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The real reason Syrian rebels attacked Assad now · The Fourcast

• 0:01
  Hello and welcome to the forecast.
• 0:03
  Syria has burst into the news again because rebel forces have
• 0:09
  taken the world and the Syrian government by surprise by not
• 0:14
  just taking the second city of Syria, Aleppo, back into their
• 0:17
  control but expanding both to the north and to the South.
• 0:21
  Now Syria has long been at the centre of everything in the
• 0:25
  Middle East, but it's essentially gone quiet for a few
• 0:28
  years. The front lines in this long
• 0:30
  civil war have been frozen for around four years.
• 0:33
  So we as news organisations had rather looked the other way.
• 0:38
  But not everyone was so short sighted.
• 0:41
  People like Leena Khatib, who joins us today from Chatham
• 0:45
  House and has been watching Syria very, very closely.
• 0:48
  And of course, our international editor, Lindsay Hilson, joins us
• 0:52
  from Ukraine. And of course, the war in
• 0:57
  Ukraine and Russia's distraction there is also very important in
• 1:01
  this whole story. So, Lindsay, let's just begin
• 1:04
  with why Syria is so important. Well, let's just start because
• 1:09
  of the Syrians, and because the Syrians who've been through so
• 1:12
  much suffering and so much war, hundreds of thousands killed,
• 1:17
  millions turned into refugees. And now we see this war coming
• 1:22
  back again. And we begin to see how central
• 1:26
  it has been to geopolitics really for the last 15 years or
• 1:30
  so 'cause remember, it was President Obama who decided not
• 1:35
  to intervene in Syria even when Bashar al-Assad crossed the red
• 1:41
  line and used chemical weapons. And that was an opening for
• 1:45
  President Putin. So in 2015, the Russians went in
• 1:50
  with their air power and with some troops on the ground,
• 1:53
  basically to save President Bashar al-Assad from being
• 1:57
  overthrown by rebels. It wasn't just about their old
• 2:02
  friend Bashar al-Assad. It was about President Putin
• 2:06
  saying Russia is important on the world stage, Russia is a
• 2:10
  power to be reckoned with, and it was about Russia filling the
• 2:15
  void left by the United States of America.
• 2:18
  So I think a lot has flowed from that decision made by President
• 2:23
  Putin about Syria back in 2015. Yes, Lena, we often talk about
• 2:30
  the the new age of impunity that we are in and you you could
• 2:33
  argue it began with Syria. Yeah, absolutely not just that.
• 2:37
  It's the age in which red lines have ceased to have much
• 2:41
  meaning. When President Obama back in
• 2:44
  2013 said that the use of chemical weapons was a red line,
• 2:51
  privately Bashar al-Assad took that seriously.
• 2:54
  But then when Bashar al-Assad saw that this was not followed
• 2:57
  up with action, he basically just felt that the US rhetoric
• 3:03
  is not really going to translate into any concrete action and
• 3:07
  that red lines were basically rhetorical.
• 3:10
  And unfortunately, since then, when you look at different
• 3:14
  incidents in the Middle East where the US has invoked red
• 3:18
  lines, you'll see a pattern in which threats are not translated
• 3:24
  into action. And this has hurt the
• 3:26
  credibility of the United States, not just when it comes
• 3:29
  to its allies in the region, but also when it comes to its
• 3:33
  opponents. Lindsay, can can you just
• 3:36
  explain, you know Syria's current geopolitical importance.
• 3:42
  You know who, who its alliances are with and why.
• 3:46
  Yeah. So you've got Bashar al-Assad,
• 3:48
  who is supported by Iran and also very reliant on Hezbollah,
• 3:55
  also supported by Iran and by Russia.
• 3:58
  So that's that. And then Shia forces from other
• 4:02
  parts of the world, I mean Shia Muslim forces who've come in
• 4:06
  from other parts of of the world.
• 4:08
  But then the rebels, many of them are backed by Turkey.
• 4:16
  And there are a lot of different groups.
• 4:17
  And Lena is going to be much more expert than me on the
• 4:20
  different groups that there there are.
• 4:23
  But Turkey is a very important player here.
• 4:26
  And but whereas in the past, the Saudis, the UAE, the Gulf
• 4:32
  countries really supported those rebels, now some of those
• 4:37
  countries have come round to, well, if not supporting, at
• 4:40
  least tolerating Bashar al-Assad in the interests of stability.
