Aaron Maté on More Russiagate Fallout, Protests in Ukraine, and Israel's Strikes on Syria With Special Guests John Solomon, Marta Havryshko, and Joshua Landis
Journalist Aaron Maté discusses the latest Russiagate revelations, protests in Ukraine, and Israel's strikes on Syria with special guests John Solomon, Marta Havryshko, and Joshua Landis. ------------------------- Watch full episodes on Rumble, streamed LIVE 7pm ET. Become part of our Locals community Follow System Update: Twitter Instagram TikTok Facebook
Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
I'm Aaron Matte, sitting in for Glenn Greenwald.
Tonight we'll be looking at three major stories, the latest in Russia Gate and the latest as well in Ukraine and Syria.
Now there's a through line to all three of these stories.
That's the CIA.
That's right.
From Russagate to Ukraine to Syria, a lot of the mess that we're still dealing with after so many years and all these major stories runs through the CIA.
We'll be delving into all that and a lot more tonight on System Update, which begins right now.
During Donald Trump's first term, the dominant story of his presidency was the allegation that he had secretly conspired with Russia as part of a massive Russian interference campaign to install him in office.
A lot of this story was fueled by intelligence officials who fueled the Russiagate conspiracy theory with anonymous stories to the press.
Well, now we all know after multiple investigations that a lot of this was a scam, and we continue to learn more.
The new director of national intelligence under Trump, Tulsi Gabbard, has been declassifying critical information on the Russiagate story.
And unveiling a brand new batch of newly disclosed records, Tulsi Gabbard accused Barack Obama of being a part of a plot against Trump.
The implications of this are far-reaching and have to do with the integrity of our Democratic Republic.
It has to do with an outgoing president taking action to manufacture intelligence to undermine and usurp the will of the American people in that election and launch what would be a years-long coup against the incoming President of the United States, Donald Trump.
Thank you.
So that's Tulsi Gabbard accusing Barack Obama and other officials in his administration of being part of a coup against Trump.
Now, I think that language is a little bit too strong.
And I also think that the administration has messed up some of the messaging here.
In putting out RussiaGate documents, they've conflated, for example, vote hacking and email hacking.
Email hacking was the core allegation at the heart of RussiaGate.
And if you listen to the messaging that Tulsi Gabbard has been putting out, she's conflating the two.
So there have been some mistakes in putting out this story.
And it also comes at a time when there's a lot of anger at the Trump administration for reneging on their promise to bring disclosure to the story of Jeffrey Epstein, which Donald Trump is very much implicated in.
But that does not negate the fact that there are really important disclosures in these new RussiaGate documents.
I have a brand new article at Real Clear Investigations talking about what I think is the essential story here, which is that the core allegation at the heart of RussiaGate, along with the conspiracy theory that Trump and Russia were in cahoots, which nobody believes anymore.
But the other major story was that Russia waged a massive interference campaign.
And the heart of that supposed interference campaign was that Russia stole emails from the Democratic Party and released them via Wikileaks.
Well, if you read the new documents, you will see that U.S. intelligence officials who lodged this Russian email hacking allegation, they buried the fact that there was dissent at the highest levels that Russia was responsible for the hack and release of these emails.
The NSA and the FBI, two premier U.S. intelligence agencies, expressed low confidence in that Russian hacking allegation.
And that assessment from the FBI and the NSA, that was suppressed until now, until Tulsi Gabbard just released it.
So even though the messaging has been screwed up, the disclosures are important and transparency is paramount because whether you want to think this was a coup or not, this was an attempt to frame Trump and his campaign as Russian agents and accuse Russia of a massive interference campaign that was aimed at destroying American democracy.
And there have been many consequences to this RussiaGate scandal, including fueling tensions with Russia and I think helping to lead to the current crisis we're in inside Ukraine.
So to discuss all this and more, I am joined by one of the premier journalists on the Russiagate story.
John Solomon is the founder of the website Just the News, a veteran reporter who's previously worked for the Washington Post and the Associated Press.
And he's been on the Russiagate story since day one.
John Solomon, thanks so much for joining us on System Update.
Yeah, great to be with you.
Great to join you.
You have covered RussiaGate extensively, and we've just gotten a series of really important document releases declassified by the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.
For people who are not following the story closely, as closely as you and I have, what do you think is most important to know and what revelations stand out to you?
Well, what we now know is that both our intelligence and our law enforcement communities were hijacked by political operatives in the 2016 election to take the normal process of how you would evaluate election interference, which goes on, by the way, in every election with multiple countries, and try to turn it into a political weapon and to create the perception in the public that Donald Trump conspired with Vladimir Putin to defeat Hillary Clinton.
Now, that concept starts with Hillary Clinton herself.
The intelligence community intercepts a conversation indicating that Hillary personally approved a plan in mid-July to hang a fake Russian shingle on Donald Trump's campaign house, basically play a dirty trick and make it look like Vladimir and Donald were together on the election.
The President of the United States at the time, Barack Obama, is personally warned about this on or about July 25th by John Brennan.
Then, five days later, the president does not stop the FBI when the FBI decides to open up on that allegation.
And then, between July and November, there's a concerted effort to get an FBI investigation going, to get a FISA warrant going, to then leak the information to try to get voters to believe this false story that was an illusion of the Clinton campaign.
Donald Trump still wins the election, not with Vladimir Putin's help, but by the help of the American people.
And then in December, with Hillary Clinton chastened by her loss, the intelligence community, working with John Brennan, tries to create a plausible explanation that Hillary only lost because Vladimir Putin had hijacked the election for Donald Trump.
And they do this over the objections of career CIA officials.
They do this in violation of the intelligence community's directive rules.
And they do it by relying on a document that by December of 2016, the Steele dossier, we all know it now, had been fully discredited.
And yet it is used to drive a conclusion that Vladimir Putin was trying specifically to help Donald Trump win.
And it's really dramatic how it happens.
On December 8th of 2016, after the election, the intelligence committee was going to come into Barack Obama and say, hey, we assess that Russia, like it always did, gotten meddled in the election a little bit, but it did not have a favorite candidate.
In fact, it so much didn't have a favorite candidate that it dropped out of its active measures, its dirty tricks, its intelligence in October, the very month if you were going to try to influence the election, you would most be active, right?
If you wanted Hillary or Donald Trump to win, October is the month when people are making up their minds.
That's when you would do your most active things.
Putin pulls out of the election in October.
On December 8th, they were going to tell Barack Obama that.
That briefing got canceled.
The next day, Barack Obama orders a new review, led only by John Brennan, James Comey, and the NSA director.
And within a few short weeks, they flip-flop the conclusions and say, oh, we've now decided, magically, that Vladimir Putin was specifically trying to help Donald Trump.
And the only way they can get there, by today's explosive revelations that Tulsi Gabbard gave us, is they have to use the Steele dossier, which by that time has been discredited over and over again.
Bruce Orr told them in August it was not to be relied on.
The CIA warned the FBI in September that Steele's network of sources had been infiltrated by Russia intelligence.
He needed to be reevaluated.
The FBI fires Christopher Steele after catching him leak the existence of the investigation and his dossier in November.
