Winners - HTS Jihadists who are pretending to be moderates, Turkey & Erdogan who backed them, and Israel who is eliminating enemies. Losers- Iran who deserves to lose it all, Russia although they may keep a warm water port in the Black Sea as a trade, and minority Christians and Kurds who will be in the crosshairs of the Jihadists.
Transcript:
FOX - Back with us right now, the Middle East Forum Chief Editor and Army Special Forces Jim Hanson. He’s the real deal. Jim, always good to have you. You know, I was thinking, I mean, between Syria imploding, not good, of course, for Assad to say nothing of Vladimir Putin and Russia and Iran and all of that. What do you make of how the fallout is going here?
Hanson: I think the big winner is Erdogan in Turkey. It’s the groups that he backs, the Islamists who have taken over who are benefiting and he may have designs on creating a new form of state. I think also Israel again is showing why they have gone about the. The securing of their borders in a completely new way, the strikes they’re doing now, you know, the pushing back of Hezbollah above the UN design border in Lebanon and also now in the Golan Heights, I think shows that they’re not going to make the mistake the Biden administration did, which is leave an arsenal intact when jihadists take over a country, as Afghanistan showed was a bad idea.
FOX - You know, sometimes it’s it’s an old line. You got to be careful what you wish for. Who? Who’s to say that whatever emerges here is going to be any better than what what was left behind? Iraq comes to mind sometimes. And and and what do you, what do you sense?
Hanson: Yeah, I think the the Biden administration, Jake Sullivan was saying he expects an inclusive democratic process in Syria and that’s a fantasy. I mean, the guys who are running this now come out of the jihadist world. They are Al Qaeda and ISIS veterans, and they may be doing a little marketing right now, trying to appear moderate, but nobody like that changes their stripes.
They are doing what they need to to get international approval and stop people from interfering. And then they’re going to go about the business of persecuting minorities like the Christians and Kurds and, you know, running a basically caliphate like state. You know,
FOX: I’m wondering if you’re Vladimir Putin and you were hoping for better relations with the American president and Donald Trump they had with Joe Biden, who’s to say that Donald Trump won’t capitalize on some of these missteps? And maybe be able to to extract more concessions out of Putin, particularly when it comes to whatever settlement. If we have a settlement in Iraq, I’m sorry, in Ukraine.
Hanson: I think there’s a there’s a play here. The the Russians had a warm water port in Syria, right. Now they also have a warm water port in Crimea. The problem is the Ukrainians keep sinking their boats there, which is unfortunate for the Russians. Now, I think there may be a play Trump can make to say we’re going to end the war
n Ukraine. Putin keeps Crimea. and Donbass is the likely outcome there, but maybe abandon Syria and his, you know, port and airfields there and stops messing around in that area. We’ll see. Trump’s a deal maker. That’s his game.
FOX: Yeah, transactional. Make it transactional. Jim Hansn, thank you. Very good seeing you again, Jim.
Hanson: Good to be with you, Neil.
