#WTH Syria: Good news, and bad

Distrust, and verify

Is the fall of Bashar al Assad and the minority Alawite Assad regime a cause for celebration, or despair? The answer isn’t simple. We explored the question this week with our Syrian-American friend Hassan Hassan, the Editor in Chief of New Lines Magazine, and author of a New York Times bestselling book on ISIS. Check out the whole conversation…

Or read the highlights below. As someone who has been to Syria many, many times, and loves that beautiful country, I hope Hassan’s cautious optimism is warranted.

Right now, things are unclear. And, as is always the case in the Middle East, there is good news and bad news. Let’s start with the good:

• Assad was a ruthless murderer, with the blood of hundreds of thousands on his hands.

• Assad’s Syria was Iran’s land bridge to the Mediterranean, to Lebanon, to Hezbollah, and to Israel. That’s gone.

• Assad was Iran’s most critical Arab ally, and he lent his country to Iran’s rulers to funnel and build weapons, build missiles, experiment with chemical and nuclear weapons, train terrorists, and manufacture and transfer narcotics.

• The collapse of the Assad regime removes a critical link in Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance, and will not be replaced.

• Similarly, absent Assad, Iran’s ability to arm and fund Hezbollah, and Hezbollah’s domination of Lebanon, will be crippled.

• Assad’s disappearance opens Syria up for the potential return of millions of refugees around the Middle East and Europe.

• Assad’s defeat is a humiliation for Vladimir Putin, who could neither rally his own forces in Syria nor his proteges in the regime to defend Syria. Putin’s dreams of a broader Soviet-style Russian empire died in Damascus.

• Syria owes Iran tens of billions of dollars in loans and credit lines for oil. That’s a darned shame.

There’s more, but those are the headlines. Then there’s the bad:

• Hayat Tahrir al Sham, or HTS, the group that led the liberation of Syria, is a Salafi-jihadi collective. Once affiliated with ISIS, and then al Qaeda, they have split from their overlords, but not from the ideology that animates them.

• HTS and the Syrian National Army are backed by Turkey, which is eyeing Iran’s setbacks and marching apace on its path toward Muslim Brotherhood/Islamist domination of the region.

• Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces backed by the United States are under assault by the Turkish military, as Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan pursues his anti-Kurd agenda.

• Worse: The SDF is guarding several camps and prisons holding ISIS members and their families. There are thousands and thousands of terrorists, and some innocents, in these facilities. Without the SDF, these hardened jihadis will likely go free. (Ditto if the small US contingent at Tanf departs.)

• Also really bad: Syria is dotted with weapons factories, drug factories, nuclear sites, chemical and biological weapons facilities, and God knows what else. These are now up for grabs.

Much of the analysis of the state of play in Syria has boiled down to the argument that unfortunately, the enemy of my enemy — in this instance, Iran — is not necessarily my friend. That’s correct, but there are layers beneath this bumper sticker summary that are important to consider.

The United States has long failed to grapple with the question of how to deal with Islamists, whether Sunni or Shia. Both Republicans and Democrats have romanticized certain Islamists only to be rudely awakened after brief periods of tactical cooperation. The Obama administration had an embarrassing love affair with Iran’s ruling mullahs. The same Obama administration fell in with Iran-backed militias in Iraq to battle ISIS, only to discover that once the fight with the Sunnis was done, the militias turned on America. The Trump administration — or at least some within it — argued that Afghanistan could be ceded to the Taliban, which had learned the errors of its ways. Ultimately, Donald Trump did not cede Afghanistan, Biden did. Now Afghanistan is a Sunni terror state.

The leader of HTS, Ahmad al Sharaa, aka Abu Muhammad al Jolani, claims that he has left al Qaeda, ISIS, and their quest for war with the West behind him. He is focused on Syria. Early days seemed encouraging: In Aleppo and then other Syrian cities as they fell, Jolani reportedly encouraged discipline, respect for Christians and other Muslim sects, for women, and for houses of worship. Well, ok.

Both the United States and Israel, reckoning that it was better to be safe than sorry, took out an enormous number of sites all around Syria, with the US hitting 75 targets on the first day following Assad’s ouster and Israel going to town as well. Doubtless, given that both the Americans and Israelis were in the Syrian skies, they were sharing targeting information. That’s good news, but the Israelis (surprised on October 7) and the Americans (9/11? Assad’s fall?) do not have perfect intelligence. It is worrying to consider what may still be left for Jolani and company to discover.

