Jeffrey D. Sachs is University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed the Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Co-Chair of the Council of Engineers for the Energy Transition, Commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development, academician of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences at the Vatican, and Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah Honorary Distinguished Professor at Sunway University. He has been Special Advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocat under Secretary General António Guterres. He spent over twenty years as a professor at Harvard University, where he received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees. Sachs has received 41 honorary doctorates, and his recent awards include the 2022 Tang Prize in Sustainable Development, the Legion of Honor by decree of the President of the Republic of France, and the Order of the Cross from the President of Estonia. His recent books include The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions (2020) and Ethics in Action for Sustainable Development (2022).

The Fall of Assad & What It Means for the Middle East

By Alastair Crooke, Chris Hedges 

December 11, 2024

Source: The Chris Hedges Report




The fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, ending a 55-year dynasty begun by his father, dramatically shifts the pieces on the chessboard of the Middle East. The rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), led by Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, is armed and backed by Turkey and was once allied with Al Qaeda. It is sanctioned as a terrorist group. Turkey’s primary goal is to prevent an independent Kurdish state in northern Syria where Kurds have formed an autonomous enclave. But it may not only be Turkey that is behind the overthrow of Assad. It may also be Israel. Israel has long sought to topple the Syrian regime which is the transit point for weapons and aid sent from Iran to the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah. The Syrian regime was backed by Russia and Iran, indeed Russian warplanes routinely bombed Syrian rebel targets. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has gloated about the ousting of Assad calling it an “historic day” and said it was a direct result of Israel’s actions against Hezbollah and Iran. But at the same time, Israel will soon have an Islamic state on its border.

Syria, a country of 23 million, is geopolitically important. It links Iraq’s oil to the Mediterranean, the Shia of Iraq and Iran to Lebanon, and Turkey, a NATO ally, to Jordan’s deserts.

Assad’s decision to brutally crush a pro-democracy movement triggered a 14-year-long civil war in 2011 that led to 500,000 people being killed and more than 14 million displaced.

Now What? Will Hayat Tahrir al-Sham seek to renew relations with Iran? Will it impose an Islamic state, given its jihadist roots? Will Syria’s many minority groups, Alawite, Druze, Circassian, Armenian, Chechen, Assyrian, Christian and Turkoman, be persecuted, especially the Alawites, a heterodox offshoot of Shiite Islam comprising around 10 percent of the population, which Assad and the ruling elites were members of? How will it affect the U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which holds the Syrian oil-rich territory in north and east Syria? Why are the U.S. and Israel bombing targets in Syria following the ouster of Assad? Will the new regime be able to convince the U.S. and Europe to lift sanctions and return the occupied oil fields? What does this portend for the wider Middle East, especially in Lebanon and the Israeli occupied territories?

Joining Chris Hedges to discuss the overthrow of the Assad regime and its ramifications is former British diplomat Alastair Crooke. He served for many years in the Middle East working as a security advisor to the EU special envoy to the Middle East, as well as helping lead efforts to set up negotiations and truces between Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian resistant groups with Israel. He was instrumental in establishing the 2002 ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. He is also the author of Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist Revolution, which analyzes the ascendancy of Islamic movements in the Middle East.

Host: Chris Hedges

Producer: Max Jones

Intro: Chris Hedges

Crew: Diego Ramos

Transcript: Diego Ramos
Transcript

Chris Hedges

The fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, ending a 55-year dynasty begun by his father, dramatically shifts the pieces on the chessboard of the Middle East. The rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), led by Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, is armed and backed by Turkey and was once allied with Al Qaeda. It is sanctioned as a terrorist group. Turkey’s primary goal is to prevent an independent Kurdish state in northern Syria where Kurds have formed an autonomous enclave. But it may not only be Turkey that is behind the overthrow of Assad. It may also be Israel. Israel has long sought to topple the Syrian regime which is the transit point for weapons and aid sent from Iran to the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah. The Syrian regime was backed by Russia and Iran, indeed Russian warplanes routinely bombed Syrian rebel targets. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has gloated about the ousting of Assad calling it an “historic day” and said it was a direct result of Israel’s actions against Hezbollah and Iran. But at the same time, Israel will soon have an Islamic state on its border.

Syria, a country of 23 million, is geopolitically important. It links Iraq’s oil to the Mediterranean, the Shia of Iraq and Iran to Lebanon, and Turkey, a NATO ally, to Jordan’s deserts.

Assad’s decision to brutally crush a pro-democracy movement triggered a 14-year-long civil war in 2011 that led to 500,000 people being killed and more than 14 million displaced.

Now What? Will Hayat Tahrir al-Sham seek to renew relations with Iran? Will it impose an Islamic state, given its jihadist roots? Will Syria’s many minority groups, Alawite, Druze, Circassian, Armenian, Chechen, Assyrian, Christian and Turkoman, be persecuted, especially the Alawites, a heterodox offshoot of Shiite Islam comprising around 10 percent of the population, which Assad and the ruling elites were members of? How will it affect the U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which holds the Syrian oil-rich territory in north and east Syria? Why are the U.S. and Israel bombing targets in Syria following the ouster of Assad? Will the new regime be able to convince the U.S. and Europe to lift sanctions and return the occupied oil fields? What does this portend for the wider Middle East, especially in Lebanon and the Israeli occupied territories?

Joining me to discuss the overthrow of the Assad regime and its ramifications is former British diplomat Alastair Crooke. He served for many years in the Middle East working as a security advisor to the EU special envoy to the Middle East, as well as helping lead efforts to set up negotiations and truces between Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian resistant groups with Israel. He was instrumental in establishing the 2002 ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. He is also the author of Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist Revolution, which analyzes the ascendancy of Islamic movements in the Middle East.