And by December, the FBI has completed a spreadsheet of every sentence of the Steele dossier and concluded they can't corroborate it or they've debunked every sentence.
And despite all that, they decide to use it over the rules of the intelligence committee to plant this dirty secret or to plant this lie on the American people that Vladimir Putin helped Donald Trump win the election.
You know, I'm personally skeptical that there even was any kind of serious Russian meddling operation at all.
There were some Facebook ads.
We know about that and some dumb memes.
But in terms of the email hacking, I'm even more skeptical now after seeing the newly declassified intelligence.
But before I get into that with you, I want to go back to July because it's really important what you discussed initially.
So in July, we learned very, very late, years later, that the Obama administration got a warning that Russia was aware of a plot to falsely tie Trump to Russia.
And despite that, as you explained, the Obama administration still let the FBI go ahead with its collusion investigation.
And what we also learned way later was that weeks before the FBI opened up its fake collusion investigation to Trump and Russia, Victoria Newland, who was then a senior State Department official, authorized the FBI to go and collect the steel dossier, which is the Clinton campaign-funded collection of conspiracy theories.
But yet the FBI wants us to believe that that had nothing to do with their decision to open up CrossFire Hurricane, the Trump-Russia collusion probe.
But on the issue of this warning by Brennan, of the so-called Clinton planted.
Let me stop, Erin, just for one second, because you just said something pretty profound.
It's really important to realize that after they're warned that Hillary Clinton's going to plant a dirty trick, the FBI's FISA warrant relies on the direct evidence of that dirty trick, right?
The steel dossier was a big part of the dirty trick that the Clinton campaign was planting along with the fake Alpha Bank story.
The FBI takes the very fruit of what they know to be a dirty trick because they were warned, and they use it to predicate the investigation.
That's what makes it more than just bumbling and stumbling.
That's why a lot of people like Cash Patel, who's now open to conspiracy case, believe it was criminal in nature.
Absolutely.
Okay, and speaking of criminal, in September, early September, after, you know, weeks after John Brennan has, you know, shared this information that Russia is aware of a Clinton plot to falsely tie Trump to Russia.
In early September, all of a sudden, John Brennan sends a criminal referral or an investigative referral to the FBI, to James Comey, to Peter Strzok, warning them about this Clinton plan intelligence, this Clinton plot to falsely tie Trump to Russia.
And yet nothing happens.
And in fact, years later, James Comey is asked about this in Congress, and he claims it doesn't ring any bells.
See, Mr. Comey, as you mentioned it earlier, Mr. Ratcliffe says on 7 September 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to FBI Director James Comey regarding U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's approval of a plan concerning Donald Trump and Russian hackers as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private mail server.
End quote.
Did you open an investigation?
I don't know what that refers to.
As I said earlier, that does not ring any bells with me when I read that.
You did not receive any investigative referral of this nature?
I don't remember it.
I don't remember receiving anything that's described in that letter.
What do you think is going on here?
So Brennan received his intelligence.
He warned Obama about it.
Then in September, why does he all of a sudden send a criminal referral or a referral to the FBI?
And do you buy James Comey's claim that it doesn't ring any bells?
He doesn't remember receiving that referral.
On multiple instances over the Last four or five years, including this week when Barack Obama said, I don't know how they can say I was part of a conspiracy.
I kept thinking back to the figure on the old Hogan Heroes TV show, Sergeant Schultz, who always used to say, I know nothing, even though he knew everything that was going on in the camp.
It's important to realize that these statements are not true based on the emails, the text messages, and other evidence we have.
Everybody was read into these different developments as they were happening.
There's no chance that James Comey can't remember that he was warned that Hillary Clinton was going to hang a dirty shingle on Donald Trump's house called Russia Collusion.
He just would remember something that important.
If it didn't get to him, it would be one of the greatest failures of the FBI.
You'd tell your director things of this importance.
Everybody claims a lack of knowledge, even though they're present for the moments when these happen.
Let's take Barack Obama's denial this week, because it can be disassembled so quickly.
Barack Obama is basically like, this is a political weapon.
I didn't do anything.
The idea, I don't even know what they're talking about.
He's in the meeting with Brennan in July when he's told Hillary Clinton's going to do this.
In December, he orders the re-review after the intelligence committee comes to a conclusion that's different.
And then in January, just 15 days before Donald Trump's going to take office, he presides over the meeting in the White House with Joe Biden where they're trying to figure out how they can keep the investigation of Mike Flynn open, the incoming national security advisor.
That is so significant because one day before, on January 4th, the FBI had decided that Mike Flynn had not engaged in a single act of criminality and that he should be cleared and the investigation against him that was launched during the election should be shut down.
And there is Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and the FBI gang trying to figure out how can we keep this going.
And when they leave that meeting, there's an FBI agent so disturbed by what happened in that meeting.
What he witnessed, he writes down, is our mission here to get the truth for the American people, or are we just trying to trip up Mike Flynn to lie so we can charge him with something?
That's what a senior FBI official witnessed the President of the United States engaging in.
Barack Obama, I can refresh your recollections pretty quickly.
Stop lying to the American people.
Own up to what you did.
And then you have John Brennan, who testified under oath that the Steele dossier played no part in the formation of that intelligence community assessment that Barack Obama ordered in December 2016 and that was released to the public in January 2017.
This is what John Brennan said to Congress.
Steele dossier as part of any court filings, applications, petitions, pleadings?
I have no awareness.
Did the CIA rely on it?
No.
Why not?
Because we didn't.
It wasn't part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had.
It was not in any way used as a basis for the intelligence community assessment that was done.
It was not.
Okay, so that's John Brennan, John Solomon, telling Congress that the Steele dossier was in no way used for the intelligence community assessment that accused Russia of a sweeping operation to try to elect Trump.
Now we know that that's false.
We've seen the new report by HIPSI, the House Intelligence Committee that's just been declassified by Tulsa Gabbard, which says that the Steele dossier was explicitly referenced in the body of the ICA and that John Brennan himself personally argued in favor of including it over the objections of some senior CIA analysts.
Yeah, and by the way, Brennan gives very similar testimony to what you show again in 2023, which is in the statute of limitations right now.
There's four bullets upon which the key conclusions of the ICA that was produced in December 2016 rest.
And one of those bullets, which is the bullet that helps back up the argument that Donald Trump was aided by Putin.
Putin's goal was to help Donald Trump win.
That bullet refers to Annex I, which is the annex that we now know to be the steel dossier.
So it was used as an analytical product to come to the most contentious of the analytical conclusions, which is that contrary to what the government had been saying for months, now we're going to say Putin was trying to help Donald Trump.
And that rests on the Steele dossier, which by December, as we've said, was completely debunked by the time.
It was not a reliable intelligence product.
It contradicts everything you just heard in that clip from John Brendan.
All right.
So on the issue of Russian hacking, Russian email hacking, which was the core RussiGate allegation, it's actually what triggered RussiaGate when CrowdStrike, a firm working for Hillary Clinton's campaign, came out in June 2016 and accused Russia of hacking the DNC.
We've learned since then that the FBI relied on CrowdStrike's forensics, even though CrowdStrike redacted its own reports and refused to let the FBI examine the DNC servers for itself.