• 4:45
  So I think that one of the important questions is what role
• 4:49
  is Turkey playing in this re emergence of this war?
• 4:54
  Because these rebel groups, the Americans, the Western
• 4:58
  countries, Europe, they're not really a friend to either side.
• 5:00
  They're certainly not a friend to Bashar al-Assad and his
• 5:03
  Iranian and Russian backers. But some of these groups were
• 5:08
  allied with Islamic State, with al Qaeda.
• 5:12
  So they're not friends of the West either.
• 5:15
  And so I think that the critical power in the region is Turkey.
• 5:20
  President Erdogan is a man who the West can do business with.
• 5:25
  He's a man who President Putin can do business with, even
• 5:29
  though they're on opposing sides in this war.
• 5:32
  He, I would see, is very much a key player.
• 5:35
  I don't know what you think, Lena.
• 5:37
  Yeah. I mean, I was gonna say we have
• 5:39
  to emphasize that these groups that are now leading this
• 5:43
  military campaign against Iran, backed groups in Syria and
• 5:47
  against the Syrian regime forces no longer are affiliates of ISIS
• 5:52
  and al Qaeda. The group leading this alliance
• 5:56
  of convenience is called Heya Pahrir Sham HTS.
• 6:00
  It did begin life in 2012 as an affiliate of al Qaeda, and it
• 6:05
  called itself at the time the Nusra Front.
• 6:08
  And then, of course, you had ISIS rising.
• 6:10
  And this proved to be a challenge for al Qaeda.
• 6:13
  So the two groups in Syria were competing for legitimacy, who
• 6:17
  was basically more Islamist than the other.
• 6:20
  But then with time, the Nusra Front started having political
• 6:24
  ambitions, and it rebranded, changed its name into HTS and
• 6:28
  severed ties with al Qaeda. And not only that, it started
• 6:32
  fighting al Qaeda and fighting ISIS as well.
• 6:35
  And it has emerged as the most a militarily powerful group
• 6:40
  amongst the rebels in the northwest of Syria.
• 6:43
  And because it has political ambitions, it has set up a de
• 6:46
  facto government, ruling Idlib in northwest Syria.
• 6:51
  It calls itself the Salvation Government.
• 6:54
  But just just to be clear on that, I mean, Lena, they're not
• 6:57
  Democrats, are they? I mean, they are, they are
• 6:59
  essentially Islamists. They are still Islamists, and
• 7:03
  the people who have been under their rule in northwest Syria
• 7:07
  have persistently protested against them.
• 7:10
  And so here we have, as I said, an alliance of convenience
• 7:15
  because this group and others see a moment in which Assad's
• 7:20
  Iran backers are weakened. They see Russia distracted in
• 7:25
  Ukraine, so they feel this is their moment.
• 7:28
  And they've been training for four years to basically improve
• 7:33
  their military capacity, manufacture their own drones.
• 7:37
  They set up a Military Academy to train officers.
• 7:41
  So you have HTS, basically still an Islamist group, but a group
• 7:46
  that ultimately has political ambition to be part of the
• 7:49
  political transition in Syria. So who supports them?
• 7:53
  I mean where? Where do they get their weapons?
• 7:55
  You know, what's the root? Who's giving them the money?
• 7:59
  Well, as Lindsay said, they have links with Turkey.
• 8:02
  Now, Turkey has been quite vague in its stance regarding this
• 8:06
  current campaign by these rebel groups, because it's not just
• 8:09
  HTS, it's HTS and some other groups, including a group
• 8:14
  confusingly called the Syrian National Army, which has nothing
• 8:18
  to do with the Syrian Arab Forces, which is the regime of
• 8:21
  Bashar al Assad's actual army. This is a group set up by Turkey
• 8:26
  because Turkey has its own ambitions to be influential in
• 8:30
  Syria. So Turkey has basically not said
• 8:34
  that it's against this attack, but at the same time not said
• 8:37
  that it supports it. But de facto Turkey benefits
• 8:42
  from this situation. And without Turkey, these groups
• 8:45
  would not have the kind of funding and weapons that they
• 8:48
  enjoy. So Lindsay, where, where does
• 8:50
  that leave the West? I mean, you know, the, the truth
• 8:53
  is, you know, when the, when the sort of the war lines were
• 8:56
  frozen, the West looked the other way and they basically let
• 9:01
  Assad claim victory despite everything that happened in
• 9:05
  Aleppo. We have to talk about one other
• 9:07
  group, and that is the Kurds, because we've talked about the
• 9:11
  part of Syria which is controlled by Bashar al-Assad,
• 9:15
  helped by his allies. And we've talked about the part
• 9:17
  of Syria, Idlib in the northwest, which is controlled
• 9:20
  by HTS and these other rebel groups who are basically Sunni.