Let’s put everything in context. So let’s go back to the Arab Spring, Alastair. There were widespread demonstrations in Syria, as there were throughout the Arab world. These were crushed very, very brutally by the Assad regime, which triggered the civil war. But let’s start there.

Alastair Crooke

Okay, well, with the Arab spring, really its roots, if you want to go back to the roots of that whole process, was a meeting that took place with then Vice President Dick Cheney after the war in Lebanon, the 2006 war in Lebanon. And it entailed [Saudi] Prince Bandar [bin Sultan Al Saud], who was then head of Saudi intelligence services. And what happened at that meeting was that Cheney started moaning and saying, look, what’s going on? The invasion of Iraq was supposed to weaken Iran, and it doesn’t seem to have done that. And now we’ve got Hezbollah who has emerged victorious from this war in Lebanon. And Prince Bandar interrupted at that point, and he said, No, the king believes that the solution to this is we’ve got to take out Syria. Syria is the weak link in this whole process. And Cheney sort of backed off. He said, Well, what do you have in mind? What are you talking about? And he said, Well, there’s a solution. It is, if you like, Islamic revolutionaries, they’re the ones that can work for you. And again, Cheney sort of backed away a little, said, Well, you know, United States can’t do too much about that, you know. We wouldn’t want to go too far in that. And Bandar said, no problem. We will do it all for you. It’ll be done. You don’t have to intervene. It will follow. And so this was a sort of second round, the first round had happened in Afghanistan long before, when I was there. When, of course, Saudi Arabia, at the behest of the United States, sent Islamist movements into what was a secular society in Afghanistan in order to bring it down, to damage Russia and to weaken Russia at the point. And so this came up, at this point, but you have to grasp the big geopolitical picture of what was happening. Saudi Arabia was proposing to invert the whole paradigm of the Middle East. From the 19th century and beyond, it was Iran, the Shah. It was a big, powerful country, and it was the leader in the Middle East. And what he was saying is, let’s invert it. Let’s isolate Iran and make the Sunnis paramount in the Middle East, give them the primacy. And so it was an attempt to sort of shift the whole balance around in a different way, and to give the Sunni world, and this had been part of America’s policy from ’96 onwards. This idea of working with the Gulf states and with the monarchs and emirs of the Gulf, then it was against Baathist regimes and others. But then it was against Iran. And I remember, I mean, I was writing—you asked about the Arab awakening and what happened at that point. Well, it was, I think, really, in about 2015, or earlier, I’m not sure of ’12 or ’13 even, that Obama signed the presidential finding, which is an order. I mean, it’s an order that is given, and was given to the CIA to oust Assad and to overturn the government there. And so [inaudible] then have been a whole series of sort of ragtag of three letter groups that have received American training, Israeli training, Turkish training, in Syria, mainly for the purpose of ousting Assad and fulfilling the finding, Obama’s presidential finding. But even this started to fail in my view. I wrote, I remember in I think it was around 2012 I wrote, and I said, things are shifting, because what I see is this— we used to look at Palestine, and we used to look at the Middle East through sort of secular eyes, albeit Orientalist eyes, but through secular eyes, we used to [inaudible] it and see it in sort of instrumental fashion. Palestine, it was about institution, construction, two state solution. And I wrote, even then, that I thought this was shifting towards, if you like, symbols of religion—Al Aqsa versus Temple Mount were going to be the new war that was coming. And gradually, if you like, the Saudis, wore out their interests in Wahhabism. Wahhabism— extreme form of very narrow religion of Islamic religion based on texts and on document which was known, quite obviously, as a management of savagery. And this was the turning point, really. I think it was starting to shift in the other direction. And now Saudi Arabia has almost completely got rid of, if you like, the Wahhabi influence. Other parts of the Gulf have become, what I call, more interested in Bloomberg and their stock market ratings than they are in the geopolitics of the region. So that is the shift. Now what’s happened, essentially, with this is an extension of Obama’s finding, because gradually the most severe sanctions, the Caesar sanctions [Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019], were imposed on Syria from the beginning. And then the Kurds were empowered in the northeast of Syria, and they sat on the Syrian oil fields, and that oil was taken from them and sent to Turkey and it was entirely an illegal operation. So Syria lost its oil revenues, and then later, the Turks came down into the western part of Syria, occupied Idlib and took Aleppo. That was the industrial part, and so the agricultural, the oil industry— there was no economy, no economy left. Just to give you a practical example. Now we’ve seen that the Syrian army sort of were declined to fight. A conscript in the Syrian army is currently paid $7 a month. A general in the Syrian army receives $40 per month. The HTS and the others of the militia received $2,000 a month. That is the state in which, I mean that really—Syria just didn’t have, for one thing, the resources to seemingly be able to put together an army or fight. Russia tried to do this in 2018. It said to Assad, we’ll remake your army, re-equip it, new equipment. We’ll train them, the latest things on credit. You don’t have to put money up. Assad said no. Then more lately, the Iranians have said to them, we can support you. We can support your army. We can help but you have to invite us. I mean, we can’t come in as an occupying force. We have to be invited. Assad said no. And throughout this period, he has been warned that something was coming. The Iranians—the [Al-]Quds Brigade of the IRGC—about two months ago, went to Assad and they said to him, something is happening in Idlib. Beware, watch out! And I imagine that the Russians were equally aware of this. And the Turks have now publicly said that this was on the cards, they were operating this six months earlier. It started, from their perspective, six months earlier. I would actually put the date for the preparation of this for two years ago, probably. But anyway, they openly say six months ago it was underway, being prepared and being prepared, obviously, with America and being prepared with Israel. Now, why did he say no? Now I don’t have an answer that is definitive of this. But I remember some years ago, I remember there was a discussion, and I know the details of it, that when MBS, Mohammed bin Salman, was sort of new on the stage, and young, MBZ [Mohammed bin Zayed], the crown prince of UAE [United Arab Emirates], were talking, and he said, listen, to Mohammed bin Salman, if you want to be Crown Prince, the path to being Crown Prince is through Israel, and it’s through the Israeli lobby in Washington. That’s what you need to do. And that’s, of course, what UAE had done already with its base in Washington and presenting itself in ways to America. And I think what we’ve seen in the last three or four years is we’ve seen, actually, that Assad was distancing himself from both Iran and from Russia. And I think that he was being pulled more and more by the Gulf states, thinking that if he approximated closer to the Gulf states and away from Iran and Russia, this was his path to sort of survival, because Washington would like that. But more importantly, Tel Aviv would like that, and that would work with him in that way. Well, in the end, it just was nothing left to work with so [President of Turkey Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan, who had been for months, years, trying to persuade Assad to allow his government to be, if you like—I can only describe it as a sort of controlled Ottoman structure, rather than a government of the Syrian people. And I remember he was pressing it very hard at one time when I was with Assad in Damascus. And Assad said, Look, these people like Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, who are guests in my country, we’ve helped, funded, supported them, now tell me how to run the country and that they want the Muslim Brotherhood. And it’s a very sensitive issue, the Muslim Brotherhood, and in Syria, I’m sure, you know, because of the affairs with…

