Bible Science Forum

Kevork Almassian of @SyrianaAnalysis joins ‪@BettBeat_Media‬ and discusses the truth about the US empire and Israel’s war in the Middle East / West Asia. This an excellent interview that serves to set the record straight on the US empire systematic conquest and its relationship with the Israeli state’s expansionist aspirations.

Transcript

Host: All right, good evening, everyone. We are here today again with Kevork Almassian, who is the host of the Syriana Analysis podcast. I wanted to get you on, Kevork, because you focus a lot on what’s happening in West Asia and geopolitics in general, and I thought you would be a very good source to get an update. So welcome back, Kevork.

Kevork: Thank you very much for having me. It would have been better if we had this conversation during better times, but unfortunately, I always see that the cycle of history sometimes is vicious. However, it’s important for people like yourself and many other people to speak up and present solid, let’s say, content to educate the people. I believe sometimes we underestimate how many people are craving for such a content. And then you read the comments and you see that a lot of people had no idea. Many people were influenced and say, “Thank you so much for opening up my eyes.” So don’t underestimate the work that you do on YouTube.

Host: Thank you for that, Kevork, and I totally agree with you. Sometimes I have the idea that everybody knows what we know. And then I read the comment section and I see the genuine gratefulness of people, the genuine gratitude, I should say. And I’m like, wow, you know, you don’t realize that you’re opening the eyes of a lot of people. And I think especially in this case, with all the propaganda that we see, it’s so important that people know more about what is going on.

And that is also what I wanted to talk a bit about today, Kevork, and I hope you allow me to ask a first question that is maybe a bit personal, but I think I’ve seen a lot of your content, so I don’t think that should be a very big problem for you. But I’m really wondering, because I’m struggling a lot emotionally about what is going on in West Asia. I think a lot of the viewers are also struggling emotionally about what is going on. And I want to first start with something that was triggered by one of the shows that you did quite a while back. And it is about the following.

I know that in the West, we have no idea about the deep and rich historical significance of West Asia, of the Arab world, but also West Asia in general, how significant that is for us as human species. And I remember a very beautiful, I think it was a monologue by you, where you mentioned the significance of Iraq for you as a kid growing up in Syria, and how devastating it was to watch a place that you admired so much be destroyed by the US and the West in general.

What we are witnessing, Kevork, is the Western Empire within a few decades flattened thousands and thousands of years of old history, literally the cradle of humanity, you know, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, you name it. Architectures such as mosques, churches, roads, temples, statues, besides, of course, the human toll, it’s all destroyed by the West as if they play a Call of Duty video game.

My question is, Kevork, you as a Syrian, can you explain to the audience how deep this touches you emotionally, and how significant this area is for us as human beings?

Kevork: In 2003, I was 15 years old, or so, maybe younger. In 2003, when I watched what happened in Iraq, I cried. So I have to confess, because when I watched the footage coming from Iraq, the shock and awe, or what they say, this bombing campaign of Iraq, and then the occupation of Baghdad, the killing of Saddam, despite that in Syria, we had big disagreements with Saddam Hussein as a country, as a foreign policy, let’s say, but we knew that this is not about Saddam Hussein. We knew that this was about destroying the Mesopotamian civilization. And as you mentioned, the history, the rich history of this country, right?

I mean, 7,000 years ago, one of the first civilizations spawned from this region. And accordingly, the human development started, the agriculture, and then the construction and building the, let’s say, the architecture of the region. There were so many innovations or the first handcrafts that started from this region, and then this has expanded to other regions, especially in Europe, places like I live nowadays, right?

Now, this was entrenched deep inside me. When I cried, it touched me a lot, and this has motivated me more to study political science. I started with international relations and diplomacy in Damascus, in 2005, two years after the invasion. And a year after I started studying, the invasion of Lebanon happened, which again, left deep sentiments deep inside me. And then the unconventional invasion of Syria in 2011, through these proxies of the CIA, MI6, Turkish intelligence, Israeli intelligence, Saudi intelligence.

So to 2011, I still was not mature enough. It touched me a lot. Like, I always felt like this deep anger and deep resentment and something that I couldn’t translate into constructive work, let’s say. But as I grew up, I would say that in the past five years, I grew up a lot. I grew up, I’m speaking about myself, psychologically, emotionally. I grew up a lot because there was a phase that I realized in my personal life, especially, that I’m alone. And I either grow up and become a man, or I stay in my place. And this was the place that I grew up from, let’s say, a younger phase into a man phase.

And this has also impacted my political understanding, because I started to see similar content and even worse from what’s happening now in Gaza and Lebanon and in Syria. But instead of sitting and crying about it, which I still do deep inside, but I use this as a fuel to produce content, to produce to the people showing them that what’s happening in the region, first is inhumane, it’s barbaric, it’s terrorism. And using the language that they understand, and the logic that they understand, because the past years, I accumulated experience by dealing with people in the US, in Germany, in the UK. So most of the following of my channel are from this country. So I understood how I should address these points, and how should I deliver these arguments to them. But most of this is based on the anger that I have, due to this destruction and the policies of their governments.

Now, people ask me, how do you watch this content and stay sane and normal? I don’t. I am hurt from inside, right? But I don’t want to go to social media and make it about myself. Because there are people in the Gaza Strip today, over 25,000 women and children got murdered and 15,000 men are murdered and more. It’s like the statistics could be way higher than these numbers.