Just as the FBI relied on the Steel dossier, I've always flagged this as a major investigative lapse because you're relying on Trump's political opponent for such a critical component of this investigation.
And now we've gotten more information that I think bolsters skepticism of this Russian hacking allegation.
So even if Russia did hack into the DNC servers, which is quite plausible and it seems as if the intelligence community had a basis to believe that, the actual evidence that Russia took something from the server and gave it to Wikileaks remains very thin.
And now you have, newly released by Tulsi Gabbard, a September 2016 intelligence community assessment that says the FBI and the NSA had low confidence that Russia actually hacked the emails and gave them to actors, including WikiLeaks for publication.
We only got that now, this low confidence.
Somehow, the FBI and the NSA go from expressing low confidence to going along with the John Brennan-led judgment that actually it was Russia that hacked and leaked the DNC.
And what happens?
Well, the timeline is after the election, as you mentioned, Barack Obama orders a brand new assessment, and at a December 9th meeting, they decide we're going to make an attribution to Russia.
Now, missing from that meeting are Jim Comey and Mike Rogers, the respective heads of the FBI and the NSA, which had at that point still been dissenting on this Russian email hacking claim.
What I'm speculating here is that it was at that point that they were told to fall in line.
And James Comey, having been blamed for Hillary Clinton losing because of his handling of the Clinton email server investigation, he goes along with it.
That's what I'm speculating here.
What do you think?
And what do you make of this very attestment that there was more prompting?
You know, as well as anyone how elaborate this dirty trick was.
I believe that that probably will be what the evidence shows when we're done.
This is the time now where we have the contemporaneous documents, but we haven't compelled people to go before a grand jury and find out the truth on this.
And I think the next moment, the moment whether we'll know whether this is going to be a serious move towards accountability or just another great set of Fox News revelations that go away in a few months, is whether Pam Body follows the normal procedures for the Justice Department.
As you laid out, and we've laid out for the last 20 minutes, this is a conspiracy case now.
And by the way, Cash Patel opened a predicated conspiracy case in April, looking at the events of 2016 through 2024 as one ongoing conspiracy.
Claire Hillary Clinton, hang the Russian shingle on Donald Trump.
Hunter Biden's got a Ukraine problem, start Ukraine impeachment.
Joe Biden's got a classified documents problem.
Let's raid Donald Trump's house and find a classified documents problem for him.
They're looking at that as one continuous conspiracy, which, by the way, winds back the statutes.
You can now start taking events in 2016 and make them part of the conspiracy.
If in any other case a conspiracy case is open, the usual step that the FBI and the Justice Department take is they create a federal task, a strike force.
If this was a drug kingpin for the cartels or a godfather for the mafia, the next step is, all right, the FBI predicated a case.
You now create a federal strike task force, and you take your best prosecutors and your agents, you make them one team, and they look at every overt act and try to tell you whether this rises to the level of a criminal conspiracy.
If Pam Bondi does that in the next few days or few weeks, then you know something serious is going on.
If she doesn't, then all we have is a lot more detail, but still a very short lack of accountability for the people who are involved in this.
One more question on the email hacking.
You reported years ago that there were talks with Julian Assange between Assange and the FBI, the Trump administration, where Assange was talking about providing some technical evidence that would rule out the role of state actors, including Russia, in the hack and leak.
It was James Comey, I believe, that killed those talks.
That's right.
According to Adam Waldman, the lawyer for Julian Assange at the time, that's where we learned that information.
Yeah, that's what happened.
And we have text messages that was going on.
You can see in real time, I think Mark Warner and Comey were the ones that seemed to put the kibosh on it.
That needs to be looked back now in light of these other events because it could be another overt act, another act of cover-up to try to keep the lid on the dirty trick that started with Hillary Clinton.
That's where a strike force and a grand jury could be potentially very helpful because there are still missing pieces of this puzzle.
For instance, why didn't the FBI grab the servers?
In any other investigation, you would rely on someone's private vendor and say, trust us.
By the way, a private vendor who worked for a client that had a vested interest in the case, Hillary Clinton's in the Democratic National Committee, that's who they're working for at the time.
You wouldn't have to do that.
As they're framing Trump and everything, just like when they got the five thumb drives with all of Hillary Clinton's exfiltration, you would normally look at that, but they didn't.
All of the basic requirements of the FBI diag, all of the basic requirements of the U.S. Attorney's Manual, all of the basic requirements of the intelligence community's directive, which is the Bible for how you do assessments, all of them get abandoned during this hour.
During this window, all of them take all of their training and they cast it aside in order to come up with this ruse.
The answer to why they did that will probably determine whether this is criminal in nature or not.
Yeah, what did Comey say when he was asked about this by Congress?
He said, well, CrowdStrike, which is working for the Clinton campaign, was a highly respected firm, so nothing to see here.
I suppose he could have said the same thing about Christopher Steele, a highly respected agent who the FBI was also relying on.
So the fact that you have the FBI relying on a Clinton campaign contractor for not just one, but two of Russia Gates' core allegations, collusion and email hacking, the fact that we're only still getting transparency about this now, eight years later, really is mind-boggling.
So you've laid out the fact that we're looking at a conspiracy case here.
What are you expecting to happen in the coming months?
More document releases?
Do you think that, I mean, and who do you think they're looking at when it comes to building a criminal case?
Well, listen, you've got to have the apparatus to do it.
It's one thing for the FBI to open the case and gather the evidence that's currently available, but for the evidence that hasn't been produced and needs to be forcibly produced, you need grand jury power.
You need grand jury subpoenas.
The next, if this was, conspiracies are typically applied to drug cartels and mob cases and things like that.
If this is treated like every other case, the next step is to create a strike force and then give that strike force the ability to use a grand jury.
Maybe you name a special counsel because Donald Trump is the alleged victim for some of this.
So he creates some independence.
Whether they do that or not, if they don't create the strike force, they're not following the normal procedures that a Justice Department would use for a conspiracy case like this.
So we have to look.
The ball is in Pam Bondi's court.
The question is, is she going to shoot the three-point shot or not?
I don't know the answer to that yet, but I will tell you, the way the Justice Department normally would work, the strike force would be the very next part of the process that you would see unfold in the next week or two.
This conspiracy theory that Trump and Russia were in cahoots was so dominant, so widespread, and so mainstream.
I mean, you know, the New York Times and the Washington Post gave themselves Pulitzers for advancing this conspiracy.
They did?
That I'm not expecting very much accountability from them.
But I am wondering if you have thoughts on, well, first of all, the way Tulsi Gabbard rolled this out, there is a criticism that she conflated in her messaging, vote hacking and email hacking.
And I think that criticism actually is correct.
I do think she conflated that.
I think that's right.
I agree with you.
It doesn't change the fact that she revealed important stuff, but the messaging, I think, has been off.
And then you have the fact that Trump is dealing with this Jeffrey Epstein controversy.
And there's anger, even among some of the MAGA faithful, that there have not been the disclosures that they were promised.
And I'm wondering, do you think that the fact that Trump has been hesitant to address the Jeffrey Epstein issue and told people to move on, that that might undermine the ability to get out and to convince people that this RussiaGate stuff really is important.
Because what critics will do here is say that Trump and Gabbard are just releasing this to deflect from the Jeffrey Epstein mess.