Chris Hedges

Just explain… there was an uprising, I think his father, Hafez Al-Assad, he raised the city, 10,000 dead. You can explain the context of that. And it was a Baathist, secular regime. Baathism, coming out of [Former President of Egypt Gamal Abdel] Nasser. Saddam Hussein was a Baathist, but just explain, going back that history, why they were so terrified of the Muslim Brotherhood, as of course, was other rulers like King Hussein [Former King of Jordan].

Alastair Crooke

They saw the Muslim Brotherhood as a very strict Islamist movement, whose tale, and there is some truth to this, veered off into sort of Wahhabism and Salafism. That was certainly true in Gaza and elsewhere. But Erdoğan tried to take control of the Muslim Brotherhood because he wanted to present, as I’ve just said—you know that whereas [Dick] Cheney was empowering the kings and amirs of Sunni Islam to be the masters of the world, Erdoğan wanted to go back to Ottomanism, a form of Neo-Ottomism. And everyone feared that no one liked the Ottomans, basically outside of the Ottoman wealth, and he wanted to insert that. And Assad saw this as a huge danger, and that this was going to be a militant attack on the state. But during that period after this, I mean, the state has become weaker and weaker and weaker. And so when, if you like, when Russia said, Well, we can try and build up your army and try and make you stronger, I don’t think he had the resources. Don’t think he had even— you know when you’re paying your troops $7 a month, you just don’t have many resources. The people were starving, they were losing hope. And there was a lot of corruption. You can imagine soldiers on certain dollars a month, stop big people at the checkpoints and demand money from them, and that sort of thing was what was going on. And then he was being dragged towards the Gulf states, thinking this might be a solution for him. And then Erdoğan decided to mount, if you like, this coup through Idlib, using a motley group of militias and others and those that are loosely tied to ISIS or Al Qaeda. And I think that what happened was because he went to see President [Vladimir] Putin on the day before, Friday, things started Saturday. And he spent some time with President Putin, hours. And then flew back the same day, and we have no idea what was said at that meeting. There’s no record of it from the Kremlin side, and there’s no record on the Damascus side of it. But I think that was probably the point Putin said, I’m sorry, Assad, it’s game over. There’s going to be a change, and you’re going to have to work with it. So I think from the Astana, from the meetings between Iran, Turkey and Russia, Russia had come to the conclusion on two grounds that—I mean, first of all, this was going to be a terrible mess if Assad fell. And I think he was probably being advised that this is an almost inevitable outcome. The situation was becoming irreversible. So I think in one sense, he could see that this would be a terrible mess, yes, but at the same time, he recalled Afghanistan, and the same time, he knew that one of the plays that is in hand against Russia is to reconnect, to give ways of pulling it from its focus on Ukraine and the war there, to create new fronts, new pressure points, more pressure on Assad and that he decided, you know, what was the primary interest of Russia. The primary interest is not the small wars, the big war. Not Romania, not Belarus, not Mongolia, but the big war which is against, if you like, NATO and the West which wants to, if you like, peel him away from China, peel him away from Iran, scatter the BRICS across the globe and leave Russia isolated. And so I guess he decided that that was to be the case. And Iran were very clear. They went, [inaudible] went to see Assad, well before the the actual collapse to say, look, it’s coming. It’s coming. You’re going to go, I mean, there’s no way the army is going to protect and I know that [inaudible], he wouldn’t even see him, and then he told him he was wrong. And I just think that at that point it was all over. And so Russia and Iran and Erdoğan got together and they produced this document, of course, I mean it’s all diplomatic speak. It has got no real meaning. It talks about elections and a cease fire and everyone is going to stop and get together and come and the legitimate opposition must be included and HTS excluded. I mean, all this is fiction. Of course, it’s never going to happen.

Chris Hedges

Let me ask a little bit about what this—let’s start with Turkey. I mean, I hadn’t heard that figure of $2,000 a month. That’s a lot of money in the Middle East, is that Turkish money? Is that Israeli money? Is that U.S. money? I just want to talk about the U.S., Turkey and Israel independently. And then, of course, we have to acknowledge, I think you would agree, this is quite a blow to both Russia and Iran, in particular, Hezbollah. It’s the lifeline…

Alastair Crooke

Of course, of course, of course.

Chris Hedges

Where did the arms and money come from? Was it primarily Turkey?