So if I make this about myself, I’m being selfish. I have to be the voice of these people and the voiceless people in Palestine and in Syria and Lebanon. So I wake up in the morning, I have the love for the people in West Asia, which motivates me. And then I have the hatred towards the foreign policies of the imperialists in our region, which motivates me even more to push against their policies.

And people have to make the distinction here. I live in Germany. I am very grateful for the German people for receiving me from the war zone when I came to Germany. My wife is a German, my friends are German. I have no bad or negative sentiments toward the people.

However, I believe that these people are also victims of the policies of their governments, because what’s happening basically, that these governments and this political elite, what they call elite, when they wage these wars in our region, the outcome of these wars is for their purpose. It is to generate as much profits as possible and also for geopolitical reasons. But the people in these countries, they don’t get benefits from these wars. In the contrary, we in Germany now send weapons to Ukraine and to Israel.

So we are actively sending tens of billions of dollars. But in return, we are the ones paying more from our taxes. We are the ones paying for our bills, electricity, heating. Just for very quick, my electricity bill before the war in Ukraine and the Gaza was 45 euros. It’s now 95 euros. So you do the math. It’s over 100% more because we are sending more weapons and because we don’t have cheap gas any longer in Germany from Russia.

Host: Yeah, I hear you, Kevork. I think our trajectory is very comparable, even though you grew up in Syria and I grew up in the Netherlands. And of course, the Netherlands is a neighboring country of Germany. So in a sense, we also have very comparable experiences, I think. And I grew up as a kid during 9-11 and the war on terror that followed and the intense explosion of anti-Muslim, anti-Arab racism is something that was so disturbing in those days, that was so painful and it was so angering because it was so unfair what happened in West Asia.

And I remember also thinking like I can either sit here as a victim and cry about it, which I did in the beginning, don’t get me wrong, or I can turn this outrage into energy to try and do something. And in my case, I went into academia and I write very critical papers, very, very critical papers that I somehow managed to publish in very prominent journals. And that’s my intention, to get a lot of views for very radical ideas.

And in the end, I also made the decision to leave, to go to the other part of the world where I have the freedom to talk and write about imperialism. And that is something that I did because I know in the West, that’s a very, very difficult thing at the moment.

And that brings me also a bit to what I wanted to ask you, Kevork. You live in Germany. And we always see Germany as almost like a sister or a brother country in the Netherlands. And I wanted to ask you about that. What do you feel about the atmosphere in the West? For example, people, if you look at the UK, you have something like Palestine action, but you also had a journalist, Richard Methurst, who got arrested, they get imprisoned, etc., etc. So there’s a very, very dark atmosphere right now in the West when it concerns speaking out about imperialism in particular West Asia and Ukraine.

So it seems that speaking up in favor of human rights for Arabs and against genocide is literally criminalized in the West at the moment. And in my opinion, it exposes a deep seated racism nested in European cultures, something that I in the old days didn’t want to see because I was very happy with my country. I always say pre 9-11 Netherlands was a beautiful country. But the past decades have really exposed the deep rooted, almost obsessive persistence of racist ideas in European cultures. And I wonder how do you experience that in Germany?

Kevork: So I come from a position that I’m not a Muslim. I am a Christian. However, I have become recently more aware why after 9-11 there was persistent anti-Islamic sentiments, let’s say in Western countries, and this was deliberate.

So after the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States needed a boogeyman, needed an enemy, because empires need an enemy to continue justifying their expenditure over the military, and also their expansion in other places around the world. So the boogeyman here was the Muslim people and the Muslim countries. So if you want to invade Afghanistan, in order to block the Russian access to the Indian oceans and for geopolitical reasons and to capitalize on the trade routes there and also to restart the opium trade in Afghanistan, you need someone like Osama bin Laden to invade Afghanistan.

And to put it into context, Osama bin Laden was the freedom fighter of the US in the 80s against the Soviet Union. So I see this as an intelligence work. These organizations are infiltrated and they are directed through back then Saudi intelligence to hit certain regions for the sake of or in favor of the United States.

Now after 9-11, they needed to invade Afghanistan, as I mentioned, but also Iraq. So these Islamophobic or anti-Islamic sentiments was a deliberate projection of this hatred on the Muslim people to justify what happened in Iraq. So who benefited from the Iraq war? The neoconservatives and the Zionists.

They were the planners of this work, right? So back then, because they controlled both sides of the press, left and right and center, they were capable of, let’s say, injecting these negative sentiments against the Muslim people.

Now, there was a phase after 2011 when Obama wanted to create or let’s say capitalize on the Arab Spring movements. Now during this time, the anti-Islam sentiments have decreased all of a sudden because they needed to bring the Muslim brotherhood to power in the Arabic world. This was the strategic plan.

But then when the refugee crisis erupted because of the wars of Obama in the region, in Syria, and back before that, in Iraq and in Afghanistan, Obama, Clinton, and before that George Bush and everyone, so they needed this time a truce, let’s say, like a cessation of hostilities against the Muslim people, because hundreds of thousands of them started marching to Europe. So they have to convince now the European people that all Muslim people are nice and we have to receive them all because refugees are welcome. So you see, those are the same people, those are the same circles of power, but they change their tone when it’s convenient for them into anti-Islam rhetoric. And when it’s not convenient for them, they flip because they wanted to send as many refugees to Europe.