• 9:25
  And then you have the northeast, and that is a place which is
• 9:28
  known as Rojava, and it is controlled by Kurdish forces who
• 9:35
  are connected to the Kurdish forces over the border in
• 9:39
  Turkey. And therefore, President Erdogan
• 9:42
  does not like them at all. However, the West does quite
• 9:47
  like them. And they are, they are regarded
• 9:50
  as a more moderate force. I've spent quite a lot of time
• 9:53
  there. They're very easy to deal with.
• 9:55
  They're much more, I mean, they have female soldiers, many of
• 9:58
  whom are very brave and so on. I wouldn't call them democratic,
• 10:02
  but they are a much more sort of moderate force.
• 10:05
  But they and they have some Western backing.
• 10:08
  You know, there are American troops in there.
• 10:11
  I was there and I, you know, I can't even remember what year it
• 10:14
  was now. But Donald Trump when he was
• 10:16
  last in power, suddenly just, he suddenly found out that there
• 10:19
  were American troops somewhere in Syria.
• 10:20
  And he said, well, we're going to get those out.
• 10:22
  We don't want that. We don't want that.
• 10:24
  And that was seen as an utter betrayal of the Kurds, of our
• 10:28
  allies. But.
• 10:29
  They're still there, aren't they?
• 10:31
  But yeah, he wasn't in the end. They managed the the people who
• 10:35
  he was working with at that time, you know who were the.
• 10:39
  Guardrails kicked in. Yeah, the adults in the room
• 10:42
  didn't let him do that. But the Kurdish forces there are
• 10:45
  quite important to the West. And the reason for that is
• 10:48
  because they were in the forefront of beating ISIS.
• 10:52
  Islamic State, you remember, it had the caliphate, which had its
• 10:56
  its headquarters in Raqqa. And now there are all these
• 10:59
  prison camps which the Kurds run, where they control and hold
• 11:04
  many of these jihadis. Now, this is very controversial
• 11:07
  and I would argue extremely cruel, especially to the
• 11:10
  children who've been held in there.
• 11:11
  But in there, there are also, you know, Westerners who went to
• 11:16
  fight for Islamic State. You know, Shamima Begum is the
• 11:19
  most famous one from the UK. But there are many others.
• 11:22
  And countries like the UK and Canada don't want those people
• 11:25
  back. And it's the Kurds who are
• 11:28
  imprisoning them, sometimes under not very good conditions I
• 11:32
  must say, But that is where the West is and they don't want that
• 11:37
  destabilised. So there's another complication
• 11:40
  to add to this situation. I mean, so, so just, I mean,
• 11:43
  because it, you know, obviously it's getting very, very
• 11:45
  complicated to follow, but we have a situation in which Turkey
• 11:49
  supports one lot, America supports the Kurds and America
• 11:55
  and Turkey, who are allies and in NATO together are supporting
• 11:59
  opposing factions. Yes.
• 12:01
  And President Erdogan and Vladimir Putin, who are on
• 12:04
  opposite sides on the war, actually get along quite well,
• 12:08
  which is why I think that Erdogan is the key to any kind
• 12:12
  of resolution because he is. And, and one of the reasons that
• 12:17
  this has happened is that Erdogan has been pushing Bashar
• 12:20
  al-Assad for some months now to try and sort some of this out to
• 12:25
  come to some kind of accommodation.
• 12:27
  And Bashar Assad has refused to do that.
• 12:29
  He's a stubborn man. He again, is a tall man.
• 12:33
  He runs what is basically a narco state now.
• 12:36
  But I think the President Putin may now gang up with Erdogan to
• 12:40
  say to Bashar al-Assad, you just can't carry on like this.
• 12:43
  I don't know, Lena, have I got that all wrong?