Alastair Crooke

Most of the training, I mean, there’s been a lot of training of these groups, even across from sort of Central Asia. Uzbeks, Turkmens and others are former jihadists, former fighters, Al-Qaeda fighters, have been taken in. And indeed, if you look at [Abu Mohammed al-]Jolani’s group, this polyglot group of militia, more than 30% actually come from Central Asia. They’re not Syrians at all. So they’ve been brought in, and Turkey is well known to have a training center for these groups. Even allegations that the famous fire at a concert hall in Moscow last year, earlier this year, that many people died in, they were trained in Turkey. So there’s been a long process of this, and yes, it’s funded by America because it’s part of the process. He sold it to America as part of the process of getting rid of Assad and getting a Western friendly government installed in Damascus. Of course, he framed it as a Western friendly government. What he meant was a sort of Neo-Ottoman-esque government in Damascus. And as I say, I know that because Assad was telling me at that earlier point how much pressure was on him to sort of bring in sort of parts of the Ottoman world into his government and he refused, and that was the cause of the breakup originally. So yes, money coming in, Turkey working closely with America, particularly in the groups in the south which were operated— it was complicated in Syria because the Pentagon was training some and CIA training others in Syria at the same time, and some of those groups were fighting each other, even though they were both on the American payroll. So America was funding a lot of this for Turkey. It was seeing Turkey as someone who could be helpful to Israel, and Turkey was very supportive of Israel, and things only started to sort of go wrong I think around 2016, when Turkey said that there’s been this plot against him, a coup and he blamed it was an American coup attempt to to get rid of him, and at that point, he’s become much more militant. His ego is huge. He made a statement yesterday. I saw it this morning, he was sitting there, and he said, There are really only two leaders in the world today, myself and Putin, but I’ve been around lot longer than Putin. So, you couldn’t judge how he sees Syria, something for him to take. But I think the great weakness and the flaw of this whole construct that has taken place and allowed to be taking place is he claims and thinks he can control Jolani and the jihadists now posing as ex-jihadists and diverse characters have embraced diversity and inclusion and whatever else. And he thinks that he can control, and even his own people say, and they’ve said it clearly in the press too, he doesn’t control these people. He controls a few of them, but he doesn’t control them, and he certainly doesn’t control Jolani, who set up a very oppressive structure in Idlib while he was the boss there, very oppressive. Strict Wahhabi, and anyone who disagreed was disappeared.

Chris Hedges

Let’s talk about Israel, because Netanyahu is gloated about this. In the short term, it does seem to benefit Israel in the sense that, as we said before, Syria is the transit point for weapons and aid to Hezbollah. Hezbollah troops were fighting for Assad. They withdrew just before the fall of Assad, Israel has moved forward in the buffer zone and the Golan Heights. They’ve moved tanks. This is occupied Syrian territory. So just as in Lebanon, they’ve used this moment to seize more land. Israel, like the U.S., has bombed, supposedly, weapons facilities, intelligence facilities, in Syria. But I have this question I have to ask you, I don’t see how an Islamic state, and I agree with your assessment of Jolani, of course, I don’t see how an Islamic State in Syria, in the long term is beneficial to Israel. But perhaps you can talk about all that.