Yeah, listen, Donald Trump has been worried about Russia collusions since 2017.
So it's going to be hard to say he suddenly got interested because of Epstein, right?
He has cried about this, and rightly so, for eight years, and he's done everything in his power to get the American people the truth because he felt victimized, and he felt the American people are victimized.
He said that to me several times in interviews.
And he doesn't want another president ever to face what he faced.
So I don't think you can say, boy, Donald Trump ramped this up because he wanted to make the Epstein thing.
The Epstein crisis exists because of bad messaging.
Pam Bondi was more interested in getting in front of the camera before getting her facts straight before she got in front of the camera, and so she messed it up.
I think in some way, Tulsi Gabbert's rollout on Saturday and some of the messaging in the Friday, Saturday, Sunday timeframe was a little messed up.
But at the end of the day, they have released really significant evidence.
And we elitists inside the belt, we worry about all the messaging and stuff.
The American people just want to know, were they defrauded?
And I think in Tulsi Gabbert, in Pam Bondi, in Cash Patel, President Trump and the others, we now have a body of evidence that could answer that question for history, could answer that question for the courts.
And it would be a crying shame if the normal processes of the Justice Department aren't followed in this next step.
There is grounds for a criminal conspiracy case and a strike forced to be named.
Let's see if that happens.
We'll judge, I think history will not judge the Epstein matter and this matter and Tulsi on the fumbles.
They did make fumbles.
I don't disagree with you.
I totally agree with you.
They'll judge them on did they handle the evidence right and did we do the right thing?
That judgment will come in the next few weeks.
We'll know whether Pam Bondi and Tulsi Gabbard get us to the right place or not.
Cash Patel has started the process.
Let's see if it gets to the right place like every other person who's been accused of a crime would face in similar circumstances.
Let's not treat it differently.
If they treat it the same way as other criminal scals, I think the American people will be forgiving and remember this as a good period.
John Solomon of Just the News, thank you so much for joining us.
Aaron, great work.
You are such a great reporter.
I read you all the time.
And congratulations for the work you've done on this story.
Well, likewise, you've been an essential voice to understanding this whole RussiaGate mess, and I really appreciate you taking the time to share some of your insight with us.
Anytime, great honor to be on the show.
And thanks once again to John Solomon of Just the News.
Turning now to Ukraine, a crisis that was very much fueled by the Russagate controversy.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is facing the biggest protests he's seen since Russia invaded more than three years ago.
And to discuss Zelensky's current turmoil, I spoke to Marta Havryshko.
She is visiting assistant professor at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University.
So for people who are wanting to know what's going on in Ukraine, you have these massive protests now outside Zelensky's presidential residence calling out him cracking down on an anti-corruption bureau.
What should people know?
What's going on in Ukraine?
So yesterday, for the first time since the Russian aggression in February 2022, the mass protest took place in major Ukraine cities.
Yesterday they were in Kyiv, Edipro, Lviv and other cities.
What were demands of protesters?
They started to go out to the streets and protest with the hope that Zelensky will put a veto on one of the law adopted yesterday by Verkovna Rada.
Actually, people call it anti-corruption law, and according to this law, the main anti-corruption bodies in Ukraine, Nabu and Sapo, are losing independence and they became subjected almost entirely to the prosecutor general, which is the person appointed by Zelensky.
So what does it mean that the entire activities of those structures now is paralyzed?
And Zelensky can use it as a tool to reward his loyal politicians and to punish disloyal.
That's why many, first of all, young people, many students, they go out to the streets and they started to shout and demand to veto.
And while they were protesting, they found out that Zelensky very quickly signed this document.
And it was the big outrage.
And nowadays, even in more numbers of cities, we have the similar demonstrations.
People are so angry.
Why?
Because Zelensky is constantly talking that Ukraine is the part of European family.
That Ukraine will join NATO and EU.
And one of the preconditions of joining EU is the building of effective anti-corruption system.
And what is going on?
Zelensky is destroying the whole system.
That's why many people believe that EU can even put sanctions in Ukraine, could stop this move of Ukraine to the European nation.
That's why they are so angry.
And mostly those people are young people.
They are students.
And Zelensky says here that he's just cracking down on what he calls Russian influence.
That somehow this anti-corruption bureau was corrupted by Russia.
What do you say to that?
Actually, many observers, many experts, many anti-corruption activists say it's bullshit.
In other words, so it's not true.
Because those charges are very suspicious.
First of all, some of them were accused of connections with the previous president Yanukovych.
And why Yanukovych is not now important person in political life, not Ukraine, not Russia.
Some of them were charged with some offenses connected to traffic offenses that happened several years ago.
And some of them were accused with direct cooperation with Russian security service.
So these charges are very serious.
And we know that SBU, Security Service of Ukraine, in past days, they made approximately eight raids across offices and homes of Naboo agents and without court warrants, which makes them suspicious and debatable and controversial and basically illegal.
But many experts say that the main reason is because Naboo that was created by Western powers, predominantly US, was financed by US, inspired by US, agent were trained by US.
Basically, they say that in recent days they wanted to open investigation against the closest allies of Zelensky, for example, Timur Mingic,
who was his law and is his long-term partner, business partner, the owner of Dvonosto Piati Kartal, his entertainment company, together with Zelensky.
And also, recently, one of the criminal investigations with very serious charges of great corruption was opened against one of the closest friends of Zelensky, deputy prime minister Oleksy Chernyshov.
And we know that Oleksi Chernyshov left the country and there were so many rumors about his desire to return because he was afraid that he will be put in prison.
So Mingich went to him, presumably, and argued that you can go because you will be freed, you will be not put in prison.
And basically it happened.
Despite this massive damage to Ukraine budget that cost approximately 1 billion grivnas to Ukraine budget, he wasn't dismissed and he wasn't put on trial.
He paid enormously big bail, approximately 3 million dollars, which for Ukraine settings is enormous sum.
And he's enjoying his office.
He's still in place.
But Mingic never returned to Ukraine.
Why?
Because he was afraid that he will be the next after-Chunchov.
So experts say that by cracking down on anti-corruption bodies, Zelensky want to protect basically his friends, his closest friends.
So he is not caring about anti-corruption system, about the European future of Ukraine, about the effectiveness of anti-corruption struggle in Ukraine, which is one of the biggest problem in Ukraine from the very beginning of its creation after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
And according to some polls, it's even the bigger problem that Russian concert attacks, run and missile attacks.
Because corruption kills.
And many protesters, they hold signs, corruption kills.
And another reason, some investigative journalists say that Naboo was closely investigating so-called the army of drones.
It was and it is still the one of the biggest project in the security service where millions of dollars including the Western pay, including Western aid and the taxes of Western people are going supported by Ministry of Defense,
supported by General Staff, supported by a crown funding platform United 24 with the celebrities from around the world.
So this army of drones have a lot of speculations and the great corruption is there.
And who is involved in this?
The closest people to Zelensky, Arakamjan, who is the leader of Zelensky party in the parliament, and Jermak, who recently became a celebrity, I would say, in the Western press, because so many articles were written about him, about his power.
Andrey Yermak, that's Zelensky's chief of staff, yeah.
Yes.
