This interview was informative to a point. It was also striking in that it attempted to spin the HTS takeover of Syria. The US Establishment is so ecstatic that Assad is gone, they are willing to spin the situation in order to assuage public fears. While Robert Worth suggested Israel is less than pleased - as demonstrated by their seizure of territory beyond the Golan Heights, and the numerous strikes to cripple that nation's military capability, I still felt like the whole question of Jolani/al-Sharaa was viewed through an Israeli lens.
They (Gross and Worth) first dealt with the question of the Houthis and the scandal surrounding Signal and the inclusion of Jeffrey Goldberg. Leaving aside some of the comments made by the likes of Hegseth and Vance, I found myself growing a little irritated with Worth's framing of the situation with Yemen.
He almost presented their Red Sea campaign and missile strikes against Israel as something coordinated with Hamas and its attacks in October 2023. In reality it was in response to Israel's brutal genocidal campaign in Gaza. That may or may not justify Houthi actions but the distinction is important. They are presented as the aggressors which ignores the fact that the US has waged war on them for more than a decade. Saudi Arabia is mentioned by Worth, but it was in every way a US sponsored war - as it is with the Israeli war on Gaza. The US has long had the Houthis in its sights and so for them to start launching attacks on US targets in the Red Sea and on Western (or one could say NATO affiliate) shipping is not quite the 'aggression' that it's made it out to be. Despite the ceasefire with the Saudis, the Houthis have been engaged in a decade-long war with the United States. The fact that the American public knows so little about it is a commentary on US government transparency and the role of the mainstream media.
It's not polite to say, but another reason for the American and British empires to be guarantors of the seaways is it allows them to have a global footprint - the whole world becomes their interest and sphere, allowing the said empires to intervene when and where they will. Additionally this claim blocks other nations from exercising the same kind of security. Should they attempt to do so - it's presented as aggression and to use contemporary language - a violation of the rules based order. Trump clearly doesn't understand any of this but simply wants to run the empire on the cheap - everyone should bow down out of fear and a sense of obeisance - in awe of his greatness, majesty, and power. They get nothing for it and as a consequence Trump is creating conditions that allow nations to begin breaking away. Not only will his regime generate inflation and hard feelings, he's creating conditions that will allow the US to be blocked and boxed out in the future. There is a sense of poetic justice in witnessing all this and yet the irony is pretty staggering as the people who think they are making American great and respected, are in fact working assiduously to tear down the the geopolitical structures of American power. Whom the gods will destroy they first make mad.
The strike on Yemen was not controversial but contrary to Worth, it should be. Again, the US war on Yemen and the Houthis is little known or understood by the American public. The media only reports on it when there's something sensational involved and yet as many have argued - how can democracy actually function when the electorate isn't aware of what it's government is doing? And Yemen is only one of many small-scale wars the US is involved in.
I found Worth's statement about the Houthis to be incredible. He says:
'The Houthis... behaves in all kinds of terrible ways. They jail people. They torture people. They get rid of all kinds of rivals in the nastiest possible ways. They're classified now, again, as a terrorist group.'
Everything he said could be applied to the Saudis who the Americans backed for years as they waged war on the Houthis. The only difference is that the Saudi government is not classified as a terrorist group - even though there's abundant evidence connecting them to various Salafist movements and most infamously the 9/11 hijackers. In case any readers have forgotten, 15 of the 19 terrorists were Saudi citizens.
The Houthis have been targeted as part of Iran's larger sphere - even though their relationship with Tehran was not on the order of Syria under Assad or of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Nevertheless both Washington and Israel want to see them gone. It would weaken Iran and geopolitically Yemen is an important choke point connected to the Red Sea, the Suez Canal, and the larger Horn of Africa region. The Houthis ability to project power is limited but the real fear is that China or Russia will ally with whoever is in power in Yemen and set up shop in that critical region. The Trump people clearly think in transaction as opposed to strategic concerns and this is one of the reasons why the leaked dialogue is so upsetting to some. From the standpoint of of seasoned diplomats and analysts it's abundantly clear that these people (like Hegseth, Vance, and Waltz) are amateurs and out of their league.
For my part, I do not doubt that some people connected to the Trump administration and the Netanyahu government were determined to escalate this conflict and it was probably safe to assume that a re-kindling of the Gaza campaign would work to this end. It is a multi-faceted war with a set of larger geopolitical goals and expectations. Netanyahu in a rare moment of honesty has suggested the intention is to re-draw the map of the Middle East. It is precisely this manipulation that took place during the first Trump administration that led to not only the Gaza War but the larger set of tensions and conflicts.
Returning to Syria, the most difficult task for politicians and journalists is to present al-Sharaa as some kind of moderate. Everyone needs to stop and consider this scenario - imagine in 2010 or 2015 a member of al Qaeda or ISIS suddenly decides to 'reform' and make peace, and to enter mainstream politics. Would this be acceptable? Of course not, the very suggestion is absurd.