Alastair Crooke

Okay, because, we have to go back a little bit and look—there’s been this huge change in Israel from just over a year ago, when the whole paradigm of Israel was overturned. And so we saw the Mizrahi [Jews] coming into the government. They were really antagonistic to the European-style Israelis, from the kibbutniks, the Ashkenazi, they were hostile to them. They had three agendas, basically. They had one agenda [which] was to establish Israel on the land of Israel, translated, no Palestinian state. The second one was to create, if you like, a really Jewish state, Jewish in spirit, and they think that they have it. And the third element was Halakhic law to come in. I mean, the secularists in Israel didn’t like this one bit, and Israel is deeply divided on this front and other fronts at the moment, almost to the point of civil war, just short of it. Netanyahu has become ever more authoritarian, controls literally everything personally. He has a coalition which is very much of the right. But the other important change that’s taken place is an epistemological change. They’re no longer secular. The Israelis that you might have known in the ’70s and ’80s were secular Europeans. These people are biblical, and there’s an eschatological element to it, which changes the epistemological. There’s no point in talking about rationality and does this make sense, or is this an interest, because they have a vision, and it’s not about just the vision, but the vision is it requires and mandates your commitment and your belief in it. You’re not supposed to reason with it, you take it, and this is the vision of the future. So there’s been this big change, and moving towards this, Israel has moved through what I call magical wars. The wars are quite magical. I mean, in Gaza, it’s a great victory. It’s huge, even though it isn’t a victory at all, it’s far from it. Hamas is still there, but it’s presented as a huge victory, and already they are organizing for settlers to come in and take the land of Northern Gaza and subsequently to repopulate that. Settlers are already putting their names down to be in the settlements of Gaza, and then they say in West Bank, it’s also a great victory, because [Bezalel] Smotrich, who’s a minister in the cabinet, minister of defense as well as administration of the West Bank, he’s actually delegitimizing the whole of the Palestinians in the West Bank. And then they claim a great victory against against Hezbollah in South of Lebanon. Even though they suffered enormous losses, had to pull all the reserves out. So they’re in a fix, because the army, it doesn’t have enough men. It’s about 20% understaffed for the commitments it’s already got, and increasingly, reservists are not showing up to duty. The army say they’re exhausted, but primarily they say there’s no plan, there’s no structure. What are our objectives? What are we actually trying to do? This is a little bit sort of rational, he isn’t there on the same page. He’s working towards the grand victory, which is something different. So we’ve had already sort of magical construct. And so the magical part of it now is Syria, another great victory for Iran on the route to the war on Iran. So this is what it’s all about, showing how it’s successful and it’s going on and now the final cherry on the cake is to persuade the United States that it has to support Israel in its war on Iran. And of course, suddenly we have the nuclear weapon being presented as the, if you like, the motive for this war. And you see Trump even now saying, Oh, well, what’s happened? It’s partly to do with Ukraine, but it’s also because of Israel’s fighting successes. Well, most Israelis would say we haven’t got any successes. This is all, you know, magical. I describe it as like, it’s like a Ponzi scheme, this is a financial scam. But in this case, it’s a geopolitical Ponzi scheme, in the sense that everything is a victory for Israel, everything is taking us closer to ultimate victory. Ultimate victory is to get rid of the head of the octopus, which is Iran. And we’re moving towards this great victory. And there are all these people trying to stop us. Biden is trying to stop us. All sorts of people are trying to stop us, but we’re on it. So it’s very important. Like a Ponzi scheme, if you stop making money, the thing crashes. If you find people as sort of withdrawing money from the fund and saying, Well, is this really going to work? Is this really a good idea? Then you’re finished. And so Netanyahu’s structure is a sort of magical thinking that he’s got to keep everything to be a victory, moving towards the direction that he’s always wanted it to go. He’s pulling in, veggling the United States through some provocation that they will do on Iran into supporting a war. Now I just add, because I don’t want to give the wrong impression, I think a war would with Iran would be disastrous for Israel might even destroy Israel, and it would be a great defeat for the for the United States. I won’t go into the reasons for that, but just to say, you know, I don’t think people have thought this through. I mean, you know, it’s based on the simple sort of understanding, absolute conviction in the West: Russia is weak, America is strong. Israel is strong, Iran is weak. And you know, there’s nothing you can say, really, against it. And then you have some four star general, Jack Keane, coming up on television in the U.S. and saying, well, the Israelis have knocked out Iran’s air defenses. The Israelis have damaged their nuclear program by the attack on Parchin. The Israelis have really reduced Iran. It lies naked before us. It is stunningly vulnerable, and this is what the talking heads on CNN are saying. Clearly laying the grounds. Parchin is held up, but it’s really no different from when [Former United States Secretary of State] Colin Powell went on television all those years ago, before 2006—you see what’s in this vial here? This is weapons of mass destruction, and this is what the war is going to be about. They didn’t strike anything at Parchin. There’s clear evidence that the Israelis were not able to even fire ballistic missiles. They never got closer than 70 kilometers to the Iranian front here. So this is a magical—it’s difficult to deal with this in a Western way, like most of the audience would like me to say, you know, on the one hand, on the other hand, because we’re talking about something that has moved into an eschatological, if you like, mindset, that this is ordained, this is the Bible. This is what the Torah says. This is what we are going for, and we do it because we have to believe in Revelation, forget rationality. It’s revelation.

Chris Hedges

I want to ask about the Turks—and I spent a lot of time in northern Iraq, actually spent time with the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party], covered all of the fighting in southeastern Turkey, including the Nehru’s rebellion—the Turks are obsessed with this U.S.-backed Kurdish militia force that controls the oil fields in the north and east of Syria. One has to assume that that’s the next move. They want to essentially push the Kurds out and seize those oil fields. That’s my hypothetical or that’s my guess. Is that correct?

Alastair Crooke

Well they started. They were already attacking Manbij. They’re attacking those Kurdish groups there, and more than that, because this is one of the big fractures taking place, because Turkey is determined to destroy the Kurdish. They see them as terrorists and a great threat to Turkey. Let’s have no doubt this is why it’s not just Erdoğan, this is a white Turkish view, not everyone in Turkey holds it. But then you have these—and now, I mean, there is real fighting going on in Manbij, and on the other side, you have Israel saying, we want to build up these Kurds. We would like a Kurdish state to be formed in the eastern part, joint to Erbil and joint to Iraq. And that’s our objective. And so the two of them are—and unfortunately, this is going to be the case, not just in the Kurdish part, but in many parts of Israel, there’s going to be a clash as things go on, between the interests of Jolani and the leadership there and the interests of others. What happens to the Alawites? What happens to Latakia? This is a stretch along the coast where the Russian bases are, but has always been, historically, an Alawite sort of state, shall we say. And some of the Syrian army have, have sort of kept their forces a little bit together. I don’t want to sound too much—they took all the armor into Iraq. A whole division took its armor into Iraq. You know, we’ve seen it before happen in other places in for example, in Egypt, how even the military that has been defeated and has been discredited, somehow bits of it come together and find popular support. So will they come in and start fighting Jolani’s groups? What will happen? No one knows. It’s going to be, I think, a really—huge mini wars, cultural wars, fighting. And I think Turkey thought it would be able to sort of manage these like the puppet master from outside in Ankara. And I think that already that’s gone. Yes, Russia’s influence is gone. Iran’s influence is gone, but I think Turkey is just evaporating now before our eyes, because they’re not being able to do what they think they were going to do in the Northeast. Erdoğan has said he wants to take the whole of the northern strip, right across Syria, through to Iran as a big, big buffer zone to protect him from any influences from outside.

Chris Hedges

I don’t see how the Syrian economy is going to function if they don’t get back the oil fields. And we should be clear, one of the things, out of many things that led to Assad’s deep unpopularity, aside from really savage repression, was also the fact that there was only electricity an hour a day. In Damascus, prices were astronomical. Unemployment was widespread. Of course, you had sanctions against Syria. But those oil fields—aren’t they vital? I mean, if they don’t recapture those oil fields, how are they going to ever… And much of the country is destroyed and has not been rebuilt. It’s one of the problems with the millions of people, Syrian refugees. There’s nothing to go back to.