Yes.
So, I mean, you know, hearing you talk about just like the key role of U.S. funding and all this, U.S. influence, it speaks to one irony of this whole conflict, which is that in the name of fighting supposed Russian influence, Ukraine's been consumed with U.S. influence.
And Zelensky obviously feels empowered to be doing these things because he wants to curry favor with the U.S. But let me ask you about the war here.
There's an article in The Spectator, which is a British publication that's been a huge cheerlitter for the proxy war.
But even they're now being forced to admit that the war is not going well for Zelensky.
And they quote a former senior official in Zelensky's administration who says this, quote, if the war continues soon, there will be no Ukraine left to fight for.
And this person goes on to say that Zelensky is, quote, prolonging the war to hold On to power.
The spectator also spoke to a Zelensky ally named Maria Berlinska, who is head of a prominent Ukrainian volunteer movement, who said, we are hanging over the abyss.
Ukraine is an expendable pawn in an American game.
How much discontent is there right now with Zelensky because of the war and because Ukraine continues to lose so many of its people in this horrible conflict?
Actually, this point is very common nowadays in Ukraine, is very widespread.
That's why there are so many draft dodgers, because people don't believe that they own their lives and they can make their own decisions.
Because even when we take into consideration this mineral deal, we observe, and many members of Ukraine parliament, they were very open, that they didn't even read these documents.
They were provided only this general paper, this general document, but two other were hidden from them.
So they can't even learn the details.
And they just were strongly advised to vote for this.
Some of them were threatened by Zelensky and his inner circle that they risk be stripped of Western US.
And we know that many of them have property in the Western countries.
So they were really afraid of these sanctions probably by US.
And they just voted for this mineral deal.
And the problem is that this mineral deal in general is even against the Ukraine constitution.
Because according to Ukraine Constitution, all minerals belong to the people.
But nowadays they are stripped even of those resources.
So many Ukraine ask themselves, what I am dying for?
Why I should go to the front line, to lie in these trenches, to be hunted by Russian drones, to gather remains of my comrades, to bury them, to visit their family members and to talk to their wives.
Why I should suffer while I not even own those minerals.
I have nothing.
Ukraine nowadays is perceived as a colony of the West.
Everything in Ukraine is influenced by the West.
Every single decision, military decision, financial decision, political decision, who will be the prime minister, who will be the head of the SBU security service.
From the Western media we learned that Budanov was attempted to dismiss 10 times.
But because he has a protégé in US, and it is believed that he is very close to some US military circles, Zelensky wasn't allowed to dismiss him.
So basically, Zelensky and his team are not independent decision makers.
That's why many people who are now protesting against this anti-corruption crackdown, they ask EU, World Bank, White House to put pressure on Zelensky because they know that all leverages are there in the West.
They could pressure on him.
And we learned from some investigative journalists that some people say that this decision is already been done, that Zelensky is not needed anymore.
His popularity is going down.
And after yesterday decision, and you know, it reminded people so much the Yanukovych time, because during the Maidan protests in 2013-2014, Yanukovych was associated with a massive corruption,
but also with the stop of with this break of this European dream of Ukrainians, because he refused to sign this association with EU.
And nowadays, many EU members, Ursula von der Leyen, you know, G7, other bodies, Macron, EU, Marta Kos from EU, they express their deeply concerns about this law.
And many people are afraid that this will be another case when Ukraine will be prevented from entering EU and will be stopped by their own government, prevented by their politicians.
That's why many people compare Zelensky to Yanukovych.
And in the memory of many Maidan protesters, it's the biggest Willian.
Pro-Russian, bloody murder of peaceful protesters.
That's why the climate is very hot nowadays in Ukraine.
And we shouldn't underestimate this protest.
And the main question for me nowadays, will Zelensky got his Oven Maidan?
And will he be the next president, Ukraine president, who will be forced to leave the country and his post?
And if he is forced to leave, like, where does this leave groups like Azov?
The Azov Italian, which is a paramilitary force with neo-Nazi ties led by some really extremist people, they've endorsed his crackdown on this anti-corruption bureau.
So if he's forced out of office, does that mean they take even more power?
Would their power be reduced?
Where would they stand in opposed Selensky Ukraine?
You know, many, I was very struck when I read statements from Bileisky, the leader of Azo movement, several of his deputies, and other members, not only from Azo movement, but close to Azo movement who are also far-right,
like, you know, the leader of C-14, Jovan Karaj, who is an extremist and far-right neo-Nazi and others so basically those neo-Nazis who are in close alliance with Zelensky and heavily rely on his support are very critical of Naboo and basically supported him they say oh and they started you know to to to disseminate this talking point that yes there were Russian agents,
assets there in Naboo, that's why this decision was very good.
And we should keep in mind that all these far-right in Ukraine, they are the proponent of the cult of strong leader.
And they really believe that one person in the state should hold the maximum power, like Fuhrer, like Mussolini and other strong leaders.
That's why they supported him.
And I believe, and it's very, for many NGO activists, for many human rights activists, they are very surprised because many of them didn't follow their agenda.
So they were very surprised.
How can you?
It's about European future.
It's about democratic future of Ukraine.
But those guys have nothing to do with this democratic use.
They are proponent of this strong authoritarian power, authoritarian state with a strong leader.
That's why.
And we observe how they enjoy this state support, support from security service, support from military intelligence, support from oligarchs close to Zelensky, and they are joining everything.
So they want this war to prolong, to going on, and they support Zelensky.
That's why I believe it could be a civil unrest if they will support this strong position of Zelensky.
Because many people believe, because of those anti-corruption organs were created and inspired by Biden administration mostly, by Democrats.
And now Trump allegedly is not interested in fighting corruption.
He is not interested in all this internal politics.
He just wants to leave this Ukraine cause, everything, and to just concentrate on other problems.
So he doesn't care about this.
And Zelensky believed that he can get away with these actions.
And Europe needs him because he's a proponent of war, he's the proponent of these radical decisions.
That's why he believed that he can do whatever they want without any resistance.
But I believe that this potential for violent resistance inside Ukraine country, so I'm talking about even civil war, at least civil unrest, yes, it's very possible.
Because there are even more radical far-right who are not in alliance with the state.
For example, this white fanny who is allegedly involved in the killing of this SBU, Colonel Voronic, and others, like Bilavarta, Bila Sons, they are very radical, white supremacists, and they are against even the Azo movement because they believe that Azo nowadays is in conjunction with globalists and Zionist cabal, all this conspiracy and so on and so forth.
Which is why, you know, which underscores why it was not a wise decision to block the Minsk Accords, block opportunities that there were out there a while ago to avoid all this bloodshed and to not empower the most extremist elements of society.
Marta, final question for you.
I recently signed an open letter in your defense that was put out because you faced a lot of threats yourself for speaking out as a Ukrainian, as a scholar of the Holocaust, against Zelensky's government, against the influence of the far right.
Very briefly, because we only have a few minutes, talk about the threats that you faced and this open letter that a bunch of us have just signed in your defense.
Thank you, Aaron, for the support.
And I invite everyone to visit my Twitter, for example, and you can sign this letter too, because the general idea of this letter that was drafted by scholars, journalists, human rights activists is about basically free speech and academic freedom in Ukraine.