• 12:45
  No, I mean, I was going to say that this is part of the reason
• 12:49
  why Turkey is being vague about this campaign by the rebels,
• 12:53
  because it's a way to pressure Assad to finally agree to a
• 12:57
  deal. I mean, ultimately the situation
• 13:00
  is complicated, but it's actually also simple at the same
• 13:02
  time. Everybody wants power, everybody
• 13:05
  wants influence. And these rebel groups in
• 13:08
  particular, including the Kurds, actually are all being
• 13:11
  pragmatic. So you will see, if you, like
• 13:15
  me, follow the communiques by these rebel groups conducting
• 13:20
  the campaign against Assad and the Iran proxies.
• 13:23
  Most of the time they are not talking about Russia.
• 13:26
  In fact, they issued an open statement to Russia saying our
• 13:30
  fight is not with you. What this tells me is that they
• 13:33
  want a deal at some point made between them, Russia and Turkey
• 13:40
  about power sharing in Syria. Right, so, well, So what What?
• 13:44
  What does a deal begin to look like?
• 13:47
  Are you talking about carving up Syria effectively?
• 13:51
  No. Having some sort of federation
• 13:53
  or what? No, what they, what they are
• 13:55
  interested in is be part of the political transition.
• 13:59
  Now there is AUN LED peace process which of course sadly
• 14:03
  has LED nowhere in terms of political transition.
• 14:06
  There was AUN Security Council resolution, Resolution 2254 that
• 14:11
  says there has to be political transition in Syria, which
• 14:14
  basically means Assad stepping aside.
• 14:17
  And a group of people who have been brought by the UN from both
• 14:22
  sides were meant to come up with some sort of power sharing deal
• 14:26
  that involves elements from the old Assad regime and elements
• 14:30
  from the opposition in its different factions.
• 14:33
  However, because HTS and all those Islamist groups in the
• 14:37
  northwest are listed as terrorists by many countries
• 14:42
  around the world, they are not part of this political process.
• 14:46
  What they're hoping would happen, and here, Lindsay, maybe
• 14:49
  you can weigh in, is basically have a scenario a bit like the
• 14:53
  Taliban in Afghanistan, whereby they are eventually recognized
• 14:58
  as, you know, legitimate political actors and be part of
• 15:01
  this political transition at large.
• 15:04
  Well, I don't think that the Taliban are accepted as a
• 15:06
  legitimate political actors. It's just that nobody knows what
• 15:08
  to do about it. And because the Americans pulled
• 15:11
  their forces out in such a precipitous way, you know,
• 15:15
  that's what we ended up with. And now everybody just sort of,
• 15:19
  you know, keeps coughing twice and looking the other way and
• 15:21
  taking absolutely no notice about the horrendous things that
• 15:24
  are happening to women there. But Lena, it's very hard for me
• 15:27
  to see how this kind of transition could work without a
• 15:31
  carve up of the country, because Bashar al-Assad, as I understand
• 15:35
  it, is not going to step aside unless there's a coup against
• 15:39
  him. And I, I can't see how these
• 15:43
  enemies could work together because they have such different
• 15:47
  visions for the country and because the country is ruined
• 15:51
  and is now entirely dependent, as I can see it, on drugs as a
• 15:56
  way of fueling the economy. This drug captagan, which
• 15:59
  Hezbollah and the Assad regime traffic in in order to keep
• 16:04
  things going. I I just find it very hard to
• 16:07
  see how you turn that into any kind of functioning state.
• 16:11
  Functioning is the keyword here. I would give you Lebanon as an
• 16:16
  example of a country in which you had many, many, many
• 16:19
  factions fighting with one another and then realizing that
• 16:23
  no one can actually win and in the end agreeing to a very slow
• 16:27
  power sharing agreement. So unfortunately, I am not
• 16:30
  predicting that even if Assad is removed, whether by force, which
• 16:35
  is what these rebel groups are now trying to do, or whether,
• 16:39
  you know, eventually Erdogan and Putin managed to kind of carve
• 16:43
  up some political deal with him. I don't see the future being
• 16:47
  rosy, unfortunately for, you know, at least the short term in
• 16:52
  Syria because we've seen what these, you know, kind of
• 16:56
  so-called peace building agreements based on power
• 16:59
  sharing can do. And it's also far from clear
• 17:02
  whether any of these groups and and the government have any kind
• 17:06
  of popular support that would last.