Alastair Crooke

This is what I was saying. The oil has been taken. That is also the agricultural land of Syria. That is now occupied by the Kurds. So they lost the revenues from agriculture, the revenues from oil and the industrial parties around Aleppo and Idlib, and that has been under Turkish control for this period, and they have been under sanction. So, I mean, there’s absolute poverty in Syria, and people are in despair and have lost hope. And this has been a big case, and I do think what you’re saying is very important, because I think it’s fundamental also to the Russian calculations. Okay, Turkey, [inaudible] like the West, you’ve broken Syria. You broke it, you pay for it. Because it’s going to cost a huge amount of money. At the moment, Qatar is paying for the electricity in Aleppo. It’s having to pay for as a big bonus for HTS that you know, Aleppo now has electricity at night and all the day, because Qatar was given 30 million or something to pay. But that’s just one part of it. I mean, the whole state would need rebuilding and reconstructing, and I think that’s ultimately why the thing collapsed because it was just irrecoverably, financially, militarily and actually institutionally, because the institutions have become very much affected by it. I mean, the Ba’ath party has been long decrepit in Syria, and Assad has found it impossible to to reform it.

Chris Hedges

Can you draw parallels between the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq—also based, of course, on magical thinking. Is that the kind of chaos that you envision enveloping Syria?

Alastair Crooke

Well, I think there is one thing where it is very clear what happened— was the planning for this. In Iraq, the particularly the British, but the British and America, had bought off most of the army, the Revolutionary Guards, Republican Guards, I mean, had been bought off. Large amounts, even in gold. And so when it came to it, they didn’t fight. It was already sort of half ordained, but then they didn’t know what to do with it, how to take forward. And I think it was really sort of very much expressed by the governor. What was his name that came in [inaudible]? I can’t remember, but their first appointed governor of Iraq, and he arrived there and he said, Listen, I know nothing about Iraq. I don’t know about its culture. I don’t know its history. I know nothing. But I’m here because I’m an expert in neoliberal economics, and there was no empathy. There was no sense of how to bring people together to deal with it and manage it. I see zero sign that, at this stage, anyone likely to come forward and be able to have that sort of charisma and to have that understanding of how to bring humans, to lead humans towards a sort of sense of understanding, a community again. To being part of belonging, being connected again to a society. And the Syrians just feel, on all elements, so disconnected from society. I think they feel it, they just don’t see how they’re going to connect. So they just look after themselves. Someone offers them $400 for a weapon. Why not? That’s like a fortune. Take it. So I think this is partly, again, the sort of why Russia does understand it a lot better than the West, what’s happening. And I think Russia sees the big picture all the time. It sees the big picture about the building forces. I mentioned [Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey] Lavrov saying we’re moving towards a hot wall, and he is preparing and it’s all about Mackinder and the heartland, i.e. the heartland of Central Asia. And this is why he’s preparing for it, because I think, and I wrote about this just recently, in quoting some Russians who are very close to him. The West gets this entitled back to front, Putin has said this time and time again. He said it to the foreign ministry at his speech, and he said it again in the press conference at Astana the other day: I will not accept a freezing of the conflict. I will not accept that because I know what you want to do. It’s you just want to then take the rump that is Ukraine afterwards, and NATO-ize it and re-arm it and be prepared for the next war in a few years time against Russia. No, we have to go back to it and look at it. How do we solve this properly? How do we solve it in a fundamental way? And when he says, strikes me as correct, he goes back—the basic problem arose on the, if you like, the unification of Germany, when America gave the guarantees that that frontier, the border of Germany, represented the border of NATO, and not just NATO, but of Atlanticist interests, economic institution, or whatever you like, that there had to be some sort of agreement. So what he’d been saying, and what was in those treaties of December 21 was saying, we have to have an architecture. We have to have some basic understandings where the frontier now lies between Atlanticist interests and the interests of Central Asia, the heartland, the world, if you like, of the Central Asia, China, Iran, all of that right through to the coast. And you’ll have start with that, and then eventually you’ll get down to the to the to the actual issue, which is Ukraine, because once you agree a sort of overall architecture, Ukraine will naturally fit somewhere into that. We can’t say how exactly, but it will. Maybe parts of it will go to Poland and to Hungary or something, or not. But get the big picture. Don’t come here and just say ceasefire in Ukraine because you’re inverted the whole thing. You’ve got the wrong end of the stick and you don’t listen and hear what I’m saying to you. So I think it’s very important. And he even gave a big hint in his statement, from behind his desk in his office. And what he said was, I feel it was a great mistake in 2019 when you, the United States, did away with the intermediate missile treaty agreement. And that’s what he said. But if Trump’s team heard it and paid attention—so, why not send an [inaudible] where he said, you know, Mr. Putin, it was really interesting what you said in that talk, and you said that was a mistake. Would you like to sort of say what you see is a way to deal with this, and what would be the future and how we would arrive at that sort of thing? And then ultimately, we’ll get to Ukraine in the discussion. But if you come in and say, freeze, we want to freeze. Otherwise we’re going to hit you with more sanctions, or we’re going to sanction with more or do this or that, or send more attack hands, and it won’t work. So, I mean, he gave a pretty good [inaudible]—this is diplomacy. You come in and you don’t start off saying, let’s cut to the chase. What’s your bottom line? This is mine. Cut the difference. It’s not a real estate deal. It has to be done differently. And Putin said, why not? Let’s talk about that. Let’s see if there’s an agreement. If we do that, then we get into the architecture of Europe, the whole security architecture. And that matters a lot to Putin. I know it does.

Chris Hedges

I’m no fan of Trump, but in terms of Ukraine, the Trump administration appears to speak far more rationally than the Biden administration. I want to go back to Syria and just to close, how could this all go terribly wrong? Paint for us the ways this could just unravel in ways that jeopardize stability within the Middle East and perhaps even globally.