Nonetheless, it is certainly true that the coalition now leading Syria’s transition government is a less formidable opponent than Iran (itself lamer than our own CIA and Pentagon kept telling us). It is also clear that there is a great deal to be done to get Syria back on its feet after more than a half-century of Assad tyranny. Will HTS and its allies be up to the job? Will they begin to fight among themselves? Will Turkey seek to turn over territory now controlled by Kurdish forces to its allies in Damascus?

And there are more questions: On the day that Assad fled to Moscow, the Syrian Embassy in the Russian capital raised the new, non-Assad, Syrian flag. Russia is adapting quickly and cut a deal to protect its naval base in Tartous. Meanwhile, Putin is still busy selling arms to everyone who will buy, including the Houthis in Yemen. Israeli sources also report that more than half the arms they’ve destroyed or seized from Hezbollah are Russian. Does the rise of a different power in Syria really disrupt Russia’s regional agenda? Unclear.

Then there are the implications for Israel. On the day Damascus fell, an as yet unidentified jihadi spoke from Damascus’ Umayyad Mosque and declared that they were coming for al Aqsa — in Jerusalem — and to liberate Gaza.

Hassan says the HTS leadership is looking to arrest the fellow. Let’s hope so.

It will be up to Syria’s new leadership to prove to the world that they are not a new iteration of the Taliban or al Qaeda or ISIS. To quote Marc, our motto going forward should be distrust, and verify. For the much-beleaguered Syrian people, let’s hope Jolani et al can lead Syria to a better future. The Syrian people deserve peace and prosperity. A decent government could help transform the entire region. Or tip the Levant back into a period of endless conflict that will inevitably draw in even the most reluctant of American leaders, as ISIS did in 2011.

For all the details on the latest steps by HTS, including amnesty for much of the Syrian military and the Ba’ath party, check out our Critical Threats update here.

HIGHLIGHTS

What was the chain of events leading up to Assad’s fall?

HH: Let me start with the mindset, exactly what you described. That mindset, I imagine Assad regime's or Bashar al-Assad himself, his mindset was the war was over a few years ago. Everyone was almost racing to normalize with my regime, especially in the region, Saudi Arabia, UAE, before that, Jordan, most of the countries in the region except one or two really haven't normalized with or hadn't before the events normalized with the Assad regime. And the remaining force was basically the neighbor, Turkey. And the mindset for Bashar al-Assad was now it's time to move beyond the war. So the last thing on his mind was war, going back to fighting, going back to the front lines, and then suddenly this happened. Nobody expected it.

But I think the worst thing for Assad, it was not just the loss of Aleppo in the beginning. It was really, “I was about to normalize with all the countries in the region and then Italy and other countries started to also normalize with me and then eventually the US will come.” And I think even there were discussions within the Biden administration about at least relieving some of the sanctions from the Assad regime or turning a blind eye where other countries can do business with the Assad regime despite whatever Caesar Act.

Why was the Assad regime so weak?

HH: The reason behind the regime's weakness is the backdrop of Israel's war against the Iranians and their allies in the region. I think without that... I think many people are not comfortable acknowledging the direct connection between the war between Israel and Iran and what happened to the Assad regime over the past week or two.

So just before that, the weakness of Hezbollah. You have to remember, when Aleppo happened the only country or force that could have saved Assad was not Russia, it was Iran. Because Russia tried to save Bashar al-Assad and did in 2015. But it took them more than a year of strikes and really kind of heavy deployment, was said to be the largest air campaign by Russia outside its borders since the Cold War. And it took them more than a year to really capture this small part, let's say half of that was under the rebel control.

Iran, on the other hand had the militias that would have fought on the front lines against the rebels in Aleppo and elsewhere. But because Iran was blocked from Syria, essentially by Israel, they can't go in and send thousands of militiamen or hundreds of Toyota trucks into Syria to go and fight for Bashar al-Assad because Israel would attack them, would strike them. Israel, as you know, for more than a year they've been targeting any movement by Iranian proxies in Syria, whether weapon depots or man fighters. Anything moving and they suspect it's Iran, they hit them.