And for demographic reasons in Europe, but also I suspect nowadays that after what happened in Gaza, you know, the vast majority of the Muslim people see what’s happening in Gaza as a horror for them. So imagine you bring hundreds of thousands of newcomers from Muslim countries to Europe, and then something like the extermination of the Palestinian people happens, and it’s ongoing, and you consistently and persistently push anti-Islamic sentiments in Europe. Like politicians come and say, we sent weapons to Israel, and we will send more weapons to Israel. And then the foreign minister of Germany comes and says, I believe that civilian objects, let’s say buildings in Gaza, they lose their protection when Hamas uses them as human shield. So it drives the people…

Host: If I may just jump in quickly, Kevork, I actually wrote that somewhere, I think it was on my Substack, about according to that logic, that means that if Nazi terrorists would hide somewhere in a residential area in Germany, that means that the civilians there lose their protected status. But of course that would not happen, it only happens to Arabs. Sorry, go on.

Kevork: What she [the German Chancellor Angela Merkel] said basically is, she provoked hundreds of thousands of Muslim people now in Germany. So it seems to me like, call me a conspiracy theorist, as if they’re provoking the Muslim communities in Europe deliberately, so there would be a backlash, a social backlash in the country. And you cannot really understand this, because it’s illogical. Why would they want to do that, unless some would argue and say, maybe their allegiance is not for Germany. I’m not saying it, some people say this, right? Because it doesn’t make sense, if you are a German politician, your priority should be the security in Germany.

Now, according to this logic, and under international law, a civilian infrastructure loses – there are conditions – loses its protection with conditions. First, if there is a hospital, and there are missile launchers, let’s say, over the building of the hospital, and there are no patients in the hospital itself, so it’s empty, you may hit this target under certain conditions. Geneva Convention is very clear. But you cannot use this justification verbally, and come and say, civilian infrastructure loses its protection because Hamas is using it as a human shield. First, you have to prove that Hamas is using the hospital, not for medical treatment, because they are allowed to have medical treatment, but rather to wage acts of hostilities, offensive hostilities from the hospital, and there are no civilian targets inside the hospital.

Completely false what she said. It’s wrong on so many levels, even legally, it’s wrong. But this is all going to lead into a type of repercussion for Germany, that they will not be able to handle it any longer. Because, look, Italy says, we stop sending weapons to Israel. Macron says that we will stop sending weapons to Israel. And Germany will stay alone in this with the United States.

And I think the pressure in Germany is so high, that you have 5 million between Turkish people and Kurdish people, and you have now over 2 million newcomers from Islamic countries, they multiplied in the past 10 years, we don’t know the exact numbers. You have at least millions of people in Germany, are extremely bothered by what Germany is doing. And this will create a social backlash in the country itself.

And I’m, as a journalist, who cares about the social stability and security in this country, I’m warning against this type of policy. Germany has to come to its senses as a political entity, and be a mediator, for example, in Ukraine, and be a mediator in the Middle East. But now Germany lost every credibility, even there is a new government next year, there is not going to be any change in the foreign policy, because there is a competition, it seems, between the political parties who is more pro-Israel, like from the left to the right, except for one political party, called the Sahra Wagenknecht coalition, and she spawned from the left party, they have around 10% now of the votes in Germany, they are the only one calling for arms embargo against Israel, the rest are all not pro-Israel, they are Israel first, like they have Israeli flag in their bios on Twitter, X, they don’t have a German flag, it’s like, it’s just shows you how these politicians think, and where their priorities lie, this is a very unfortunate situation.

Host: Yeah, it’s very comparable to the Netherlands, you guys at least have a Sahra Wagenknecht, we have a political party of Geert Wilders, I don’t know if you ever heard of him. of him. It’s a very, very, very Zionist.

Kevork: What an asshole. Sorry. (Laughter.)

Host: This really shocked the conscience when you hear him speak and what he says about Muslims. But I wanted to hone in a bit on that German aspect here. I still find it shocking that your politicians say things such as that civilians lose their protected status when there are so-called terrorists. Because again, that would mean that if you have Nazi or right wing terrorists in residential areas in Germany, that would mean that German civilians would lose protected status. I wonder if she would feel the same way when you would say that.

But I want to ask you, Kevork, I do not believe this overreaction and this hyper, hyper support for the for the genocide in Palestine and the attacks on the neighboring country is out of guilt. I just don’t believe that nonsense anymore. I believed it when I was younger, when we were all indoctrinated by the mainstream media. But I really don’t believe that you support openly a genocide out of guilt for the Second World War. I just don’t believe it.

So I’m going to ask you something that I always ask my guests. What is this blatant and utter support for a genocide that’s been going on for one year now? We can see it on our phones. Every disgusting thing comes out. Mass sexual abuse by IDF soldiers, torture of children, mass extermination of innocent people, burning people. We can see it. Everybody knows it. Yet the West blatantly and openly keeps supporting this utter evil.

So I am wondering, what is this? What explains this? I don’t think it’s guilt. Is it ideology? I don’t know. Is it strategic interests? Is it money? What is it? What do you think, Kevork?

Kevork: So the purpose why Israel was established in the region is to separate the Levant from northern Africa. So geopolitically speaking, every empire that I studied from the Ottomans, the Mongols, the Romans, the Greeks, everybody tried to expand from the eastern Mediterranean shores to Egypt. They wanted to have this linkage between the northern African countries and the West Asia or what they call the Middle East. This is geopolitically very, very important for any economic integration in the region and for the establishment of any political and geopolitical power that could represent a challenge to the Western hegemony.

So Israel was installed between this intersection, let’s say, between the eastern Mediterranean and northern Africa. So if they want to preserve the Western 400-year-old hegemony on the world, they have to preserve their hegemonic status in one of the most important geographical regions, and that is this area, including, we can speak of, of course, Ukraine and Taiwan, and you see the trade routes, etc. So this is the geopolitics, why they do it.