Alastair Crooke

I think the first thing would be to look at the immediate area, and the first one would be Lebanon, where there is a strong pocket in Tripoli, of those who would support Jolani strongly against the Shi’i. The Shi’i were about 45% to 55% of the population in Lebanon, but the tensions, the fractures, are very obvious in Lebanon, because of the ceasefire and because of Israel’s massive bombing of civilian areas to try and bring a ceasefire about. Then you go up to Iraq, the Kurds in Erbil—are they going to see their Kurdish colleagues wiped out by Turkey there? And what is going to happen to the [inaudible]? The [inaudible] are the militia which are part of the Iraqi army. I mean, they’re formerly part of the Iraqi army, but they’re quite autonomous in many ways. And these have been working with Iran, and these groups are now armed, and now they’ve had a whole division of Syrian forces placed inside. Are they going to go and fight the HTS, as they sort of encroach and try and cut off Iraq from Syria, as is very likely? Then you move further away. How does all this look in the sort of relationship that matters so much to the United States, between the Gulf states and Islam and the region as a whole? And I started off by talking about the sort of big shift, polar shift between Iran was at the apex, and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states were at the bottom. And then it was the Americans, tried to turn it upside down. But the greatest Saudi Arabia will be very nervous, I believe, to see the Ottomans claiming to be one of the leaders of the world, as Erdoğan just did, and to treat the Saudis as just another branch of Islam that he doesn’t pay a great deal of attention to. And I think also because inevitably, although they say they won’t—I mean, already, hijab is mandatory in Syria, and women are being rounded up in some places, and I don’t know what’s happening to them. This is in part of the Kurdish areas, the Kurdish areas that are run by the Americans—I mean the women. And what happens if the Kurds are really under pressure and they release 50,000 ISIS [soldiers] from their prison in the Kurdistan? What then will Iraq do? What will the Iraqi forces do? Will they enter into Syria to deal with the with the ISIS that have been released into the people? There’ll be more ISIS released in Damascus from the prisons there by Jolani. But the point is that MBS, Mohammed bin Salman, and the Gulf states, I mean, they’ve adopted the western lifestyle, almost completely. You know, they’re like girls, not quite scantily dressedin their palaces, and on the beach and things like this. And he’s moved in many ways, you know, alcohol is pretty freely available and things like this. I don’t think he’s going to be happy seeing this sort of—because it really hurts, because he is the Wahhabi establishment. The sources Wahhabism are in the [inaudible], not in Jeddah. And this is going to make him, I think, very uneasy indeed. And so is he going to put money in to forces that are opposed to Erdoğan and the takeover? Will he support factions in—well, you see it already. Doha has already come in. Doha, which is at odds with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states on these issues of the Muslim Brotherhood or, I mean, of course, Qatar is a Wahhabi state. Is it? Are they going to go and support it? They’re already supporting within Aleppo, providing all the funding to try and support the credibility and the public appeal of it. That’s how the whole region can change. And Israel within this, it sees itself as a grand victor. But I think what has happened and what will increasingly happen, whether Jolani is the leader or not, I mean, Israel is seen disliked by much of the world, whether they’re pro-ISIS or anti-ISIS, for what’s happened to Gazans. That really has—I mean, the Middle East, the states are just seething with anger about it. There are pockets that side with Israel, in Syria, in Lebanon, but they’re impotent, they don’t count anything. The great feeling is against it. Then you come to Jordan. What happens to Jordan in these circumstances? Because Jordan has got right on the border there. Will they come across? Will they invade? Jordan also has a huge Muslim Brotherhood contingent, and it also has some quite Salafist elements in it too. It’s been very tense in this period, as it is very tense because of what’s been happening in West Bank and in Gaza and Jordan is terrified that Israel will eventually push the Palestinians out of the West Bank and describe Jordan as a new Palestinian state. And the push on Palestinians in the West Bank is intense, and they are leaving, and they are moving as the settlers, I mean, there is a big army of settlers, 10,000 strong, now armed by [Itamar] Ben-Gvir. And I believe, I can’t say for sure, but what I hear from inside in Israel is there’s going to be an attempt by Ben-Gvir, who’s in charge of the police, coordinated with Smotrich, to clear the Palestinians out of Area C. Area C is a sort of area in the West Bank, where there is joint security, supposedly joint security responsibility, between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. And I think, really, they envisage South Lebanon to be another area C that they will sort of take over in the set in the same way. So that’s where I would see these things. Meanwhile, the tensions in Israel are growing. Netanyahu goes to court, I think this week. There are big divisions. The Attorney General says that Ben-Gvir is an illegal cabinet member. She says that you cannot delay this court case, the attorney general. Ben-Gvir and the cabinet say the attorney general must be sacked. There’s deep divisions within the army who say there’s no plan, there’s no policy, there’s no blueprint. And we’re getting killed. The Orthodox don’t get killed. Why do our sons have to bear the loss of life and the Orthodox feet to study in the yeshiva? Why is all this happening? And so Israel is deeply, deeply divided, and many of those Israelis, even former national security members, feel that Israel is on the brink of a collapse, not in the sense of just a military one, but of a institutional collapse because all of the structures of law and how the army work, because it is becoming, in brief—I use this as a shorthand—but it’s becoming a war between the kingdom of Judea and the State of Israel. And Ben-Gvir has a mini army of 10,000 settlers, all armed or who obey his particular radical rabbis, very radical people who talk about the oral Talmud, and not just the Talmud. And then the rather secular, Europeanized state of Israel, who want to bring everything under a judicial process and to have the army being, if you like, a neutral element. And this clash is profound, and what will come out of it? Israelis don’t know. So, I mean, it’s not the victory that Netanyahu is proclaiming, it’s very tentative. And as I say, it’s all based on the sort of magical thinking that we’re on our path to Armageddon with Iran and then everything will be resolved. Gaza will be resolved. Lebanon will be resolved. Syria, Iraq, all done, because we will have defeated the head of the octopus.