Because not only me, but many scholars in Ukraine face pressure.
They face pressure to ally with state agenda, to obey all this ethnic nationalist agenda and don't criticize the rise of far-right in Ukraine.
And I started to receive those death threats more than one year ago when I criticized for the first time this ASSAL exhibition, the third assault brigade exhibition about Waven's division in Galicia.
They were, during this exhibition, they compared themselves to Nazi collaborators basically.
And I asked them, is it okay when Putin is using this denazification talking point to justify his aggression against Ukraine?
What are you doing, guys?
Why you need those Nazi symbols to fight Russians?
You have beautiful Ukraine symbols.
And then I started to do more research, and I understood that they have basically free hand in Ukraine and they are in cooperation with the state authorities and political elites.
And they are so unhappy about my activity and about my research and exposing all these problematic developments that they send me rape threats, death threats.
They openly in their channels they discuss how they will kill me.
And I'm cooperating with Massachusetts State Police and FBI in this regard because they have connections with many far-right neo-Nazis groups here in US.
Aten Waffen Division, Misanthropic Division, Oceepers, Proud Boys and others because they have similar agenda.
As you know, many American neo-Nazis nowadays are in the war in Ukraine fighting for Ukraine.
So basically they are trained, they are armored to the teeth by American weapon, by NATO weapon.
And I was strongly advised to be conscious about those threats and to do whatever I can to protect myself and protect my child because the very important thing and most important for me is to save my child from that threat.
That's why my friends supported me and I encourage everyone to protect freedom of speech even despite all those challenging developments and troubling times.
So free speech is a corestone of democracy, human rights and freedom.
Marta Havriszko, you're a very, very brave person and I'm very grateful to you for joining us on System Update.
Marta Havrishko is visiting assistant professor at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University.
Marta, thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
And thanks once again to my guest, Marta Havrishko.
Turning now to another part of the world that's been turned upside down by a CIA proxy war, Syria.
When Syrian President Bashir al-Assad was overthrown last year, the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Nenyahu, openly took credit for the regime change in Damascus.
This collapse is a direct result of our forceful action against Hezbollah in Iran, Assad's main supporters.
It set off a chain reaction of all those who want to free themselves from this tyranny and its suppression.
So that's Netanyahu last year taking credit for Assad's ouster.
And in Assad's place came a new government led by the former leader of al-Qaeda in Syria named Muhammad al-Jalani, who since changed his name to Ahmed Al-Shara.
But now Netanyahu, after taking credit for installing this al-Qaeda offshoot, is bombing that new government as well.
Just recently, Israel bombing Damascus after sectarian clashes broke out with a lot of Druze, members of the Druze minority in Syria, being killed.
And Netanyahu claimed he was acting on their behalf, in their defense.
So what is going on in Syria?
Why is sectarian killing still going on in Syria?
And why is Netanyahu intervening after helping to install the new government that he is now bombing?
Well, to discuss that, I spoke to Joshua Landis.
He is the Sandra Mackey Chair and Professor of Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.
Joshua Landis, thanks so much for joining me.
Aaron, it's always a pleasure.
When Israel bombed Syria, that took a lot of people by surprise, especially because the Israeli government had recently been bragging that it helped oust the previous Syrian government, led by Bashra al-Assad, and put the new Syrian government in power.
So what's going on here with Israel bombing a government that it took credit for installing?
Right.
Well, Netanyahu did say that it was because he had destroyed Hezbollah in Lebanon or decimated it that Syria and Assad fell because there was no support for him.
And they'd also bombed Iran.
And that clipped the normal support for the Assad army.
But he very quickly decided that he did not like the new rulers of Syria, Ahmed al-Shara, because he had been head of al-Qaeda for many years.
And he's very closely attached to Turkey.
And Turkey, of course, had welcomed Hamas leaders in Istanbul and had spoken out against Israel.
So in a sense, Iran was out, but Netanyahu said that Turkey is our new big enemy and is dangerous, if not more dangerous, than Iran.
Okay, and the pretext for this, according to Israel, is that there were atrocities being committed against the Druze in Soweta, which was happening.
There were atrocities.
So what happened there?
And then why is Israel getting involved on their behalf?
Or purportedly on their behalf?
Right.
Well, the Druze situation.
Druze are 3% of Syria.
They're a small minority, heterodox, Shia, like the Alawites or the Ismailis.
They did not trust this government because the government had persecuted the Druze in the past.
Ahmed Shara had killed about 20.
He apologized and made up for it, but their shrines were blown apart.
ISIS had forced many to convert.
And Shara had been a member of ISIS before he was just al-Qaeda.
So it's, they didn't trust him.
And the Druze freed themselves of Assad's rule a year ahead of the taking of Damascus.
So they had set up their own autonomous regime.
When Shutta formulated his new constitution several months ago, an interim constitution for five years, it gives all the power to him.
There is no democracy.
You know, the parliament is appointed by him, a third directly, two-thirds indirectly.
He appoints all the judges in the Supreme Court.
He is everything in that country.
And there is a Druze minister who's resigned, but they don't have any power.
They are things like transportation or various things.
So the real central figures are all from this al-Qaeda organization and very close to Shada, whether that's interior or defense or foreign ministry or so forth.
So they didn't trust.
They said, we want some kind of federal arrangement.
The Kurds are saying the same thing.
The Alawites are saying the same thing.
They don't want to just put down their arms because that's what he was asking.
He said, I'm the ruler.
I'm going to have a monopoly on power.
All the minorities should put down their guns and trust us.
And they said, we don't trust you.
And so it became a classic standoff.
And that's the background.
That's the important background to this assault by the state on the Druze on the Druze Mountain.
It's a mountainous region.
It's in the south near the Jordanian border and not too far from the Golan.
But there is a big Arab city, Dada, that sits between the Jebel Druze and the Golan Heights, which makes it impractical for Israel to move its troops in and protect them directly.
So it used bombing, and Israel stepped in to defend the Druze.
Now, Israel has, it's important to know that they have 150,000 Druze who've served loyal in the military, so they've served loyally in the military, and are an important lobbying group that's not to be sneezed at.
I know many Israeli Druze, and they were frantic to get Netanyahu to step in.
Now, Netanyahu has much bigger fish to fry than just the Druze.
He has got a strategic vision, which is Israel being the predominant power.
And we've got to say that Israel has established not only complete air power over Lebanon, but now over Syria, over Iraq, and today, Iran as well.
It doesn't want a strong Damascus, a Damascus that's armed by Turkey, that has a real army, that's spread its power over the border.
So Netanyahu said very early on, we're not going to allow Damascus to deploy its troops south of Damascus City.
I'm not going to allow Shadat to deploy its troops.
And, you know, in the first day that Assad fell, Israel bombed Syria 400 times, destroying its entire navy, every missile depot, any airplane that was still existent.
It erased everything it could find of the old Syrian army so that Shadow would not have anything.
And it's continued to bomb various airfields that Turkey is trying to resurrect because it's very worried that Turkey will send its planes down there, build up the military, and that they'll have Turkey on Israel's border.
That's what Netanyahu says.
They said they're not going to do it over our dead body.
And of course, America doesn't like that.