And then you have the instrumental role of Israel in the region. Now, there is a misconception that Israel is leading the United States in the region into war, and I doubt that is the case. I believe that the United States is a partner with Israel in this conflict in the region, against the Arabs, against the Christians, against the Muslims, against even the Jewish people who are indigenous of this part of the world.

Now, in their understanding, what’s happening in Ukraine is not going well, and when Russia emerges victorious from Ukraine, this will have enormous repercussions on the balance of power in the world, and this will be the new world order, and that is a multipolar world. So they want to make sure that their hegemonic status is secured in the region, through the Israeli powers, after, let’s say, the war in Ukraine is over. So they are engaged in a brutal war to finish the Palestinian cause and normalize the relations between the Arabic countries.

Because remember, if the Israelis succeed, I’m not saying they will, hypothetically speaking, if they succeed in Palestine and they move to Lebanon, they would isolate Syria. So Syria would not have a choice to go to war against Israel any longer, and they would probably accept to normalize ties, or they would come and do a regime change in Damascus, right? So what’s happening here is to create a complete pro-American, pro-Israeli region. So this is a very high-stake poker game for them that they cannot really tolerate to lose, because what’s happening in Ukraine is very already, it’s not going well for them, let’s say.

And they cannot go to war against China, so what they have to preserve something in the region, and the closest geography for Europe, for Germany, for France, for the United States, to keep this hegemonic status in the region is in Israel. So they see Israel as an instrument to project their power and don’t underestimate the American understanding of geopolitics. They see the world in a zero-sum game situation, and this has been persistent after World War II till today.

They don’t believe in middle ground, in compromise, they see it as a zero-sum game, and they have the military tools to impose their hegemonic status on the rest of the world, and this is the second reason. And the third reason is ideology. And ideology is driving the policies of the current leadership in Israel.

Smotrich, Ben Gvir and Netanyahu, they’re not sane politicians, they are madmen, and they have this vision of the Greater Israel, they speak about it publicly, they say the borders of Jerusalem stretch from Jerusalem to Damascus, and we have to occupy two-thirds of Syria, we have to occupy the Sinai, we have to occupy Jordan, we have to expand to Mecca. So this is a recipe for endless war in the region. If you are an expansionist country, it means that you are going to kill as many as possible indigenous people in the region to expand, because you won’t tolerate their presence, because under your rule, then these people will be the majority.

So what’s the solution here? It’s either ethnic cleansing or genocide. And they tried to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians for a very long time, and they accelerated after October 7, and they have obstacles. I mean, technically, it’s impossible to ethnically cleanse two million people from the Gaza Strip unless Egypt receives them and then sends them to Europe, right? So their battle is going to face an enormous resistance in the region, and I suspect that they will lose this battle.

The Israelis will lose this battle in the long run. They could have bought themselves another 10 years with this ongoing genocide in Palestine. But the global circumstances and the major geopolitical conflicts in the world nowadays, be in, for example, in Ukraine or in Taiwan, those are all indications where the world is heading toward.

And we are, step by step, we can see with our objective-eyed establishment of parallel financial systems, the abandoning of the dollar, the de-dollarization, for example, the BRICS digital currency based on gold and the national currencies of these countries. So a increasing number of countries, and those are the majority of the countries, see a window of opportunity somewhere else.

And when the financial power starts moving from the West to the East, this is going to be the end of the U.S. as the absolute hegemon. And when that happens, Israel’s presence and security will be in grave danger because Israel is dependent on U.S. hegemonic status. When U.S. loses that status, Israel will lose its status as well in the region because Israel cannot survive without U.S. weapons. This is a big, I would say, misconception that Israel can fight by itself. No. Were it not for American weapons, Israel cannot fight. There is no way. They receive the vast majority of their weapons from the U.S. industrial complex.

So the bet here would be on the financial upcoming crisis and de-dollarization and the dollar losing its value. This is going to be the major hit to this project of Israel in the region. And that’s why you see that they’re acting in a hysterical way because they’re smart. They can see the future and they can see that this is going to be a grave danger to their presence in the region. So they’re acting in a very violent way, barbaric way, terroristic way to scare the people to commit this genocide and ethnic cleansing in order to impose their presence, which is just going to be counterproductive because no other country in the world in the 21st century could survive in the long run or even in the short run after committing these crimes. It’s impossible.

When the Americans, not the Americans, but when the Europeans came to the United States and they genocided the indigenous people back then, there were no, this wasn’t the 21st century, we didn’t have all this human, let’s say advancement and the technologies and the smartphones and the people watch what’s happening around the world. Israel lost its legitimacy.

Host: And of course we didn’t have any powerful global south countries who could push back. It’s a totally different world now.

Kevork: Exactly. So people usually ask this question, they say, does Israel have the right to exist or not? I think the right question is, does Israel have the legitimacy to continue? Because there is already in Israel a political entity. Does it have the right to exist or not? It already exists. But is it possible for Israel to continue and keeps its legitimacy as a political entity? And here the question is, does it have the legitimacy in the eyes of the people? Most people around the world are horrified.

I mean, the media is in the grip of this very few people in the US, in Europe. And despite that, you have a huge backlash against Israel. So imagine if they didn’t have an absolute control over the press, what would have happened? They’re unable, they’re unable to control the narrative any longer.

Host: Yeah, good point, Kevork. And I’ve actually had this discussion with a couple of previous guests who were on one of the major, major battles we have to beat imperialism is to get rid of the narrative control by the West. And I mean, including the global south.

