https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgEgHVtRbg4
Video is a little over an hour long, with Hedges (CH) posing questions and Crooke (AC) answering. Much of what was said is already known to those who have been following the situation, but there were a few new bits of info:
Hedges leads with a brief bio of Crooke, which filled out a few details I didn't know: a former British diplomat with more than 30 years service in the Middle East; he worked as a security advisor to the UN special envoy to the Middle East and helped set up numerous negotiations and truces between Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian resistance groups with Israel; he was especially instrumental in bringing about the 2002 ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. He's also the author of Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist Revolution, which analyzes the ascendancy of Islamic movements in the Middle East.
CH: To put everything in context, let's go back to the Arab Spring, there were widespread demonstrations in Syria and throughout the Arab world.
AC: The roots of the Arab Spring go back to a meeting that took place between Vice President Dick Cheney and Prince Bandar, then head of Saudi intelligence services, after the 2006 war in Lebanon. Cheney complained that the invasion of Iraq was supposed to weaken Iran and didn't seem to have done that, and now Hizbullah emerged victorious from the recent war. Bandar replied that the king believed the solution was to take out Syria, because it was the weak link. Bandar told Cheney that Islamic revolutionaries could work for the US, and when Cheney hesitated about the US doing something like that Bandar said "no problem, we'll do it all for you."
This was sort of the second round, the first round was in Afghanistan long before I was there when Saudi Arabia, at the behest of the US, sent Islamic movements into what was a secular society in Afghanistan in order to weaken Russia.
From the 19th century and beyond Iran was a big, powerful country and the leader in the Middle East. What Bandar proposed was inverting the paradigm, isolating Iran and making the Sunnis paramount.
Then President Obama did his Presidential Finding, i.e., an order directing the CIA to oust Assad. Ever since then there's been a whole ragtag of groups in Syria that have received American, Israeli and Turkish training mainly for the purpose of ousting Assad.
The most severe sanctions, the Caesar sanctions, were imposed on Syria. Then the Kurds were empowered in northeastern Syria where they sat on the Syrian oil in an entirely illegal occupation so Syria lost its oil revenues. Eventually Turkey took over Id Lib and Aleppo, and that was the industrial part of Syria, which left it with no economy.
We've seen that the Syrian army declined to fight. A conscript is currently paid $7 a month, a general gets $40 a month. The HTS militants and other militias receive $2,000 a month. So Syrian didn't have the resources to put together an army that could fight.
Russia tried to do this in 2018, offered to train them and provide them with new equipment on credit, Syria didn't have to put money up. Assad said no. More recently the Iranians offered to provide support to the Syrian army but said they had to be invited else they'd be viewed as an occupying force. Again Assad said no.
Throughout this period he was warned that something was coming by the Iranians, the Quds brigade of the IRGC told him about two months ago that something was happening in Id Lib and I'm sure the Russians were also aware of this. The Turks have now admitted that it started from their perspective six months ago though I'd put the date of the preparation for this at two years ago.
Why did Assad say no? I don't have a definitive answer but I know of a discussion some years ago, when MbS was young and new on the stage, MbZ (Mohamed bin Zayed), the crown prince of UAE, told him that the path to becoming crown prince was through Israel and through the Israeli lobby in Washington. What we've seen in the last 3 or 4 years was Assad distancing himself from both Iran and Russia and I think he was being pulled more and more by the Gulf states, thinking that this was his path to survival because Washington and Tel Aviv would like that. In the end there was nothing left to work with.
For months, years, Erdogan had been trying to persuade Assad to allow his government to become what I can only describe as a controlled Ottoman structure rather than a government of the Syrian people. I remember one time I was with Assad in Damascus and he said people like Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood in his country, who he had supported and funded, and now they want to tell me how to run my country.
CH: Explain why they were so terrified of the Muslim Brotherhood, as were other rulers like King Hussein.
AC: They saw the Muslim Brotherhood as a very strict Islamist movement whose tail, and there's some truth to this, veered off into Wahhabism and Salafism. But Erdogan tried to take control of the Muslim Brotherhood because as Cheney was empowering the kings and emirs of Sunni Islam to be the masters of the world, Erdogan wanted to go back to a form of neo-Ottomanism and everyone feared that.
Erdogan wanted to insert that into Syria and Assad saw this as a huge danger. But it became weaker and weaker. Russia offered to build up his army but when you're paying your troops $7 a month you just don't have the resources. The people were starving, they were losing hope and there was a lot of corruption. And then he was dragged toward the Gulf states thinking this might be the solution.
Then Erdogan decided to mount this coup through Id Lib using a motley group of militias and those loosely tied to ISIS or Al Qaeda.
Assad went to see President Putin on the day before the invasion began, spending several hours with Putin and then flying back the same day to Syria. We have no idea what was said at that meeting but I think that was the point that Putin told him it was game over.
From the Astana meetings between Iran, Turkey and Russia, Russia had come to the conclusion that it would be a terrible mess if Assad fell and I think Putin was being advised that outcome was inevitable. But at the same time he decided the primary interest of Russia was not the small wars - Romania, Belarus, Moldova - but the big war against NATO and the West, which wants to peel him away from China and Iran, scatter the BRICS across the globe and leave Russia isolated.
CH: I want to talk about Turkey, Israel and the US independently. Where did the money and arms come from, was it primarily Turkey?