But that's the situation here with the Jebel Druze and Israel's entrance into this war.
So Israel claims to be fighting the sectarian oppression, the sectarian atrocities backed by the government.
But it seems to me actually that they want to foment sectarianism in Syria.
I mean, they were supporting the insurgency that was sectarian.
And I was reminded of a quote from way back in 2013 by an Israeli official named Alon Pinkas.
He's the former Israeli consul general in New York.
And he said this about Syria.
This is back in 2013.
He said, this is a playoff situation in which you need both teams to lose, but at least you don't want one to win.
We'll settle for a tie.
Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death.
Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death.
That's the strategic thinking here.
As long as this lingers, there's no real threat from Syria.
So what he was basically saying back then was, as long as Syria is divided, as all sides are fighting each other, then Israel is dominant.
My question to you is, do you think that is still basically Israel's strategy?
I think that's the operating.
No.
Israel wants a weak and divided Syria, one that cannot present any challenge to Israel whatsoever on the Golan or anywhere else.
So in that sense, you know, sweeping in and being defender, you know, having this human rights position and having the Druze actually want the Israelis to come and defend them fits perfectly into this larger strategic vision of a broken Syria that can't get back on its feet.
And I don't want to minimize the atrocities that Druze have suffered.
So talk to us a bit about what you know happened.
For example, there seems to be a documented massacre that occurred at a hospital of Druze in Suez.
The national hospital in Sweda, it was taken over by regime forces and they shot doctors, nurses, patients.
They threw people off the roof.
They were jihadists who went in there to wreak vengeance on the Druze.
And we've got to say that this came on the heels already in May.
There had been a dust-up between the Druze and the central state because the Druze had refused to make these concessions to the central state.
So Shadda, who wants to spread his military control over the country, is looking for ways.
And what happened in May was that this tape came out, a recording of a Druze sheikh, theoretically, the Druze denied it, said it was fake, of the sheikh saying something bad about Muhammad the prophet.
And they said, this is unacceptable.
And students began to attack Druze students in dormitories, in Hama.
There were demonstrations in the street, and very quickly it escalated into a situation where Druze were being attacked from one end of Syria to the other, and particularly in two towns, Jaramana and Saidnaya, on the outskirts of Damascus towards the Jebel Druze.
And many jihadist types and irregulars poured in, as well as regime troops, in order to attack the Druze.
And Israel came into their defense, which, of course, caused many Syrians to say, these are traitors.
They're sided with Israel.
Look what they're doing in Gaza.
This is terrible.
And we've got to kill these Druze.
So that was the background, and it was festering.
So a local story happened just on the 13th of July in which Bedouin, Who make up 3% of the city of Sweden, the capital city in the Jebel Druze, kidnapped a Druze merchant.
And then there was a tit-for-tat.
It exploded.
Over 10 people were killed.
The regime, Shadat, said, only the central police and our security soldiers can bring calm to the Jebel Druze.
We're sending them in.
And so they attacked.
And many people felt that the Bedouin situation was really a pretext to allow the regime to try to impose its will over the Jebel Druze.
And this turned into a major conflagration because the Druze resisted.
Regime elements came into the city, took over this national hospital, killed everybody in it.
Dozens of people.
We don't know how many, but you look at pictures of the body bags in it.
There's probably 50 or 60.
The videos are really horrendous.
I published one of the videos very early on, and I was inundated.
My ex account was inundated with regime supporters saying this is fake news.
These are not real things.
They've been either been doctored or the Druze were killing themselves because Hijri, one of their leaders, they've tried to demonize him and said that he's evil and he's shooting all these Druze because they really want to be part, give up their guns to the government.
It was very hard to tell what the truth was in those first moments, but there's a major, you know, there are major narrative campaigns going on in social media to defend the government, to defend the Druze, this sort of thing.
But a lot of Druze have been killed.
We don't have a sense so far, but it's probably going to approach 1,000.
Whole families have been mowed down in their houses and so forth.
Now, a bunch of Bedouin got killed, and Druze were very brutal to the regime troops that they later captured.
And there were executions on both sides.
And I'm not saying that, but this is the way that the government has been treating minorities.
Yes.
Well, that's what I was going to ask you about.
So this follows the documented sectarian killings against the Alawites.
And the death toll there is unknown, but it's believed to be very, very high.
And that was also by forces linked to the government.
Talk about what happened there and what a recent Reuters investigation newly confirmed.
Right.
Well, about 2,000 Alawites were killed.
The government is claiming that there came out with a report just the other day and said it was about 1,465, just under 1.5.
But it's probably closer to 2,000.
The government has closed down a lot of its bureaus for registering deaths along the coast.
I know that because my father-in-law, an Alawite, died recently, and the family has still unable to record his death because all the offices are saying, come back later, we're closed on this.
You can't register the deaths.
So there's a lot of sleight of hand going on here.
But 2,000 Alawites were killed on the coast, roughly.
And this started with an attack on regime soldiers by some Alawites.
And about 16, 17 Alawite soldiers were killed in one incidence, and it spread to two other places.
Now, the Alawites claim this is because we're being terribly mistreated.
And this little convoy of troops was coming to a village to drag people out, claiming that they're Falul Nizam, that they're regime remainders, and that they're coming to drag them off for transitional justice.
The trouble is transitional justice is dragging people off and shooting them.
There haven't been court trials.
It's unclear.
Many innocent people have been killed.
People have never served in the military.
Houses have been robbed.
So Alawites were beginning to feel this regime is just going to kick us to the curb and mistreat us.
So it's hard to tell.
The regime said this is a big conspiracy with Iran to bring back the Assad regime.
The Alawites said, no, this is completely false.
This was a self-defense thing.
But the point is, is once it began, the regime called for a general mobilization.
And tens of thousands of militia members and militias began to swoop down onto the coast in long, that evening, in long, you know, big lines of trucks and everything else.
And many of them put hate in their heart.
They had their jiadas principles of we're going to kill all the Alawites who are unbelievers, calling them pigs, making them bark like dogs.
And we got, you know, this outpouring of videos of whole families being lined up and just shot against walls, being made to bark like dogs and being shot.
So this, some villages, over 200 people were killed and then just laying all over the village.
So it was very brutal.
Five of my wife's cousins had their houses broken into.
People asked them, are you Alawite?
And then they proceeded to steal everything in the house, the car keys.
One of them's son, Haidar, who grew up with my son, was dragged to, he never served in the military.
He was an only son.
You don't have to serve in the military if you're an only son.
He's the breadwinner for the family because the father had died of a heart attack and the mother didn't work.
And he was dragged out to the steppe and just shot summarily.
And this happened in family after family, up and down the coast.
And so it just put terror into the whole minority.
And they began to flood out of the country as a result.
The statistics from the UN show that about 100,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon have returned to Syria since the fall of the regime, Assad regime, mostly Sunnis.
But 100,000 have fled into Lebanon since the fall of the regime, mostly minorities and mostly Alawites who are looking for safety.
So the shoe is on the other Foot, and the regime is increasingly using force and a good dollop of terror in order to try to subjugate the minorities who've been recalcitrant.
And they're a problem, but they don't feel that there's any protection for them.