Here in China, I can go to a coffee shop and I see CNN on in the background. And that latent power on the brain is so exceptionally strong. So I really, really look forward to when that changes.

And about that, it’s almost existential, you say, the support of the West for Israel. If this falls, you would say, then the West pretty much falls. And in that sense, you actually agree with a former guest that I had on, Alexander McKay, who also said the same thing.

It’s an existential battle for the Western empire. But what we can also see, Kevorkian, is that it’s an existential battle for the resistance, in the sense that I cannot remember such a persistent battle in my lifetime of people who are wiped out. I mean, the civilian life is wiped out until today. They’re fighting strong. I have tremendous admiration and respect for these ultimate warriors that you see there in West Asia, whether it’s Yemen, Iraq, Syria, in particular now, of course, in Palestine, Hamas, and you see also, of course, Hezbollah, Iran included. So I think we have to be very careful with critique when it comes to us as people from the West or people from the non West Asian world. Because let’s be honest, the resistance are the only ones right now, not the West, not the major powers in BRICS, only the resistance in West Asia, the only ones right now tangibly fighting Zionism.

So my question to you is, what is your assessment of the resistance strategy? I see some people, I’ve also watched your interview with Syrian Girl. There are some people who have a lot of critique who say it’s not enough, more needs to happen. Other people who say, no, this is a meticulous strategy. Be patient, they are on the winning hand. What is your assessment, Kevork?

Kevork: First of all, I’m in no position to critique the people who fight on the ground. I’m like, I don’t give myself the authority, even the moral high ground. These people put their lives on their shoulders and every day they could die, right? Like, those are the ones fighting, doing the fighting.

Now, if I put this into proper context, I don’t agree with the ideology of Hamas, I don’t agree with the ideology of Hezbollah, but I see why they are fighting. And I see the noble cause behind the fighting for your town, for your family, for your community, for this sovereignty of this region, and also for the border sovereignty of the region. I mean, were it not for this armed resistance, the US and Israel would have wiped out all the sovereignties in the region and they have imposed all their will on the rest of the people, right? So you see why they are fighting.

I mean, there are so many, I would say, of course, Western analysts take this out of context, and just if like people woke up in the morning and decided to fight, that’s not the case. And unfortunately, we have also some Arabic intellectuals bought by the UAE and Saudi Arabia keep circulating this idea that the resistance is the reason for the occupation of our territories and not the other way around. Like, imagine how distorted this logic is.

Host: I’ve seen these people suddenly pop up in my YouTube feed. They were never there, but they’re convincing, they’re dangerous though.

Kevork: Yeah, they’re very dangerous. Imagine there are a group of people who decided to resist when there was no occupation. It doesn’t make sense. There has to be an occupation for a resistance to be formed.

So what they’re trying to do is to destroy the logical sequence of thinking. Your brain has a logic, and it starts to connect the dots in order to understand, connect the past with the present. So they’re trying to destroy these patterns in your brain. And they’re very good in doing it because they have enormous financial power at the end of the day.

But on the ground, in my opinion, the strategy of the axis of what they call the axis of resistance, I’m not in agreement with this strategy for a simple reason.

Let’s start from October 7. October 7 was not coordinated. It was an attack by Hamas against the settlements to capture Israeli soldiers and some of the civilians and to bargain them. So here you have entire axis was they woke up in the morning and they watched what happened on TV. So they were caught off guard as well.

So now Hezbollah has to come in support of its sister group in Gaza on this schedule of Hamas and Israel because Hezbollah was not ready for this. And it didn’t secure all its front lines. It didn’t secure its own communication systems. And you see what happened. For example, when Hezbollah intervened, entire leadership has gone of Hezbollah. And for two weeks or three weeks, there was a big uncertainty in Lebanon for what could come next after Nasrullah’s assassination and the leadership.

So the timing of a conflict is very important. Like if you want to open a big front against your enemy, and you know that logically, ideologically and also on a religious level, your allies will intervene in support of you, right? So you forced other players to intervene on your schedule and on your timing. This is my criticism on it.

It should have been more coordinated with the entire axis of resistance. Because in my opinion, despite what many people say, I don’t tend to believe that Israel was caught again in surprise. Like they were watching the planning and they wanted it to happen to justify the genocide of the Palestinians.

There is the two theories that the Israelis were surprised. And the second is, let it happen, right? And this doesn’t underestimate the attack itself and the planning itself. But there is this theory that just like what happened in 9-11, let it happen and we go to war against the Muslim people in Afghanistan, in Iraq and wage the war on terror.

And this was something similar that let it happen. So we go and ethnically cleanse the Palestinians, this would be the gravest attack on the Jewish people after the Holocaust. And we will do this atrocity propaganda and convince the people that our existence is in jeopardy, then this justifies whatever we do afterwards. Now, this is my criticism as a start of the conflict. And I’m here just giving a constructive criticism, right? I’m not here to say they’re wrong or this and that.

And then you have the second strategy of the Axis of Resistance and that is boiling the frog. So they’re going to boil the frog slowly in Israel, where Israel has its grip over the retaliatory or the escalatory dominance. So what happened is Iran tried to establish certain deterrence after April and the last retaliatory attacks against Israel. But they couldn’t hold their grip over the escalatory dominance. Israel still has that. So Israel is the one choosing and picking to what level and to what extent the conflict would be with Iran, from the door of Lebanon and from the door of Gaza and from the door of Iran and also expanding in Syria.