So then what has happened? Why isn't the media elaborating and explaining the fact that the War on Terror is not only over - but that the US is now willing to openly ally with Salafists? This has actually been happening since at least 2011 with the wars in Libya and Syria but that too has been largely ignored and it wasn't as open as it is now. This is front and centre open policy now. The bounty is gone, and al-Sharaa's crimes are forgiven. Would anyone else accept the 'repentance' of a jihadi? What about all the ISIS prisoners being held by the Kurds in northeast Syria? If they also express remorse - can they just go home now? The story of these prisons has also been largely ignored until just recently. It's basically a large-scale outsourced Guantanamo - a gulag or concentration camp with no charges, trials, or due process that the US has sponsored and funded - the Kurds being the hired jailers. There are tens of thousands being held prisoner including thousands of women and children.
This new modus vivendi with the Salafists should shock the public given that these were the very people the US was purporting to fight after 9/11 - in a global existential struggle no less. And now, no problem, a former al Qaeda and ISIS killer can put on a Western suit and be respectable. Where's the scandal? Or was the war always really about something else? He wasn't just some foot soldier - he headed a major group and interacted with men like al-Baghdadi, some of the most wanted men in the world. And that fact that on his road to respectability he has killed off rivals and dissidents - this is all okay it would seem.
And then if the War on Terror is over and the US can ally with 'moderate' al Qaeda and ISIS types - why do all the post 9/11 security and surveillance measures need to remain in place? Why isn't the media asking any of these questions?
I guess if Worth says he's an okay guy now - that's good enough for NPR. Worth claims he conquered Syria without creating a bloodbath. If he hadn't noticed the US did all it could to create a bloodbath over the past 14 years - resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths. Clearly by the end of 2024, the Assad regime was utterly broken and Russia and Iran were no longer in a position to help. The war had all but ended but between the ravages of a more than decade-long conflict, the sanctions, and the devastating earthquake in 2023, the regime was hanging on by a thread. And by the end of 2024, Moscow and Tehran could no longer provide direct military aid. The timing was everything - and now the purges are in progress. It's as if the whole purpose of the Worth interview is to justify Washington's support for the HTS-led government. They may dump him at some future date but for now - there's nothing to see here, and the groundwork is being laid just in case the US decides at some point - this is our guy. After all, they love the fact that he's hostile to Iran.
Yes, the Assad regime was highly authoritarian. Worth knows enough about Syria to explain why this country which was created by France and the UK after WWI devolved into that. It's not a real nation and given its diverse populations the only way to hold it together is through authoritarian rule. As Alawites, the Assads were interested in protecting the various minority groups and keeping groups like the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood (let alone the Salafists) from gaining power. The way they did this was by running a police state. If you stayed out of politics, you were relatively free. There was corruption to be sure - you were not going to flourish unless you were connected to the regime but for many Syrians, life wasn't all that bad. Democracy means little in the absence of security - something many Westerners who insist on its universalism do not understand.
Did the regime in its financial desperation turn to drug manufacture and dealing? I believe it because nations like the United States have been engaged in the same behaviour for many years and have collaborated with governments and paramilitary movements to that end. The profit margins are high and impossibly tempting. As such this interview is farcical on multiple levels. It's meant for a certain target audience - a group of upper middle class people and politicos who are completely given over to the US project and fundamentally believe in its values. The interview is meant to assuage their concerns. It is not meant to properly contextualize these events or reflect on them.
Another great irony here is the role NPR is playing in reinforcing the State Department line - which in turn represents other interests in the Establishment. NPR certainly has plenty of shows and runs stories about homosexuals and other perverse subgroups of the population and it's certainly pro-abortion and pro-feminist (but then again so is FOX on the latter point) - but when it comes to foreign policy and many of the 'big picture' issues, the outlet is not liberal or Left but mainstream. I thought of this as I listened to the Republican-led hearings trying to call NPR and PBS on the mat. They've long dreamed of eliminating these outlets - the offspring of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.
In the meantime it's also clear there is a faction within Israel that is not happy with al-Sharaa and would like to see him replaced with someone else. As such they are mounting a propaganda campaign against him. One of the easiest target audiences for manipulation in the US political sector is and remains American Evangelicals. As such, rumours are quickly spreading that thousands of Syrian Christians have been killed. Never mind the fact that their ethnic Christianity is viewed as illegitimate when they are opposed to US policy - as was the case when they supported Assad. But the 'Christian' card is played when it's convenient and so it is now. While there's evidence to suggest a handful of Christians were caught up in the slaughter of Alawites by some of the HTS-affiliates, there's no proof (as of yet) of a deliberate targeting of the Christian community. But already a hysteria is being whipped up in Evangelical circles in an attempt to affect US policy. Time will tell if Trump reacts to this and Israel's actions will also most certainly play a role.
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