Chris Hedges

Two last questions: What happens to the Palestinians pushed into southern Gaza? Clearly they will empty the north. They’re far down that road already. It’s a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in the south, there’s no clean water, there isn’t enough food, people living out in the open. What happens in southern Gaza? Does it just sit and fester? The Egyptians, as I was just, I’ve been in Egypt. I was actually in the West Bank this summer and in Jordan, but my understanding is the Egyptian military has been categorical, the Palestinians will not be pushed into this. What happens?

Alastair Crooke

At the moment, Netanyahu and his cabinet, it’s not just Netanyahu, but the support and the support in the population, want to just continue with the process of the slow decimation of the population in Gaza, and there’s more. I mean, they don’t have gain. There’s no plan, no solution, except to continue the squeeze and to continue with the military intervention to make life unbearable. And Smotrich says, Well, maybe in the next few years, two thirds of them will opt to leave because there’s nothing in Gaza. It’s just rubble, no schools, no hospitals, nothing. It’s all been destroyed. And clearly the aim is eventually ethnic cleansing, to clear the clear out the whole of Gaza, because they have plans. And Smotrich has plans, and Ben-Gvir has plans for about 50 settlements to be placed in the place of Gaza. And the Palestinians will hold out. They are very tough. They’re very strong minded, and they will hold out. And it will be a daily unfolding tragedy. I can’t even bring myself to watch some of the videos that come out of there, of children and people burnt alive and so on. But I see no solution to this, as long as Netanyahu and the cabinet—and I don’t see any particular immediacy to fall of the government at this stage. I mean, who knows? There’s the trial coming up. Anything can happen. The whole thing can collapse. I mean, because it’s all very precariously based on this tiny sort of fulcrum of Netanyahu’s power and his sort of vision of great victory and the support that he gets for that.

Chris Hedges

And just to close, how likely do you think a war with Iran is?

Alastair Crooke

I think it’s likely. I think it’s likely for the following reason, I think that it’s not about Iran, particularly, it’s nothing to do with Iran. Firstly, they want to disrupt Trump, to pull him into, if you like, a war on Iran. They think it’ll be an easy war. I think they’ve got this totally wrong. They think it’ll be an easy war. But they want to reassert, if you like, American power and leadership. And they feel that doing, every so often, throwing a small country against the wall and smashing it up sort of is good for this. And I think I’m not being too cynical, I think that they feel they need a war. There is a strong sense in that, if you like, ruling cadre, not for Americans as a whole, but for within that, if you like, that they have to reassert those deep layers of American policy, which are they will not tolerate any, if you like, rival power, any challenge to American leadership and American greatness, an American sense of its vision for the future to occur on their watch. And therefore this has been bedrock, bipartisan bedrock, at the sort of deeper layer of structure that no politician is allowed to challenge, and so I think they will probably do it. It’s not about is it good or bad? I don’t think Trump will be able to because they control—the other thing is, basically, the Israeli [inaudible] want it, and they control Congress, and they have the money to do this, and they probably will do it.

Chris Hedges

But is that an aerial campaign? How physically would they send troops into it?

Alastair Crooke

They can’t take troops. No, they can’t. You can’t. You can’t. Its population is 90 million, and this is as big as Europe, virtually. Couldn’t do this. No, it’s only by—and here’s where I disagree with the consensus in America. They think it’s by air assault, you know, shock and awe, a big campaign that will go in and bust it. But the technical reasons for why that won’t work are plentiful. First of all, Iran has excellent air defenses from Russia, but their own as well. And the Israelis, contrary to what the media say, were not able to penetrate into Iranian airspace when they attempted that strike 26 of—I think it was—October. They were not able to penetrate into their airspace. And when you’re talking about a nuclear program or programs that are deeply buried underground, you saw what happened in Beirut to get at the Hezbollah leadership, it took 85 heavy missiles. And if you’re going to fly F-35’s with JDAM missiles, each of those is about 14 tons. I mean, it’s not just the weight, they can carry them, but the fuel they use. So you have to refuel maybe once, refuel twice, then you’ll have to fight your aircraft to suppress their defenses. I mean, you’re talking about a huge performance. Is America going to be able to do this and against—I mean, the Iranians have got multiple air defense systems and good radars over the horizon radars as well. And we were all told that they damaged this Parchin. This was essential. There’s been nothing. I followed it. I think you mentioned it in your lead in that I was involved with Iran and this on the nuclear side for the European Union when Solana was leaving that. I mean, we’ve been dealing with Parchin for 20 years. The Israelis have been claiming it’s got a secret site there, and the IEA [International Energy Agency] have inspected it multiple times and found nothing, and it was nothing this time. They bombed two empty warehouses. It was during Khatami’s presidency that anything sensitive was taken away from Parchin and put deep into the mountain tunnels.

Chris Hedges

Great. Thank you very much. That was fascinating and brilliant. I want to thank Diego [Ramos] Max [Jones], Thomas [Hedges] and Sofia [Menemenlis], who produced the show. You can find me at Chris hedges.substack.gov, that was really.

Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat, and is the founder and director of the Conflicts Forum based in Beirut. He served as advisor on Middle East issues to former European Union foreign policy chief, Javier Solana. He was instrumental in facilitating various ceasefires in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the withdrawal of occupying forces on 2 occasions. He is a member of the UN’s Alliance of Civilizations Global Experts.