So what’s happening here is, yes, you are inflicting heavy damage to the Israelis through emptying the settlements in the north and keeping the country destabilized and trying to choke the economy. However, the US and the rest of the Western countries are printing billions and billions and billions of dollars for the sake of Israel. So the money machine is still ongoing and Israel is receiving whatever it needs to continue its military objectives.

So from a starting point of view, this is a convenient strategy. You can boil the frog and then try to weaken its economy, its security, but this is not leading to stopping the genocide in Gaza, nor stopping the carpet bombing of Lebanon, nor the expansion of the war to Syria. So you have to adapt your strategy according to the moves and the patterns of the escalatory patterns of your enemy. And in this case, Israel also is testing its enemies and seeing how far they could go, like assassinating Haniyeh in Iran and then assassinating the entire leadership of Hezbollah.

So what is my enemy going to do about it? And if they continue in the boiling frog strategy, they could go further and assassinate the leader of Iran. You shouldn’t underestimate if someone assassinates Nasrallah, could assassinate Khamenei, period. If someone could assassinate Nasrallah, could assassinate Assad, period. I’m totally convinced that they could do it. They could push the trigger and do it.

So you have to change your strategy. And this is something that I heard from a few sources in Damascus, that the last meeting between the Iranian foreign minister and Assad, that Assad told them that Iranians have to engage more actively in this conflict, and they have to increase their participation, because this is not about Hamas or Hezbollah. This is about the region. And the end goal is Iran, because Iran is the strongest player in the Axis of Resistance.

And Israel sees the Axis of Resistance as an octopus, and they have multiple hands, arms, and Hamas, Jihad, Hezbollah, the rest of the resistance groups in Palestine, and then they would come after Syria, Yemen, and then it’s Iran. So the end goal is Iran. And Iran, without its arms, they don’t have much of a leverage over the region.

So what’s happening, basically, despite Israeli, let’s say, they’re facing lots of difficulties in southern Lebanon, and they’re losing lots of ground forces there. But this is the end goal, the strategy. So Iran has to reestablish, let’s say, a certain level of deterrence against Israel, because make no mistake, Israel will retaliate against, they will attack Iran again.

And this is all about receiving the latest air defense systems, and the technologies, and the United States is coordinating with the players of the region, in order to pave the way for a stronger attack against Iran. So what will happen next after this attack, Iran will retaliate again.

But see what’s happening. It’s Israel choosing and picking the type of the retaliation and the conflict on Iran and not the other way around. So the initiation is always in the hands of Israel and the United States. And Iran is taking a reaction to these actions.

But people always say, but those are resistance groups, they are on a defensive. And that’s not really true. Because during World War Two, the French resistance, they were on defense, and the Red Army was on defense, they were a siege for many years. And they lost hundreds of thousands of their people during the siege in Russia. But then they pushed back, they took the initiative and they pushed back the Nazi forces and they marched to Eastern Berlin, right, they ended the Nazi rule. So the initiation is always important.

So the question here is, for how long Iran is going to wait for Israel to take the initiative and the Axis of Resistance stays on a resistance or on defensive mode? Because the Axis of Resistance still speaks about ceasefire in Gaza. Is there anyone sane in his mind believe that there could be a ceasefire in Gaza or a two state solution or a statehood for the Palestinians? It’s over. All these cliches are over. It’s either going to be Israel, entirety of the Palestinian territory, and they expand to Lebanon and try to expand to Lebanon and to Syria.

Or there is going to be one Palestinian state, equal citizens for everyone, those who would like to stay, they are Ahlan wa Sahlan, we say in Arabic, everyone and anyone, regardless of their religion, want to stay as an equal citizen under rule of law. Ahlan wa Sahlan, welcome.

Those who want to live and have privileges and want to establish an apartheid state and think they are superior over the rest, because their book says so, then I think that they have a choice because many of these people, they already have a second passport, so they could pick and choose and go any other place. But we, in the region, we would like to live and coexist with everyone as equal citizens and equal human beings. If this is controversial, if this is anti-Semitic, let it be.

Host: Thank you for that answer, Kevork. Yeah, it’s a very difficult dilemma. I mean, the resistance is currently fighting the most powerful empire in human history. So I understand there’s a lot of fear and doubt going on there. But on the other hand, they are in an existential battle because it seems that Israel and the West are just not stopping. You know what I mean?

And about the October 7th, yeah, I won’t go too deep in that. I think that’s an interesting discussion for another time. I’m more of the school of thought. I think more that they actually outsmarted the Israelis.

Kevork: Really? That is a possibility. That is a possibility.

Host: And I personally think that that has damaged the Zionist self-view so extremely that they try to recover a bit of that, how do you say that, that dominance, that social dominance that they had before.

And I personally think, and not in your case, by the way, because, of course, you’re Syrian. So I don’t think you would be like that. But I think a lot of people would say, oh, Israel knew before because they just cannot handle the idea that those so-called savages outsmarted the Zionist regime. You know what I mean? I think that that also plays a big, big role. So I’m personally, I think they just outclassed the Israelis. But again, I am also not a military strategist.

Kevork: Many people agree with you. Many people agree with you. And I don’t come from the same place that these people come from because they think we are savages, as you mentioned, and we are not smart enough. I totally agree you about that. The implementation of the attack on October 7, and the preparation and the flying with the parachutes and everything, and the delay of the Israeli response, let’s say, and the re-implementation of the Hannibal Directive, because they paused it in 2017 or 18. They no longer wanted to adopt this Hannibal Directive.