AC: There's been a lot of training of these groups across Central Asia: Uzbeks, Turkmans and others, former Al Qaeda fighters have been taken in. If you look at Jawlani's group (HTS) more than 30% come from Central Asia, they aren't Syrians at all. Turkey's well known to have a training center for these groups, there's even allegations that those responsible for the Crocus Concert Hall attack in Moscow were Turkmans (from Turkmenistan) trained in Turkey.
Yes, it's funded by America because he sold it to America as part of the process of getting rid of Assad and installing a Western-friendly government.
So money coming in, Turkey working closely with the Americans particularly with militant groups in the south - it's complicated in Syria because the Pentagon was training some and CIA was training others at the same time, and some of those groups were fighting each other despite both being on the American payroll.
Erdogan's ego is huge. He made a statement yesterday that "there are only two leaders in the world today, myself and Putin, but I've been around a lot longer than Putin."
But I think the great flaw of this whole construct is that he thinks he can control Jawlani and the jihadists. His own people have said in the press that he doesn't control these people and he certainly doesn't control Jawlani, who set up a very oppressive structure in Id Lib when he was boss there, strict Wahhabi and anyone who disagreed was disappeared.
CH: The Turks are obsessed with this US-backed Kurdish militia force that controls Syria's oil fields. One has to assume that's the next move, they want to push the Kurds out and seize these oil fields, that's my guess. Is that correct?
AC: That's correct, they were already attacking Manbij ("a city in the northeast of Aleppo Governorate"), attacking the Kurdish groups there. There's real fighting going on there.
On the other side, the Israelis are saying they want a Kurdish state to be formed, joining them to Abil ("in central Syria, administratively part of the Homs Governorate") and joined to Iraq.
(uh-oh)
CH: I don't see how the Syrian economy is going to function if they don't get back the oil fields. One of the things that led to Assad's deep popularity aside from the repression was the fact there was only electricity for an hour a day. In Damascus, prices were astronomical, unemployment was widespread. Much of the country is destroyed and hasn't been rebuilt, it's been one of the problems of the Syrian refugees that there's nothing to go back to.
AC: Syria's agricultural land is also occupied by the Kurds so they lost the revenue from agriculture and oil sales and from the industrial capacity in Id Lib. That's on top of the sanctions, there's absolute poverty. At the moment Qatar is paying for the electricity in Aleppo.
CH: Paint the ways this could unravel and jeopardize stability within the Middle East and perhaps even globally.
AC: In Lebanon there is strong pocket in Tripoli of those who would support Jawlani against the Shia, who make up about 45-55% of the population in Lebanon. The tensions and fractures are very obvious in Lebanon because of the ceasefire and Israel's massive bombing of civilian areas.
The Kurds in Abil, are they going to see their Kurdish colleagues wiped out by Turkey?
What will happen to the Hashad, the militia that's formerly part of the Iraqi army but quite autonomous? They're armed and they've now had a whole division of the Syrian army that crossed over into Iraq with their armor. Are they going to fight HTS as they try to cut off Iraq from Syria? Seems likely.
I believe Saudi Arabia will be very nervous to see the Ottomans claiming to be one of the leaders of the world. And though Wahhabism has its roots in Saudi Arabia, MbS and the Gulf States have adopted the Western lifestyle almost completely; scantily dressed girls in the palaces and on the beaches, alcohol pretty freely available. So this has to be making them very uneasy; will they support factions fighting against Erdogan's militants?
Doha is already at odds with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States on the issue of the Muslim Brotherhood, etc. Qatar is a Wahhabi state and they're supporting the militants in Aleppo. That's how the whole region can change.
Then you come to Jordan, right on the border. Will the jihadists come across, invade? Jordan also has a huge Muslim Brotherhood contingent and Salafist elements. It's been very tense in Jordan because of what's happening in Gaza and the West Bank. Jordan is terrified Israel will push the Palestinians out of the West Bank into Jordan.
In Israel the tensions are growing. Netanyahu goes back to court this week, I think. The Attorney General told Netanyahu he couldn't delay his case and Ben Gvir said she must be sacked; she says that Ben Gvir is an illegal cabinet member.
There's deep divisions within the army, they're saying there no plan or blue print and we're getting killed while the Orthodox don't get killed, why do our sons have to bear the loss of life while the Orthodox are free to study in their Yeshivas. Even former national security members think Israel is on the brink of collapse.
It's becoming a war between the kingdom of Judea - Ben Gvir's mini-army of 10,000 settlers, all armed and all of whom obey his particular radical rabbis; and the state of Israel, which is very secular and Europeanized.
CH: How likely do you think a war with Iran is?
AC: I think it's likely but that it's nothing to do with Iran. I think that among the ruling cadre, they feel like they NEED a war, to reassert that they will not tolerate any rival power, any challenge to American leadership and American greatness.
CH: But would it be an aerial campaign or would they send troops into Iran?
AC: No, they can't send troops, Iran's population is 90 million and it's as big as Europe. And here's where I disagree with the consensus in America: they think it will be a shock and awe aerial campaign but there are plenty of technical reasons that won't work. First, Iran has excellent air defenses, from Russia but their own as well. Contrary to what the media said, the Israelis were not able to penetrate Iranian airspace when they attempted that strike.
When you're talking about programs buried deep underground: you saw what happened in Beirut to get at Hizbullah leadership; it took 85 heavy missiles. If you're going to fly F-35s with JDAM missiles, each of those is about 14 tons. It's not just the weight, it's the fuel they use so you have to refuel at least once, maybe twice.
The Iranians have good air defense systems and over-the-horizon radars. We were told the Israelis damaged Parchin but they bombed two empty warehouses.