So Iran was basically saying, I want to go, but there's a firewall. I can't go inside Syria. Hezbollah the same thing. Hezbollah has been depleted and drained over the past year as well. And in Russia, obviously they're entangled in the Ukrainian war. So they can't really redeploy again. So nobody was willing to fight when it comes to the Assad regime own fighters and allies, and Iran cannot. I think Iran was the most willing to go fight if they had the chance to, but they didn't have that.

Why didn’t Iran come to save Assad’s regime?

HH: Iran, as you know, anyone has been paying attention without sort of ideological lens in which they see the events in the region. Iran has shown that they cannot push back when a country like the US or Israel is willing to attack them. The sign should have been in 2020 when President Trump killed Qasem Soleimani in January 2020. A lot of people, as you remember in DC and elsewhere, they were saying, this is the beginning of a regional war. Iran is going to hit back. This is it. And we were saying, against all trolling online, no, Iran is not going to do this. Iran is not going to chase you unless you are running away. That's the kind of the bottom line.

And Iran did something symbolic, the US allowed it to do it, which is the hit inside Iraq. But it was a painful strike, the worst strike against Iran in a long, long time as the Obama administration was against such an option. They say if you hit Iran and kill someone like Qasem Soleimani, the conclusion is a war. So that formula was always kind of the mindset of them. And I think that strike, the killing of Qasem Soleimani disrupted that. And you can see a connection, direct connection between that and what Israel has been doing over the past year, hitting individuals that people thought unthinkable to target people like Hassan Nasrallah example, the former head of Hezbollah in Lebanon. And that chain of events is very connected to what's happening in Syria today and what happened recently.

Who are the groups now in control of Syria?

HH: These groups kind of represent a consortium, maybe an evolved consortium of rebel forces that rose up against the Assad regime in 2011. 2011, you see as part of the wider Middle Eastern trend, wave of popular uprisings against dictatorships in the region, toppled several dictators. With Syria, the wave of Arab uprisings took a turn, a violent turn, and you can credit Assad regime for killing that spirit of the Arab Spring. So the rebels with time, they went through fractures and evolutions. One of them is Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham.

Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham started in 2011, 2012, but they really arrived very early in the scene from Iraq. So these were Jihadists who used to operate in Iraq. And the story is that half a dozen of them were deployed and dispatched into Syria by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, we know him from ISIS. He deployed a few of his lieutenants into Syria right after the Syrian uprising started because he foresaw that there would be an opportunity vacuum and so on and so forth that we can kind of exploit. And a few started to connect with sleeper cells jihadists in different parts of Syria.

Is the group that led this offensive, HTS, still affiliated with al Qaeda and ISIS?

HH: About two years after the Syrian conflict started, you started to see problems between their bosses in Iraq, the Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and them. The divergence is very important. The divergence was all over strategy.

The Syrians, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, who's the current de facto leader of Syria, said, "I don't accept the ways of ISIS. This can be very violent, very explicit, very... You rub your tactics in the faces of people. So we're not going to impose Sharia. We're not going to do what you're trying to do, and I want to do my own thing," and this is the best way to really get people to like you first and then you rule them later.

That's when Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi said, "No, that's it. I'm going to announce that the two groups belong to each other." I remember before that it was a secret organization. That's when they split and they start to fight. That was when ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra at the time start to fight.

As ISIS grew its territorial control, did HTS re-affiliate with them?

HH: They still said, no, we're not going to go down the road and try to moderate. Two years later they would do the same with Al-Qaeda because when they start to have that problem with ISIS, they had to go and belong to another jihadi organization, which is Al-Qaeda. So they pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda and they survived because of that essentially. Then after that, they said to Al-Qaeda, "Also, we don't accept your ways." They start fighting with Al-Qaeda.

This group, HTS, nobody, I think anybody who's watched the Syrian conflict would disagree or dispute this fact that they have single-handedly eradicated Al-Qaeda presence in Syria. I'm talking about Al-Qaeda loyalists, people who pledged allegiance to Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden before. They were the ones who fought them, not the moderate rebels and others. They were the ones who really made them so weak. Anyway, they had this long-term, long-game strategy that eventually led them to the huge massive victories in the past two weeks or a week and half.

Does ISIS still exist in Syria?

HH: So ISIS existed... I mean it still exists, but existed before or before this takeover in regime-held areas. This is the areas of Palmyra, parts of Homs. It's really kind of a no-man land. It's in the Syrian Desert, but it's underpopulated areas. So ISIS existed there.

