Latest / FDD Morning Brief / Al-Sharaa's Syria | feat. Andrew Tabler

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Al-Sharaa's Syria | feat. Andrew Tabler · FDD Morning Brief

0:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Good morning.
0:12
[SPEAKER_01]: It's Wednesday, October 14th, the Multifront War in the Middle East is now 1,103 days old.
0:19
[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, who's counting?
0:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm your host Jonathan Chanzer.
0:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome back to the FTD Morning Brief.
0:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Some terrible news out of Israel after a school trip near the Lebanon border ended in catastrophe.
0:30
[SPEAKER_01]: The students stumbled upon,
0:32
[SPEAKER_01]: unexploded ordinance, which in turn exploded, killing one teenager and wounding many others.
0:38
[SPEAKER_01]: A reminder that his ballad continues to pose a threat even when it's not actually fighting.
0:42
[SPEAKER_01]: On the other side of the border, they're growing fears that his ballad is entrenching recent introductions of explosives by Lebanese authorities are probably only the tip of the iceberg.
0:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Representatives of the Israeli and Lebanese military are set to meet next week in Tampa, but it's not clear if they're going to actually discuss anything of importance or achieve anything for that matter.
1:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe they'll catch a Tampa Bay race game or in the playoffs, you know, or a lightning game, talky season.
1:08
[SPEAKER_00]: That sounds like normalization to me.
1:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe they start there.
1:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Tatars and me, or shift to me, been Hamid Al-Fani came out swinging against Tehran yesterday accusing the Iranian regime of a, quote, blatant violation end quote of Qatari sovereignty for deliberately targeting the country's military bases and energy infrastructure.
1:28
[SPEAKER_01]: This was nothing compared to the damage the regime has been inflicting on the Saudis.
1:33
[SPEAKER_01]: That's happening in real time.
1:34
[SPEAKER_01]: But I do understand the Qatari sentiment, curiously despite months of bombings and dronings
1:43
[SPEAKER_01]: settlement with the regime.
1:45
[SPEAKER_01]: They have a lot to risk here, namely 12% of the world's natural gas give or take, and they share their natural gas field with the regime.
1:52
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's all pretty messy.
1:53
[SPEAKER_01]: But do you know what is really messy?
1:55
[SPEAKER_01]: This war started with a mass slaughter carried out by Hamas, a terrorist group that both Qatar and the Iranian regime sponsor to this day.
2:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Hamas figured celebrated the 10 seven attacks in both countries and in Qatar.
2:08
[SPEAKER_01]: The Hamas guys literally took
2:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, as the great Ferris Bueller, one said, life comes at you pretty fast, especially so if you're a Cotari royal, their Hamas sponsoring partners are now bombing them and the war is intensifying in the Persian Gulf, just as things seem to be cooling off along Israel's borders.
2:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how any of this is gonna end, but I do know one thing.
2:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Cotar is a state sponsor of terrorism, even if we call that country a major non-nado ally.
2:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the Middle East.
2:39
[SPEAKER_01]: headline one remember those who be attacks on Saudi airports we talked about last episode the ones that killed over a dozen people left 300 injured all while the hoopies were threatening to strike a ramp coat and energy facilities well the Saudis hit back yesterday the Saudi-led coalition struck a Yemeni oil facility in sanna but not before warning civilians
2:58
[SPEAKER_01]: In the area to clear out, smart move except maybe two clever by half of the hoothies apparently empty the facility beforehand.
3:04
[SPEAKER_01]: So son of the oil reserves are untouched and now a hoothie spokesman is threading a firm and painful response with a ramco, sorry, Arabia's oil giant squarely in the crosshairs.
3:14
[SPEAKER_01]: continue to see bombings, attacks, the Saudis definitely feel like they are taking it on the chin right now.
3:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't like where any of this is heading, but they don't seem to have answers.
3:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And the United States does not seem eager to come to their rescue.
3:29
[SPEAKER_01]: headline to the Iranian regime is using the pause in fighting, if we can call it that, to get ready for the next round.
3:35
[SPEAKER_01]: According to the Wall Street Journal, it's fortifying its nuclear sites at Natans and pickaxe mountain replenishing its missile and drone stockpiles and mobilizing its besiege militia to hold pro regime rallies and to teach civilians how to use anti-aircraft weapons and to indoctrinate children and just supporting the war with the United States.
3:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Buckle up, folks.
3:53
[SPEAKER_01]: This is all just heating up and it's heating up.
3:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Just before the elections here in early November, I get a sense that bigger stuff is coming.
4:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I hope I'm wrong, but, you know, I don't know.
4:04
[SPEAKER_01]: It looks bad.
4:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Headline three, well, we covered it last week, Iran allegedly sending $200 million to his Bala.
4:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And yes, I cast doubt on that report.
4:13
[SPEAKER_01]: But now I stand corrected.
4:14
[SPEAKER_01]: His Bala confirmed yesterday saying it will now pay up to $14,000 to Lebanese families displaced from the war with Israel.
4:21
[SPEAKER_01]: 14 grand seems like a pitens to me.
4:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry about your house and all the trauma, but Worshia and Yershia, so how about enough money for a crappy use car?
4:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh and get ready for another war that will ruin your life.
4:35
[SPEAKER_01]: That's pretty much the message these days from the hisboes.
4:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Bottom line, Operation Economic Outcast is strangling the regime, but clearly the Molas are hanging on for dear life and they're still extending that lifeline to his Bala in Lebanon this thing
4:51
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, it's time for our interview.
4:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Today's guest is Andrew Tabler.
4:54
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a senior fellow to Washington Institute focused on Syria, the Levant, and U.S. Middle East foreign policy.
5:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Andrew spent 14 years working across the Middle East.
5:03
[SPEAKER_01]: He was co-founder and editor-in-chief of Syria's first private sector English language magazine before eventually making his way to the swamp here.
5:11
[SPEAKER_01]: working first at the National Security Council during the final days of the ISIS caliphate, then as a senior advisor on Syria at the State Department.
5:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So without further ado, let's bring Andrew that repeat a fender.
5:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's bring him back onto the show.
5:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome back to the F2D Morning Brief Andrew Tabler.
5:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Good morning John, love the intro.
5:35
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, do it.
5:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Love to have you back on the show.
5:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to spend most of our time today asking you about Syria.
5:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that's kind of been your bread and butter, but I do have a little surprise question for you as we kind of round out here at the end.
5:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I need to ask, okay, so we're pretty well into the Ahmed al-Shara presidency, right?
5:54
[SPEAKER_01]: We're into this new regime.
5:56
[SPEAKER_01]: We saw the Assad regime fall.
5:58
[SPEAKER_01]: This guy comes in.
5:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It's what almost two years now, I guess, that this guy's holding on to power.
6:04
[SPEAKER_01]: He goes by two names, right?
6:06
[SPEAKER_01]: He goes by off metal shara.
6:07
[SPEAKER_01]: That's his secular legitimate name, and then there was the name that he went by before all of this went down, which was Abu Muhammad al-Jalani, when he was associated with the Nusra front, which then became Hayat Takrari al-Sham.
6:20
[SPEAKER_01]: So basically, he is a legitimate state spend on the one hand energy hottest on the other.
6:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Which one is he, or if we have to break it down, can you go percentage wise?
6:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Is he like 50, 50, 70, 30?
6:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, how do we break down who this guy is right now, as he bolts in real time?
6:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a great question, John.
6:41
[SPEAKER_00]: So I have not met him or had faced a lot of people have, I've just been observing Syria over the last couple of years.
6:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was on a visit there this summer, which was very interesting, by the way.
6:52
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a lot of med, right?
6:53
[SPEAKER_00]: It's beautiful.
6:54
[SPEAKER_00]: It's yeah.
6:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I also came away with a nasty case in pneumonia.
6:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's because the place is just, you know, the central Damascus, which used to be kind of, you know, easy to navigate and so on.
7:08
[SPEAKER_00]: in the 90s when I studied there.
7:11
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just so unbelievably crowded, but around it, it's like Berlin or Dresden after the war is just destroyed.
7:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the scale of everything is really huge.
7:20
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what the reason why I bring this up is that in answer your question, it's very hard to put a percentage on this.
7:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, obviously, this is a high-tech rare sham has solidfist gehadest origins, right?