• 17:09
  I mean, you know, when you're on the ground there and you talk to
• 17:11
  people, they say whatever they feel they have to say at the
• 17:15
  time, you know, I remember being in West Aleppo and talking to
• 17:17
  people about the Syrian, you know, the Assad government and
• 17:20
  them saying, yes, yes, it's, you know, it's, it's it's more
• 17:23
  stable and that, you know, we'd rather, you know, we'd rather be
• 17:25
  here. But there was no, there was
• 17:26
  nothing convincing about it. And and, you know, none of those
• 17:31
  options are offering any kind of real political freedom.
• 17:35
  They don't offer democracy. They don't offer sort of power
• 17:38
  to the people in in any sense. So I mean, what whatever you end
• 17:43
  up with in terms of a deal, it wouldn't be very stable, would
• 17:45
  it? It wouldn't be, and sadly you
• 17:49
  are most likely going to end up with a scenario in which Syria
• 17:52
  is run by a Russian puppet who would be a replacement for
• 17:57
  Assad. The democratic forces within
• 18:01
  Syria, civil society, the intellectuals, the the people
• 18:04
  who believe in liberal democracy will then have another fight on
• 18:08
  their hands, which will be a political fight, not a military
• 18:11
  one, to try to carve out at least some space in this kind of
• 18:16
  setting. Ordinary Syrians, what they
• 18:19
  would want, I mean, you know, democracy, freedom, I love it
• 18:24
  all. But for most Syrians, if you
• 18:27
  could get up in the morning and go to work and make a living and
• 18:30
  know that your house wasn't going to be blown up and that
• 18:33
  your kids would get to school and things would be all right
• 18:36
  and that you could survive and, you know, bring up a family and
• 18:40
  so on, you know what? It might be good enough, at
• 18:42
  least for the moment. I mean, in in the meantime,
• 18:46
  though, I mean, we are seeing Russia bombing Idlib again with
• 18:51
  Syria, which I think a lot of people might find surprising.
• 18:54
  You know, are, are Russian forces still in Syria in the
• 18:57
  same way that they were before? And similarly with Hezbollah, I
• 19:01
  mean, you know, you assume that when Hezbollah was fighting
• 19:05
  Israel, they would have pulled all their people back.
• 19:07
  But it seems that Hezbollah is still there as well.
• 19:10
  Well, I think some Hezbollah is there, but let me, maybe Lena
• 19:13
  can tell us more about Hezbollah and let me tell you a little bit
• 19:15
  about the Russians. So the Russians are not there in
• 19:18
  the numbers that they used to be.
• 19:20
  And although Russia did have a force on the ground about 5000
• 19:24
  at the maximum, most of those were pulled out in 2022 when
• 19:28
  Russia invaded Ukraine because they needed the forces here.
• 19:31
  And what you were left with was a sort of rump Air Force.
• 19:34
  Some, you know, they, they pulled out some of their fighter
• 19:37
  bombers and they left some. So the ones that are still there
• 19:40
  are, yes, in action, bombing people, probably not rebels,
• 19:44
  probably ordinary people. But President Putin cannot
• 19:49
  afford to send large numbers of people back in.
• 19:52
  And the other people who were there fighting for President
• 19:56
  Bashar al-Assad were you remember the Wagner Group?
• 20:00
  Oh, Prigajin, his people, He had a lot of mercenaries in there.
• 20:04
  Now, when things wound down in Syria and after Prigajin, you
• 20:08
  know, was in a plane that unfortunately fell out of the
• 20:11
  sky in some mysterious manner after he had risen up against
• 20:16
  against President Putin, a lot of those mercenaries were
• 20:19
  redeployed to this new Africa Corps.
• 20:22
  So they were sent to other to to parts of Africa.
• 20:26
  So, and now here in Ukraine, what I've seen on the frontline
• 20:31
  is that the Russians are advancing and it's important to
• 20:34
  them to get into a position of strength before President Trump
• 20:38
  comes into office in January because they know that he's
• 20:42
  going to try and force some kind of negotiation.
• 20:45
  So the last thing President Putin wants to do at the moment
• 20:48
  is weaken his forces here in Ukraine in order to deal with
• 20:52
  this problem over there in Syria.
• 20:55
  He wants to keep his forces here, which is why I think he's
• 20:59
  going to call on President Erdogan.