In the north you have the Kurds. These are the forces that inherited ISIS. So with the defeat of ISIS, you start to see the areas that ISIS used to control. Now under the control of the US-backed Kurdish forces called the Syrian Democratic Forces, SDF, in the north and northeast.

In the south, you have these moderate FSA, Free Syrian Army forces that used to be backed by the US and was suspected like, I don't know... This is disputed, their relationship to Israel directly or indirectly. Those reconciled with Russia and the regime. So they were really somewhere between opposition and regime. They were reconciled rebels. These are the people who arrived in Damascus.

Are you worried about the rebels’ ability to govern?

HH: I'm a bit less pessimistic about what's going to happen because unlike in Iraq and Libya, the Syrian rebels are not starting from stage one. They're starting from advanced stages where they have governing experience of sort. They fought each other, they've seen the cost of infighting.

So they passed those hurdles or setbacks or milestones, whatever and civil wars that became familiar in the Middle East. The people in the south, they were not as experienced. So that's my theory why we've seen a contrast between Aleppo and Damascus in terms of discipline of the rebels.

But HTS and Syria’s new rulers aren’t necessarily the “good guys” in the eyes of the West right?

HH: Syria is ruled by those people. Are you going to deal with them as just bad guys and just throw the whole country with them in the same way we do with Afghanistan? So I'm thinking about it from a pragmatic point of view, from a policy point of view, from an American policy point of view. How do you deal with groups like the Taliban?

So if you want to describe HTS, It's both similar and different from the Taliban. I think they're much further away from Al-Qaeda and ISIS. So think of them closer to the Taliban, but they are softer ideologically. Actually the irony of it, meaning they model themselves on the Taliban in terms of we are a nationally focused militant organization, jihadist organization that doesn't want to fight beyond the Syrian borders. We make sure that anyone who wants to fight beyond our national borders, we crack down on them.

There are many examples of them doing this. They're still a jihadist organization, meaning they believe that jihad as a method rather than political peaceful participation and power is the way to achieve what you want to achieve. So I think of them closer to the Taliban, but with the caveat, they are softer. They're not as anti-women, for example, as the Taliban. So I'm talking relativism here.

Islamist terrorist organizations have always wanted a state and WMDs. By taking over Syria, HTS has the opportunity to have both. Should the West really allow that and work with them?

HH: On a personal level, as someone who was born and raised in Syria, I grapple with this question obviously. These people, they're not open-minded. They're not like open or liberal, progressive, whatever. They are radical Islamists and they have a goal and they're driven by ideology.

At the same time, you have to think of a solution like this Syria, because you have to understand they are the outcome of the Syrian conflict. A lot of jihadism after 9/11, they are the outcome of the counterterrorism, war on terror against them as well. So we've tried all these things. It's not like you can pick and choose who you want on those places. So in my op-ed for the New York Times, I wrote that the West, America, the US, and other Western powers, they have a choice. You either have to create, which is nobody has the bandwidth for now, to engage in the civilizational nation-building effort to create moderate forces, or you have to accept the reality that much of the world would be ruled by people, by them. We've tried all that, all the different methods in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, different parts of Africa and the Sahel, and it seems like it's hard to make progress against these people.

But the good news, to me, is that, and this is the essence of my op-ed for The New York Times, is that the war on terror actually has a positive outcome. That yes, it didn't eradicate jihadism, but it transformed them. The world view of jihadism and this change-evolved view of jihadism, to me, on a personal level and a professional level, I actually believe this is a genuine transformation. I don't think it's tactical or a ploy, and I can expand on why I think so, but it's an outcome of this war on terror, and success of the war on terror is that jihadism no longer focused on attacking the West. They focused on rule in Syria, rule in Afghanistan, rule in different parts of the region.

Are there any U.S.-backed moderate factions joining the new Syrian government?

HH: This formula of, for almost a century or at least a few decades, where Western powers worked with moderate regimes that tend to be dictatorial, not democratic, that entrenched these kind of trends where you started to see Islamism rising, because they have a very specific enemy, which is, "Our regimes are bad, they're Western-backed, and they're corrupt and tyrannical," and the only way to do it is to liberate yourselves through a specific ideology that's hardened and can fight for the long game.

And actually, the story of Syria and what happened recently is a perfect example of this, because who inherited the Syrian uprising? After 13, 14 years of fighting, a lot of those moderate forces disappeared. They gave up. The only people who continue to fight, and they still have, even if they lost, they still have that energy to go back and fight again, are the jihadists or the Islamists because they have the ideology.