7:36
[SPEAKER_00]: and so therefore it's coming to power.
7:38
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to bring with it those orientations in many ways and in some cases ideology and this is flared throughout the last two years in different ways.
7:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Many of which have been grabbed on social media and it's sometimes super-pischol like serving alcohol and Damascus and so on.
7:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I was able to purchase alcohol and Damascus.
7:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, you aren't.
8:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I mean, everything is possible, right?
8:03
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you know, I taught me to put a percentage on it.
8:06
[SPEAKER_00]: What I will say though is that as I'm going to show as sad in the presidency and then his, I would say he has become more pragmatic over time.
8:17
[SPEAKER_00]: on decisions, both in terms of inside of the country.
8:20
[SPEAKER_00]: We saw that with the Kurdish integration this year.
8:24
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of Kurds don't feel that they've been excluded, right?
8:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Northeast, which is to be expected, but it could have gone off a heck of a lot worse, right?
8:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I was expecting a lot worse.
8:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And that, of course, leads to questions on suede at which I'm sure we'll get to, you know, we'll get to in a minute.
8:40
[SPEAKER_00]: But the fact is, it's a majoritarian Sunni government that's certainly much more conservative.
8:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's hard for me to say who's named to put on top of this, right?
8:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I think what is important to point out is that I lived in Syria, as you mentioned previously, but a book about that experience, I was there in the early days of Bashar.
9:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And this was during the time when the government Bashar regime was promising reforms, economic reforms in particular for investments banking and so on in order to
9:16
[SPEAKER_00]: What strikes me is how much that hasn't changed.
9:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Literally, you have the government emphasizing energy now overwhelmingly, including with the US government officials, including
9:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Tom Barak, but also the fact is that they haven't reformed to accept the investments towards reconstruction.
9:39
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, there isn't even a reconstruction plan.
9:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So all of the announcements that have been made are good, because of the scale of the problem.
9:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I totally get it from your heart standpoint.
9:50
[SPEAKER_00]: But when the bean counters come in, which ultimately they will, right, from the international environment, they're going to be counting things and looking at what the basis of investments would be, you know, would be, right, they just haven't found it so far, both in other areas.
10:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
10:05
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's funny.
10:05
[SPEAKER_01]: It's one of these things that, well, I mean, I've said it for a long time and you can see what the Taliban you can see with Hamas.
10:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Jihadists are not great at governance.
10:13
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like a, I don't know, a little known secret, or maybe it's actually a really open secret.
10:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Jihadists do not have good training in terms of governance.
10:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I just haven't seen it, but okay, speaking of Jihadists, there are these reports that the Syrian military is possibly going to send troops to fight the hooties in the Emmett.
10:37
[SPEAKER_01]: As I said a couple of episodes ago, that sounds a lot like, well, Al Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula, so to speak.
10:46
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't sound like a good thing to me.
10:48
[SPEAKER_01]: What are the odds of this actually happening?
10:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, Sunni Jihadis squaring off with Shi'ai Jihadis in Yemen of all places.
10:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
10:56
[SPEAKER_01]: That sounds like a bad movie, but what do you think?
10:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it's also like deja vu all over again.
11:02
[SPEAKER_00]: This this has been similar news reports that talk about conversations between Ahmed Ishara and President Trump over deploying Syrian troops to Lebanon sending in sometimes foreign fighters into South to have some sort of battle of Armageddon in southern Lebanon.
11:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Now that you know,
11:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, could possibly go wrong.
11:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I know, I have argued against that because I think it's just like pouring, I don't think worse than gasoline on a fire.
11:30
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like pouring nitric glycerin on top of a fire.
11:33
[SPEAKER_00]: It is very risky.
11:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I'm going to show her, as I mentioned before, being a sort of pragmatist.
11:39
[SPEAKER_00]: probably looks at the situation and doesn't want to send the troops there and I think that holds, but he's under tremendous pressure from the U.S. government as far as I can tell to do so.
11:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And the question is why and I think the answer is because the U.S. needs all of the cards it can play in this regional struggle and war against against the Islamic Republic of Iran and
12:09
[SPEAKER_00]: The question is, is it wise from an engineering standpoint, right?
12:13
[SPEAKER_00]: The architects are the ones that make the decisions.