• 21:02
  Yeah, and also when it comes to Russia and Syria, because it
• 21:06
  remains the more dominant actor amongst the two foreign backers
• 21:12
  of Assad, Iran and Russia. Russia doesn't need to deploy
• 21:16
  huge resources because it knows it's still going to be
• 21:19
  influential. It knows it can make a deal with
• 21:22
  whoever is left on the ground. And already, as I said, the
• 21:26
  rebel groups have already appealed to the Russians to kind
• 21:29
  of say our fight is not with you, so they are ready for a
• 21:32
  deal. So Russia doesn't need these
• 21:34
  resources. Now, in terms of why it's
• 21:35
  bombing civilian areas in Idlib right now and not, for example,
• 21:40
  bombing the rebels directly, meaning military targets, it's
• 21:44
  because it thinks that this way it can push the rebels to go
• 21:48
  back to the northwest to defend civilian areas.
• 21:52
  But what the rebels are doing instead is they're keeping
• 21:55
  advancing South. And as they do that, they are
• 21:59
  actually acquiring more and more of the arsenal of the Syrian
• 22:03
  Army of Bashar al-Assad and increasing their own air defense
• 22:07
  capabilities and using those against the Russian planes.
• 22:11
  So it's actually interesting militarily how the the two sides
• 22:15
  are are are calculating very differently.
• 22:17
  Right now, just to sort of make things even more complicated,
• 22:21
  the big player we haven't talked about is Iran.
• 22:24
  So, so Lena, what? Where does Iran sit now?
• 22:27
  Because there were Revolutionary Guard in, in, in Syria.
• 22:33
  And they're, they're not now, are they?
• 22:35
  They are still there, Iran. They.
• 22:37
  Are still there. Yeah, Iran is still present in
• 22:40
  Syria through various proxy groups like Hezbollah and like
• 22:47
  groups that are Pakistani and Afghan and also Hezbollah.
• 22:53
  Of course, Lebanese Hezbollah is supported by Iran.
• 22:55
  They are still present. However, they are significantly
• 22:58
  weakened. Even though Hezbollah did not
• 23:01
  withdraw from Syria to focus on Lebanon, its ability to move in
• 23:07
  Syria has been curtailed because Israel keeps bombing Iran sites
• 23:12
  inside Syria. And Hezbollah also is now under
• 23:16
  a ceasefire agreement with Israel that says that it is not
• 23:20
  allowed to move its troops in Lebanon or transfer weapons.
• 23:24
  So Hezbollah can't send reinforcements into Syria from
• 23:27
  Lebanon. And this has left Iran basically
• 23:31
  weakened more than ever inside Syria, which is why the rebel
• 23:36
  groups are taking advantage. But when it comes to Iran, Syria
• 23:40
  is very important because without Syria, Hezbollah won't
• 23:43
  be able to have weapons transferred to it from Iran
• 23:47
  through Syria and to Lebanon. And the Captagon trade that
• 23:51
  Lindsay mentioned is very important.
• 23:53
  This drug trade is bringing a lot of money to the Assad regime
• 23:58
  and Hezbollah as well, and this is not something that Iran will
• 24:02
  want to lose. So Iran will definitely try to
• 24:05
  prop up the Assad regime, but its ability right now is not
• 24:09
  what it used to be. Of course, what's coming down
• 24:12
  the line as well in January is Donald Trump in the White House.
• 24:15
  And I mean, we we see what he's doing in Gaza, where he has just
• 24:21
  warned Hamas to release the hostages or face an even bigger
• 24:27
  onslaught, it seems. I mean, he seems to be, you
• 24:29
  know, threatening American attack as well as Israeli.
• 24:35
  So where, where might he sit on this one, Lindsay?
• 24:39
  I think he's in a will be in a complicated position because
• 24:42
  he's also belligerent towards Iran.
• 24:45
  And obviously, you know, he in, you know, he, he talks about
• 24:49
  that, but at the same time, he's also talked about maybe, you
• 24:52
  know, doing some kind of deal with Iran.
• 24:55
  And then, you know, again, it comes back to Putin and Ukraine.
• 25:01
  He, he says that he's the man who can end end wars.
• 25:04
  He can end the war here in Ukraine in 24 hours.
• 25:07
  And that means he, he wants to talk to Putin and he wants to
• 25:10
  get this, to get this thing sorted.
• 25:13
  But now you have this whole other theatre of war, which no
• 25:17
  single person can really have much impact on, you know,
• 25:23
  because the Americans largely absented themselves from all of
• 25:26
  this. It's hard to see how he comes in
• 25:28
  and sorts it out. So I think it once again, it
• 25:31
  may, it may make him look weak. And that's not a thing that that
• 25:35
  President Trump likes. I mean, Lena, of course.