So those sequences of events just gave me the impression that they wanted for as much as civilians or Israelis, soldiers or civilians, to die on this day to justify the next step. They already had a plan in their mind to exterminate the Palestinians in Gaza, and this was the perfect justification for them and how they sold the attack to the public to do it. But it didn’t take them long to lose the public opinion again.

I mean, the people, vast majority of the people are, I would say they have this human instinct inside them. And when they see what the Israelis are doing, they don’t care if they are Zionists, Jews, Palestinians, or if these things happen to Jewish people, yourself, you would be the first one to oppose this. I would be the first one in defense of the Jewish people and talking against the atrocities if something like this happens against Jewish people again, just like we are horrified by the stories of World War II and before World War II against the Jewish people. This should horrify everyone.

Host: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And yeah, it’s an interesting question. But what you say, of course, indeed, these things are very, very suspicious. And it reminds me of all these things that suddenly changed before 9-11. You remember that all the airspace rules that they suddenly changed. So these things are quite suspicious, indeed.

So can I ask you one last question, Kevork, if you have the time?

Kevork: Yes.

Host: Okay, so I wanted to ask you one last question to you as a Syrian. So what I noticed right now in the whole discussion on West Asia, and I don’t know if you agree with me, maybe I’m misperceiving this, but I have the feeling that Syria lately gets left out of the discussion a lot. It is mostly about Palestine and Lebanon, sometimes also about Yemen and Iran. But Syria? It almost seems as if people have gotten used to that, honestly, beautiful country’s destruction. It’s almost as if people have put that into their faraway memory or something. I want to know what is going on there.

So two things. What is going on? Why do people not focus on Syria enough? That’s what I think. And secondly, what’s going on there vis-a-vis Israel?

Kevork: There are two aspects of this. First aspect is the mainstream press is no longer interested in Syria. And this is a typical CIA scripted media strategy, which they do in the past 60-70 years. For example, when the JFK was assassinated, they know that this is a big scandal at the time. But then after a year or two or 10 or 20, people stare because there would be new events that would replace their interest. So this is a typical CIA strategy. They send the scripts to the press and the press follows like lapdogs. Sorry for the expression. This is how things work.

So they no longer have an interest in Syria. And Syria, on the other hand, they don’t want to present themselves as the forefront of any conflict now in the region because the country is devastated, the economy is completely destroyed, the natural resources is out of reach in the hands of the US. The US has presence in the country. And you have around 20,000 Nusra terrorists in the north mobilizing forces threatening Syria with invasion in Aleppo and in Idlib and the northern Hama axis.

So what Syria basically continues doing, they are giving military, logistical and intelligence support to Hezbollah. Syria has its big, let’s say military industrial complex, which they deliver the knowledge, the technology and the spare parts to Hezbollah. And Hezbollah combines them and builds these weapons in Lebanon.

In 2006, this was a different case. Syria used to give what Hezbollah needs from its stockpile. Now Syria has established its own manufacturers and factories under the ground and all are inside bunkers and in safe places. And Hezbollah, they come and they learn how to manufacture these weapons in Syria. Now the Syrians learned this from the Soviets and learned this from the North Koreans. So Syria is passing the knowledge to Hezbollah and Hezbollah builds these weapons.

They no longer need direct Syrian intervention, let’s say, to give them these weapons because they can manufacture themselves. For example, 31, 32, 33 missiles are made in Syria, missiles. Those are the Syrian technology, Syrian spare parts or the missile system is Syrian, but Hezbollah is building them in southern Lebanon.

So this is how Syria supports Hezbollah in addition to giving them the Kornet rockets. Now the Kornets are again changing in the battle in southern Lebanon. Russia cannot give directly these weapons to Hezbollah. Russia gives them to Syria and Syria supplies them to Hezbollah. And now in 2006, this was a shocking factor for the Russians when they saw the footage of what they call the Merkava massacre, which is the massacring the tanks of the Israelis. Many of them in one day are using these Kornet rockets of the Russians.

And the Syrians thought that the Russians would be bothered because when you sign a paper and you buy weapons for Syria, you shouldn’t give it to a third party. But the Russians didn’t mind because this was the best advertisement for their weapons, seeing the Israeli tanks melting with their weapons.

So Syria now increased the pace of these deliveries to Hezbollah. And I suspect that Hezbollah has Kornet rockets with thousands and thousands of them. And they’re very, very competent in using this. And they started operating them in 2006, trained it in Syria.

And then in 2012, they came and fought against ISIS, Nusra, FSA, those who had the tanks, they had armored vehicles, they had cars like suicide cars, etc. So Hezbollah has gained and accumulated this experience. And now they are using it against the Israelis.

And the Israelis are losing many Merkavas nowadays in southern Lebanon. And there is an indication, which I see that Hezbollah is also using this ATGMs and the Kornet rockets against the gathering of Israeli soldiers. Usually, you use different types of mortars against an Israeli gathering, for example. But when you watch these videos and see like, they’re just using Kornets against the group of Israelis, this indicates that they have thousands of them. Otherwise, you would spare, right, only against the tanks. This gives you indication that they have so many that they don’t mind using like a targeted attack by Kornet, which is like a laser moving to the soldiers, then just using the unguided rockets against them, right?

So I think Hezbollah has a very competent force, it has accumulated experience, they have an ideology, they have discipline, let’s say. And this is my prediction based on my understanding of Hezbollah, that Israel will lose this war in southern Lebanon, they will lose it, they will feel humiliated. And they will try to expand the conflict to Syria, hitting residential buildings like they’re trying to do nowadays and hitting some military installations there.