12:15
[SPEAKER_00]: You know that, John, probably in Washington, but unfortunately, they don't bring the engineers in the room until later, people that actually have language skills, know what's going on, and so on.
12:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they say, oh, well, this didn't work out.
12:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you should fix it.
12:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, I think we need to avoid those situations.
12:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have any inside information on this, but I think for the moment, it seems I'm going to shower as holding back.
12:39
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, so let's talk about the Lebanon thing, because there were those reports in Tom Barrack, the ambassador to Turkey from the United States, who somehow now has his hands in Syria, and also, I think, to some extent in Lebanon.
12:53
[SPEAKER_01]: He was at one point, he seemed like he was on board with it, and we saw, I'll show our, I guess, throw some cold water on this plant, but now they're these reports of the Turks, meeting with his Bala,
13:07
[SPEAKER_01]: from what we hear Syria as well.
13:10
[SPEAKER_01]: What was that about?
13:11
[SPEAKER_01]: What from at least what you've heard?
13:13
[SPEAKER_01]: What are they trying to do here?
13:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And should we be a little concerned here that the Turks are now looking at Lebanon and Syria as their own playground?
13:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So Turkish influence in Syria in particular, and then maybe Lebanon depends on how you look at it.
13:29
[SPEAKER_00]: by extension is growing substantially after the fall of the Ascent Reggie.
13:33
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not an undeniable fact.
13:35
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a lot of speculation about the recent Israeli strike in Syria, about little over a month ago, about whether that was for electionary, or purposes, or analytical purposes, and so on.
13:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, of course, everything going into an Israeli election like our election is political, but the fact is that Turkish influence in Syria is growing.
13:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And so therefore that becomes a real issue because then you're looking into who's going to be playing a major role in Syria in terms of brokering any kind of agreements to what they're trying to do as far as I can tell is let the air out of the balloon right they're trying to reduce tensions with the different parties sometimes it involves Israel in Syria right the Turks or between the Turks and Israel the US gets involved.
14:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes it involves Hezbollah.
14:26
[SPEAKER_00]: In this case, I think they tried that.
14:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, how that's all going to work.
14:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
14:31
[SPEAKER_00]: There were some details that some things were agreed, like not to carry out Hezbollah, not to carry out attacks on Syrian soil, but other things concerning Lebanon and we're not agreed.
14:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't, I'm not in the room and these these agreements are subject to speculation, but the fact that they appear in Reuters, I think, means that those agencies are not like a, you know, a website that just happened to pop up last week.
14:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, this is not random stuff.
14:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think what I take away from this right now is, well, the Turks see these areas as part of their sphere of influence.
15:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And, right, it's, and, and Siri, we have already known Lebanon.
15:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I think more and more and, you know, as, as his, his, ball of weakens as a Ron can project, let's say less power in Lebanon.
15:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the Turks are trying to fill the vacuum and I don't know what that looks like yet.
15:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Reports are that,
15:27
[SPEAKER_01]: The jerks are actually supporting both Sunni and Shia factions, including armed factions, which I don't know, it doesn't sound good to me, but we'll keep an eye on that.
15:38
[SPEAKER_01]: In the meantime, I'm keeping an eye also on the Syrian military.
15:44
[SPEAKER_01]: This is interesting to me, you know, it's from what we hear the Turks are helping them build, but also maybe the Russians, and even maybe the United States, from at least some some reports, are you concerned that this military is still populated by a lot of foreign fighters and jihadis from the Nusra and HTS stays, and it's now the fastest growing military in the world according
16:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, so first of all, they started from a very low base because the country was divided into spheres of influence and parts from most of the civil war.
16:25
[SPEAKER_00]: This is where I think it's important to point out to your audience here.
16:29
[SPEAKER_00]: There were lots during the Biden administration with the last time.
16:32
[SPEAKER_00]: There were lots of reports about the regime controlling like these huge large sloths of territory which were usually in red on the maps and then the opposition would control the green territory and it all looked like it was the same.
16:43
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't it was atomized but over top of that was another layer and that was the area was divided between what we called when I was in government the five armies right and so that was Israel from the air the United States from the Northeast.
16:55
[SPEAKER_00]: right, the Russians who were active there in the Iranians and also the Turks.
17:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's here of influence models.
17:04
[SPEAKER_00]: So as much as serious change in terms of the fall of the regime and so on, that's here of influence model remains.
17:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why you see these altercations between Israel and Turkey because there is a sort of line in the middle of the country.
17:18
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called the status quo agreement as far as I know as far as we know.
17:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And that agreement means that there is a some sort of dividing of Syria along the former Kirkuk Benus pipeline corridor.
17:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And so previously it was thought that heavy weaponry
17:39
[SPEAKER_00]: towards the Israeli frontier where we're in violation of the status quo.
17:44
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think the fact is that you asked earlier about the military.
17:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's not just about men under arms, that's one thing.
17:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And we do have foreign fighters about four or five thousand at least in one division.
17:57
[SPEAKER_00]: or give or take, the more worrisome thing and that is worrisome from a regional stability standpoint.
18:03
[SPEAKER_00]: If heavy weaponry is being moved into Syria and violates the status quo agreement, it will tip over the Applecard, a mixing metaphor is here and it leads to escalation.
18:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's what we will see until we deal with that fact, we're going to have more altercations and it's not going to be stable and that's not going to be good for anybody.
18:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And we saw the strike whatever it was six weeks ago or so where these really took out an air strip where it looked like the the Turks were going to be bringing in, I don't know whether it was weapons or whether it was platforms.
18:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Some by the way said that the Turks were actually considering the delivery of the S-400 that Russian made air defense system.
18:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if that's true, but I mean and there's it's still I think we're operating under the sort of fog of
18:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, sort of war, we continue here about the T4 air base, which is actually much closer to Israel.
18:58
[SPEAKER_00]: It's also, right?
18:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
19:00
[SPEAKER_01]: That's at the line, right?
19:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we continue to hear that the Israelis have concerns about platforms there.
19:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess, well,
19:07
[SPEAKER_01]: with one concern after another, we'll continue to watch.
19:10
[SPEAKER_01]: But those five armies that's exactly right, I do actually, I mean, I guess we'll learn soon enough about the Russian element of this.
19:17
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a much bigger footprint back when you were watching this from inside government.
19:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Now it's smaller, but the Russians are invited back in on some level, and I guess we'll track that.
19:29
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, I want to ask you about the minorities in Syria.
19:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think we talk enough about them in general.
19:33
[SPEAKER_01]: But we've got the Jews in the South who are under the Israeli dominion, if we can call it that, the Israelis are protecting them.
19:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's in kind of, in accordance in an agreement with the Jews in Israel.
19:48
[SPEAKER_01]: They actually want to see this as do the Jews in the South of Syria more or less.
19:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's the Kurds in the north.
19:57
[SPEAKER_01]: and they are essentially being forced to integrate with the Syrian government under address really from the Turks.
20:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So what's happening with the minority situation?
20:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Did they tip the balance in some way toward the Israelis toward the regime against, I don't know, the Turks, how do you analyze how these guys fit into the patchwork that is now Syria?
20:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so it's a difficult question to answer because there are, it's not just that about, you know, 25 to 30% of Syrian Syrian population is in our minorities, it depends on how you cut it, right?
20:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously.
20:37
[SPEAKER_00]: But even within different communities, not everybody feels the same way.
20:40
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a bit like dealing with Arab tribes.
20:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I dealt with that a lot when I was in Syria and have written about it.
20:45
[SPEAKER_00]: you can have one tribe that seems like it's on one side, right?
20:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's say the US side, but we'll have plans that deal with the other side as well so that they always have a pragmatic outcome to do the situation if they need it.
21:00
[SPEAKER_00]: In the case of minorities, the situation in Sweden considering the Druze continues to fester, and that's because the community there, and many of its leadership, do
21:10
[SPEAKER_00]: do not want to integrate their forces the National Guard under a Syrian Ministry of Defense, even under a Ministry of Interior, they don't trust it, especially following the clashes in the summer of 2025.
21:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's led to an Israeli intervention, and Israel does protect those that area of Syria, but to be fair to these rallies, this goes back years into the war, as I mentioned the Syrian influence models been there for a while, so nobody should be surprised
21:40
[SPEAKER_00]: What does the Kurdish agreement, which is, you know, is it a hard and jerk, things to come?
21:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know about that because that was the STF for better or for worse, was a more unified,
21:56
[SPEAKER_00]: organization that was disciplined and had a leadership and Muslim also could be very pragmatic and has been pragmatic.
22:02
[SPEAKER_00]: They were, I think, when you say, brought together, under with the Turks and the United States, under Tom Barrack, the ambassador, to cut a deal earlier this year, as we know, that was in the face of a
22:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Charo military intervention against the Kurds and that has brought them together.
22:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of the integration is going well.
22:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of it has been, some of it's just still outstanding, John, and I don't know, we've spoken to this every day, my research assistant, Ari and I.
22:34
[SPEAKER_00]: We look into this.
22:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very hard to understand that.
22:36
[SPEAKER_00]: We hear, though, from
22:38
[SPEAKER_00]: My folks I talk with in Syria as well as Russians and others that there are a lot of problems that's stringed out in eastern Syria.
22:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have any doubt about that.
22:48
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I'm saying is, I think it's important to note that with the new majoritarian sonny garment in Syria,
22:56
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to have to come to some sort of arrangement of representation and involvement with minorities in Syria, or they're going to risk further destabilization.
23:07
[SPEAKER_00]: The good thing is, until now, during my recent trip, I found with meeting with a number of, of, of, particularly of Christians and other minorities in the country.
23:16
[SPEAKER_00]: They are taking a pragmatic group, but as we know, ad hoc measures don't oftentimes hold, right?
23:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, I think, minorities are looking for more solid guarantees, and we just don't have that yet, and we certainly don't have it in terms of Sweden in the Southwest.
23:32
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, well, cool, keep an eye on all that, but that does feel like, well, I mean, even as the state consolidates, we continue to see instability for the revealed from Damascus, probably not a surprise, and not a surprise that there is some unease about integration with this new state given its
23:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Sunni Jihadi Flavor and the majoritarian approach that you mentioned as well.
23:53
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, I got one last question before I let you go, and this one, well, I don't even know what to make of these headlines, right?
24:01
[SPEAKER_01]: There was some UFO that was identified on Israel's northern border coming across from Lebanon.
24:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Is something out there?
24:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably something was out there.
24:16
[SPEAKER_00]: What it was exactly.
24:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
24:18
[SPEAKER_00]: It reminds me of my year.
24:19
[SPEAKER_00]: You're laughing because you know, I can believe anything these days.
24:21
[SPEAKER_00]: My father every morning says he read something from the news and he'll say any.
24:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you believe that?
24:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, yeah, dad, I can believe it.
24:27
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like what it doesn't mean I believe it in my heart.
24:30
[SPEAKER_00]: There was definitely something there.
24:32
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a lot of advance.
24:34
[SPEAKER_00]: weaponry and other kinds of drones and so on.
24:36
[SPEAKER_00]: They'd say it wasn't a drone.
24:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes they stayed out with the weather balloon, but that sounds like the old excuses to US government used to get concerning UFOs in the United States and elsewhere.
24:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, um, I don't know.
24:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Southern Lebanon is now area 51.
24:53
[SPEAKER_00]: It always has been kind of like that.
24:54
[SPEAKER_00]: It's definitely.
24:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
24:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
24:57
[SPEAKER_00]: We just need, we need less Twilight Zones in the Middle East and more, more, more, more, more.
25:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Where, where we, we know what to expect.
25:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And that will lead to, to hopefully stability in the future.
25:07
[SPEAKER_00]: But we go long way to go.
25:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, more disarmament zones, not twilight zones.
25:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's a real rule.
25:15
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I kind of thought it was just perfect to see a UFO appear somehow into the headlines as if things weren't weird enough.
25:23
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, want to thank you, Andrew Tabler for coming back and joining us again on the FDD morning brief.
25:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
25:34
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, this episode is over.
25:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Seriously, people were done.
25:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, yeah, that was bad.
25:39
[SPEAKER_01]: But there is much more where that came from, just tune it on Friday.
25:42
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25:46
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25:48
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25:53
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25:54
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25:56
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25:58
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26:01
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26:06
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26:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Until then, I'm Jonathan Changer as always, signing off.