Do you think Jolani’s transition away from brutal and anti-West Jihadi tactics adopted by ISIS and al Qaeda is real?

HH: I think it's mainly real. And the reason I'm saying this is because I've been thinking about this for many years. Like I said, they ruled in my hometown. I didn't know Ahmed al-Sharaa, but I knew the second in command, the person number two in this organization, who actually co-founded this group in Syria. So, there were six, and he was one of them. And that person, I interviewed him as a journalist for many years, and he was actually killed six months ago. So, he didn't really see the result of his efforts come to build this organization.

And just to give you an example, so that person who's now killed, Abu Maria al-Qahtani, he was an Iraqi from Mosul. He shared some similar kind of transformation in 2000 with the intifada. Because of the coverage, the footage, he was affected by the footage, and he became radicalized. So, he joined an Iraqi Saddam Hussein, ironically, faction that was supposed to go and liberate Palestine. And when the war in Iraq started, he joined the war and started fighting. And he comes from a notable tribe in Iraq.

Before he was killed, he'd been talking to me about, for example, he's very critical of Al-Qaeda, and ISIS, and other jihadism, and he would say these things. Now, he could be just saying these things, but there was one interview, a lot of signs, but this was one sign, there was an interview with his sheikh in Iraq. So, his former mentor in Iraq was interviewed on Iraqi TV, and he was very critical of him on Iraqi TV. Part of what he was saying, remember, he was critical of this person that I was interviewing, but at the same time, he was saying this guy always had these problems and quarrels with jihadists, other jihadists, because he didn't agree... He was fighting because he was part of this militant kind of resistance against the US occupation of Iraq, but at the same time, he didn't like the jihadist and jihadist ideology.

So, there's a continuity. It wasn't something that he started in Syria because it was a useful ploy or a useful tactic. No. And that's one person, Ahmed al-Sharaa, the new de facto ruler of Syria now, he also shares some of that kind of transformation. It's a long story, but to me, I believe that this is mainly a genuine transformation.

Who are the Syrian rebels saying online that they want to take Jerusalem next? Are they part of HTS?

HH: One of the founders, one of the six, seven founders, he tweeted about it, and he said, "I expect these people to be arrested soon by HTS, because it's out of sync with the messaging they've been sending." Obviously, remember, this is a very tough line to walk and dance to do in Syria. You rule over jihadists, and then they tell them, "We want to make peace with Russia or have good relations with the Shia, and the Alawites, and the Druze, and the Christians." This is not easy to do. So, you have to really make sure that you rank and file, who haven't maybe evolved, will cause issues. And that's one of the tricky things that we have to wait and see what will happen with them.

But remember, a lot of Muslims and Arabs in the region, including the most secular, a lot of them are Christians and others, would say the same thing. People are not paying attention. They think this is all jihadist and Islamist talk. No.

You’ve said that there is a transition away from wanting to attack the West, instead focusing on problems within their own territory, but groups like the Taliban still want to create a caliphate. Do you really HTS has had a change of heart?

HH: I actually agree with you, and that's exactly what I was saying, that it's not they sat there and there is a change of heart. There's a change of mind, and that's more important. What I said is basically because jihadists saw the power of the US and how much damage they can do to them, they said, "Why do we have to go and fight the West? We need to forget about this and focus locally." This is not mutually exclusive.

MT: "Until we're strong enough to go after the West."

HH: Yeah, yeah. I mean, good luck with that. I mean, if the West is weakened and the jihadists are strong, then that's a different story in the future, jihadists or otherwise. But for now, they look at Israel and say, "Look, Israel destroyed Iran and its proxies. It's stupid.” And this is what they actually said on social media, one of their founders, it's just not practical and stupid to go and target Israel or pretend to do that. And the best way to do is to find a formula where Israel knows that they have nothing to fear from those people.

I was talking to Syrians and one of the things we agree on is, and this was before the downfall of Bashar al-Assad, we were saying HTS, Al-Jolani, at the time, it's more likely he would make peace with Israel than Assad, or faster than Assad would, just because he seems very pragmatic. He moved very rapidly from being involved in apostasy, calling other people apostates and others, to saying to the Druze and ... If you know anything about Islamism, you would think that what he was saying as a radical in their midst. And he's saying this is not in English, he's saying in Arabic, he would go to the Druze and says, "You are one of us." And you go to the Christians and say, "You can rule in Aleppo," or ... You know what I mean, things like that.