Because on the ground, Hezbollah is different from Hamas. Hamas geography is very small. And they don’t have an access to the neighboring countries, they don’t have a strategic depth, they don’t have the continuous deliveries of weapons or expertise.

Host: Which makes it really impressive, by the way.

Kevork: Yes, yes. But on the other hand, Hezbollah has an open border with Syria. So this comes also to the question, why Hezbollah intervened in Syria in 2012. Many people do not understand that why Hezbollah went to Syria.

First, it intervened in 2012 in a town called, a city called Al-Qusayr. And this is a border city with Lebanon, because the plan of the intelligence of the CIA, of the Brits, of the Israelis, was to cut these armed deliveries or Lebanese access to Syria. This was the point. And why would they do that? Because they wanted to choke Hezbollah after Syria, they wanted to come after Hezbollah.

So Hezbollah intervened to protect its access to Syria and Syria’s knowledge, military arms, and also the access to Iran. So this geopolitical conflict has to be seen in the past 14 years in the context of the American attempt to end the Palestinian cause by weakening Syria, destroying the country, and then besieging Lebanon to these Nusra, ISIS types and sending these terrorists to Lebanon to force Hezbollah to fight against these terrorist groups. So when the time comes to end the Palestinian conflict, Hezbollah cannot come to support in support of the Palestinian people and would be busy inside of a, they would call it a civil war against ISIS, Nusra and all these terrorist groups.

Many people unfortunately do not understand this because they are so propagandized, even by TV outlets that you would think that they are pro-Palestinian. But when it comes to this case, they would say, we are for Palestine, but we want to Syria regime change, and then let these Nusra and ISIS types to go to Lebanon, and we call them Islamic State, and then we call it a civil war. No, this is a psy-op. What these TV outlets…

Host: They will even go as far as to call you a conspiracy theorist when you say that ISIS is pretty much a militia of the US and Israel by now. I mean, this is so blatantly obvious, but that’s something you cannot say in most parts of the West.

Kevork: On X I recently shared, the former head director of the Mossad, and he was with Mehdi Hassan, and he acknowledges that Israel received Al-Qaeda fighters in the occupied Golan Heights and gave them medical treatment.

And the Israeli press, the Wall Street Journal, the former defense minister, Yoav Galant, not Yoav Galant, his name was… I forgot his name. They say that we gave weapons, we gave training, and we gave cash to these Al-Qaeda types. Benjamin Netanyahu was shaking hands with these terrorists in the field hospitals of the Golan Heights.

It’s not even a theory. It’s like there is a visual documentation of it. And acknowledgement from the Israeli officials.

Unfortunately speaking, this is the unfortunate truth about our region. It’s also the sectarianism. Some people would be with the Palestinians, but then they are against the Lebanese because they are from a different sect.

So we have to be very patient with these people, try to educate them. We have to be embracing them. But at some point, it’s tiring. It’s so blatant, it’s so obvious who is trying to divide and conquer the region, when people are still talking about Shia, Sunni, Alevi, Christian, Muslims. I don’t even ask what’s your religion, and you may know from my name that I’m Armenian, but we share the same values, we share the same interests in the region. Whereas the Americans are trying to divide us for a long time among these vertical lines, for us not to be united against them.

And a considerable number of people keep falling in it. And this side of TV outlets and news outlets, like Al Jazeera, they are psyoping the people to hold these opinions. They are very influential, they’re very powerful. And unfortunately, this is creating divisions in the region. So unity is the only answer to this. And it’s not like, oh, let’s unite. No, we have to create mutual interest among us. We could differ in religion, in ideology, but at least there is one thing that could unite us, and that is the territory. On this territory, I live on this territory, you also live on this territory.

How could you be a Lebanese nowadays and be against Hezbollah, for example? Like, do you not see what the Israelis are preaching? Do you not read the Israeli press when they say Lebanon is part of the promised land? Do you think that if the Israelis occupy Lebanon, they will say, show me your social media posts when you’re attacking Hezbollah, and now I’m going to spare you from persecution, and I’m going to treat you as a first class citizen? What kind of mindless people are these? Sometimes it’s really infuriating.

Host: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And well, my name suggests something else probably, because I am not even religious. I was also never religiously raised. But even I can see the value in these defensive groups, you know, and it has nothing to do with sectarianism.

But you know, also something, Kevork, anybody who would have studied the history of the United States, in only just one part of the world, let’s say Latin America, would have known how normal it is for the United States to back death squads and militia groups who annihilate the population, and mostly indigenous people, mostly indigenous people in favor of a Euro-Latino elite.

And that’s why I always say, people, you can start with books from Noam Chomsky, for example, a book like Who Rules the World, very good book, and he just lays out how they do that. And so it’s not surprising at all that all these Al-Qaeda types in Sub-Saharan Africa as well, by the way, but also in West Asia, are of course, backed by the empire, you know what I mean?

But it’s becoming more normal, it’s becoming more normal, more and more people seem to finally accept the utter, utter depravity of the Western, US-led, and US-led Western empire, we could say. And let’s hope, let’s hope that in these dark times right now, there is some light at the end of the tunnel.

(Transcription by my good friend James Arendt. https://www.jamesjpn.net/)

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Related Reading

• Gaza: Hamas October 7 Attack Was An Inside Job
• Nakba 2: Palestinian Land Annexation in Gaza and the West Bank
• Greater Israel: From the Nile to the Euphrates?
• Greater Israel: Is Lebanon Part of the Promised Land?
• Israel’s God Condemns Israel’s War Against Its Neighbours

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