• 25:38
  I mean, Trump would argue that he's the only person who was
• 25:40
  strong on Syria because he did at least bomb Assad over the use
• 25:45
  of chemical weapons. Yeah, and now he's also thinking
• 25:51
  and saying that this time he's not going to be as nice vis a
• 25:55
  vis Iran. I think Trump obviously
• 25:58
  recognizes that in his first term, he may claim that no wars
• 26:04
  were happening in the Middle East, which of course is not
• 26:07
  true. But he did not manage to make a,
• 26:12
  you know, a deal happen for Syria and or to get Iran to, you
• 26:17
  know, basically behave according to international law because it
• 26:21
  kept enriching, you know, nuclear elements and it kept
• 26:26
  destabilizing the region. This is not something that his
• 26:30
  presidency dealt with in the first term.
• 26:32
  So I think now he's looking at all those issues as one
• 26:36
  interconnected issue, which is about Iran's influence in the
• 26:40
  region. And he is indicating, and this
• 26:43
  can be seen through the people who he has hired in his cabinet,
• 26:46
  that he will pursue another iteration of the so-called
• 26:50
  maximum pressure policy towards Iran, but this time it's a
• 26:53
  higher maximum. Now, at the same time, he does
• 26:56
  not want the US to be involved in military action in the Middle
• 27:02
  East. He does not want a quagmire like
• 27:04
  the invasion of Iraq in 2003. And so I think he's going to
• 27:09
  mostly use economic sanctions on Iran more so than before.
• 27:16
  He's probably going to seek to completely cancel the nuclear
• 27:20
  deal with Iran and instead negotiate with Iran on a deal
• 27:24
  that would link the nuclear enrichment file with Iran's
• 27:28
  regional destabilization, taking advantage of the weakening of
• 27:32
  Iran in the region right now. I mean, despite the rhetoric,
• 27:36
  Iran's so-called the old narrative of unity of France
• 27:39
  that all it's proxies will spring into action in a huge way
• 27:43
  together has not quite happened. And so there is fear in Iran and
• 27:50
  worry regarding what the Trump administration might do.
• 27:55
  So, you know, maybe this will be the silver lining in all of
• 27:58
  this. I mean, Lindsay, it's worth just
• 28:00
  pausing for a moment to think if, if all that were to come to
• 28:02
  pass, Donald Trump would be the man who ends the war in Ukraine,
• 28:09
  ends the war in the Middle East and puts Iran back in his box.
• 28:13
  I mean, he, he, he could come out of this incredibly well.
• 28:18
  It depends how long term you're talking, isn't it?
• 28:21
  Because, you know, ending wars is one thing and freezing
• 28:25
  conflicts is another. And that's what we've seen in
• 28:27
  Syria, that the conflict was frozen.
• 28:29
  It wasn't over. And I think that here in
• 28:32
  Ukraine, you could see the conflict frozen, but not over.
• 28:36
  And then what everybody here fears is President Putin coming
• 28:40
  back for more. And so doing a deal anywhere in
• 28:44
  the world where you force it and you say everything stops, you
• 28:48
  can tout that as peace, but that isn't peace.
• 28:51
  That's just a temporary absence of war.
• 28:54
  And that does not solve the deep underlying problems that any of
• 28:59
  these countries have. We must remember that one of the
• 29:02
  key winners in all this is Israel.
• 29:05
  Israel has been looking forward to the day when Irans regional
• 29:10
  influence is weakened and now is a moment.
• 29:14
  Although Israel had considered Assad to be a convenient leader
• 29:19
  of Syria because he did not himself to form a threat to
• 29:22
  Israel, the proliferation of Iran backed groups including
• 29:27
  Hezbollah threatening Israel in the Middle East is not in its
• 29:31
  interests and now there is a moment for it to change the
• 29:35
  status quo. And of course, one of Israel's
• 29:38
  biggest backers is President-elect Trump, so he may
• 29:42
  be pushing forever more Israeli influence in the region,
• 29:47
  whatever Arabs and others think about it.
• 29:51
  We must leave it there. Lindsay.
• 29:52
  Lena, thank you both very much indeed.
• 29:54
  That's the forecast. Until next time, bye.
• 29:56
  Bye.