Are the Russians still going to be able to operate out of Syria?

HH: The Russians seem to have sorted out their issues. They actually struck a deal with the Syrian rebels. So there's a statement from the Russians saying the opposition promised not to storm the bases.

How is Moscow reacting to Assad’s fall?

HH: The Syrian embassy in Moscow raised the Syrian flag, the new Syrian flag, the opposition flag, which is very strange. They moved very faster than Arab countries in the region. And that's an indication. They basically say, "You know what? We want to work with the new rulers of Syria. We're not wedded to Bashar Assad. We can do the same in Syria."

The chemical weapons, very interesting that these attacks are happening after. If Israel had the list of attacks and locations of where these chemical weapons are, why didn't they do that before? Because they have been attacking inside Syria with impunity, and Bashar Assad would basically saying, "As long as you're not hitting my palace, I'm fine with it."

So there's a question there as to why. There's a theory that maybe the US provided them with intelligence that maybe they withheld before, could be something else. But the ISIS attacks are also very interesting. At the timing is ISIS thrives in chaos, so when the Assad regime collapsed, ISIS found an opportunity to rise. And it was wise, I think, from the Americans to strike because they cannot allow ISIS to come back again. It's bad news for everybody, including Syrians.

What will happen to the Kurdish-maintained prisons holding ISIS fighters in northern Syria?

HH: There are several camps in northeastern Syria. One hosts families of ISIS, so there are children, women. A lot of them are still ISIS loyalists. It's a mixture. And there are other prisons, like you said, that have ISIS members, fighters, convicts, people who joined ISIS and still with ISIS.

That is one of the biggest worries about what's going to happen now because Syria used to have these three zones: opposition, regime, and the Kurds. And now the Assad regime's areas and the opposition areas are one. So now Syria, most of Syria, under the opposition control. And then you have the Kurdish enclave.

The question is, Trump is coming to office very soon. Is he going to leave? From what I hear there's consensus among different factions within the Trump team that Turkey should have a bigger role or we can allow Turkey to do more in Syria. It's not our business, we can leave. Others are obviously opposed to it, still the Kurds, working with the Kurds. Maybe things will change, also minds will change between now and then. If there's a scenario where Syria goes back to a civil war again, it's going to be because of that Turkish-Kurdish conflict in the northeast.

Read the transcript here.

SHOWNOTES

The War on Terror Had an Unexpected Outcome (Hassan Hassan, NYT, December 5, 2024)

How it happened: Two seismic weeks that toppled Syria’s government (AP, December 8, 2024)

Biden says U.S. will support Syria and its neighbors after Assad dynasty collapses (CNBC, December 8, 2024)

Map of Syrian Control (Live UA Map, Updated December 8, 2024)

Israeli Troops Occupy Syria Buffer Zone in Defensive Step (Wall Street Journal, December 8, 2024)

CENTCOM Statement on X (December 8, 2024)

Statement by HTS Political Affairs Department (Aaron Y. Zelin, X, December 7, 2024)

Hassan Hassan on X (December 8, 2024)

A jihadist blueprint for hearts and minds is gaining traction (Hassan Hassan, X, December 8, 2024)

Hassan Hassan on X (December 8, 2024)

‘I went to university with rebel leader Jolani – I wonder if he has really turned his back on jihad’ (Hassan Hassan, The Telegraph, December 8, 2024)

The Backstory Behind the Fall of Aleppo (Hassan Hassan and Michael Weiss, New Lines Magazine, December 2, 2024)

What the Global War on Terror Really Accomplished (Hassan Hassan, New Lines Magazine, September 9, 2021)

How the World Got Syria Wrong (Charles Lister, Foreign Policy, December 8, 2024)

Charles Lister on X (December 8, 2024)

Bogged Down in Ukraine, Russia Pays a Price in Syria (Anton Troianovski, New York Times, December 8, 2024)

Syrians cheer fall of Assad, region reacts (Al Monitor, December 8, 2024)

Trump on Truth Social (December 8, 2024)

Netanyahu on X (December 8, 2024)

Global leaders urge calm, stability after rebels oust Assad regime (Times of Israel, December 8, 2024)

JD Vance on Twitter (December 8, 2024)

Trump on Truth Social (December 7, 2024)