They don't have any buy-in, and they don't trust this ex-al-Qaeda guy who has a very low regard for these minorities as unbelievers and so forth.
The language that's used by officials is very religious language, and it really marks them out for persecution.
Well, so on that note, how did the government respond recently when there was a suicide bombing in Damascus at a church?
Well, the Christian church, well over 20 people were killed, a bunch wounded.
And the priests and so forth said, we didn't get a visit from the president.
So if the president did finally call them, the minister, the Christian minister, woman minister, did immediately go there.
And in the subsequent days, some other ministers went.
But this is after Christians began to complain that they felt like they weren't treated the same as other people and that the regime didn't really want the president didn't really want to address the issue properly.
So the Christians feel like that the government is begrudgingly recognizing their pain, but not doing it in a serious way.
And so all the minorities are feeling like they're being kicked to the curb.
And it must be said that the minorities were spoiled by the French during the first half of the last century.
They were overrepresented in the military.
Bashar al-Assad and his father were Alawites and they privileged minorities because they needed minority support.
And so many Sunnis feel like the West has supported this, has put up with this, and they've been mistreated for a century and that the minorities are always spoiled and therefore, you know, they're getting their comeuppance.
Well, but the minorities were also protected from sectarian atrocities.
And that's why some of us, just, you know, I'm speaking for myself here, we're opposed to regime change on top of the fact that I don't think we have the right to flood a country with weapons and fuel and arm and al-Qaeda-dominated insurgency.
It's also a disaster for groups like the ones that are being attacked now.
And I think, you know, we're seeing an ongoing reminder of that with all these atrocities.
And that chant that was attributed to some of the early protests, Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the grave, the protest against Assad, I mean, that's proved to be prophetic.
They are sending Alawites now to the grave.
So whether you want to call that previously Alawites being spoiled or just being maybe protected from sectarian murder.
Well, you didn't have to go very far.
You know, when al-Qaeda takes over, even an ex-al-Qaeda guy who's trying to fly right, and he's surrounded by all these al-Qaeda guys, that's what's going to happen.
We saw it in Iraq.
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that minorities are going to get persecuted.
And they are being persecuted, and they're being robbed.
They're having their houses taken over.
So, yes, America was concerned about Iran.
They wanted Iran out of Syria.
They wanted Iran to stop funding Hezbollah.
That was the primary concern of America.
And if having al-Qaeda take over, that was the price.
And in a sense, so that's what's happened.
That's why Jake Sullivan said in that infamous email to Hillary Clinton, Al-Qaeda is on our side in Syria.
Final question for you.
All this is happening at an awkward time for the Trump administration, which is moving to lift sanctions on Syria, the sanctions that helped achieve regime change by basically crippling the country and preventing reconstruction.
But just as Trump is asking for these sanctions to be lifted, you know, we're still seeing all these sectarian atrocities.
So talk to us a bit about the debate that's playing out right now in Washington over whether or not to lift these sanctions, which, in my opinion, again, should never have been imposed in the first place.
We don't have the right to destroy another economy to regime change their government.
But I think they're sadistic and should be removed.
But now there's a problem because of all these sectarian murders that keep happening.
Right.
You know, the first article I wrote after the fall of Assad was about time to lift the sanctions.
Sanctions are a brutal force that hurt the most vulnerable, no doubt about it.
But United States, and understandably, Trump made his deal with the Saudis and the Turks when he was visiting Saudi Arabia, and he said, I'm going to lift all sanctions.
And he embraced Shada.
He said, yes, he's a tough guy, and he's done tough things, but sometimes you need a tough leader to rule a country.
And he said, you know, make Syria great again.
We're not going to be in the business of regime change anymore.
He really slammed George Bush, the sun, and said all that regime change stuff was a big waste of time.
And what have we gotten out of it?
Nothing.
Make America great again.
You know, let the Syrians be Syrians.
And that was translated then into policy by our ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria, Ambassador Barak, who said, we're lifting everything.
We're not demanding anything in exchange.
He did say we want to see Syria.
We want to see Syria fight ISIS, get rid of all the Palestinian groups, join Abraham Accords, get rid of chemical weapons, and there was a few other little items on there.
But mostly, he didn't say anything about human rights, he didn't say anything about minorities, he didn't say anything about democracy because America's finished with democracy promotion in the Middle East.
And in a sense, America threw out the baby with the bathwater.
Yes, you don't, there's unreasonable expectations, but you want to give some guidance and you want to, this might not have happened if the United States had been a little bit firmer, saying you can't do this.
You can't use force to just crush the minorities.
There's got to be some kind of representation.
And, you know, you can work that out.
They're beginning to say it.
There's just a movement in Congress to lift the Caesar sanctions.
There's tons of sanctions on Syria.
The president can lift many of them because they're presidential sanctions.
But the major package, the CSER sanctions, were put on by Congress.
And those are the ones that give secondary sanctions.
So if companies go in and help rebuild Syria, they can be sanctioned.
And Congress, most Republicans voted against lifting those, even though there's a big, you know, all the Syrian opposition who are in favor of the shut up regime tried to, you know, said, we've got to lift them.
We're against Assad.
Now we're good.
And Republicans have been loath to do that.
I think that's because a lot of their minority constituents have been screaming bloody murder and saying, you've got to hold this regime to account.
So they haven't all been lifted.
They've been changed to a certain degree.
It's still unclear what they mean, but they aren't completely gone.
It's such a mess.
And this is what happens when you try to regime change a country.
You end up creating a monster that is really very hard to roll back.
The sanctions regime and now the fact that it's ruled by an offshoot of al-Qaeda.
And I'll just say, as someone on the issue of chemical weapons who's been skeptical of these chemical weapons allegations against the now ousted Syrian government, especially after they destroyed their stockpile in 2013, 2014 under a deal with the OPCW, the fact that they haven't been able to find a trace of Assad's supposed chemical weapons stockpile in the more than seven months since he was ousted, I find that very interesting.
And to me, it bolsters the skepticism that I've had of those allegations, which also were bolstered by things like the OPCW whistleblowers and leaked documents.
Well, you know, let me add that regime change, you know, on your point about regime change being really just a terrible thing to do, most of these countries in the Middle East were established after World War I at the Paris Peace Conference, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, so forth.
They're very young.
Various groups of people who didn't necessarily want to live together were stuck together in these newly drawn nation states and told to get along.
It's been very difficult.
Almost all of the Middle Eastern countries have had dictatorship almost from the beginning because they don't get along and they're fighting over who's going to be on top and so forth.
So there's been a lot of coercion in order to keep people from fighting each other.
And when you, you know, you're trying to do a state building that's going to create a common citizenship and a political community where people will trust each other enough to vote on a constitution and follow the laws.
And that's what's basically required for democracies.
You've got to have some common game rules that everybody buys into.
And that isn't present in most Middle Eastern countries, which is why there remains either kings or dictators.
And it's very difficult to keep people from breaking into civil war.
So when America goes in to these new countries that are still trying to reshape their citizenry and kicks over the state, which was weak to begin with, maybe a little bit muscle-bound with military dictatorship, but not unable to tax their people, unable to really get people to buy in, it turns into civil war.
And that's what happened in Iraq.
That's what happened in Libya.
That's what happened in Afghanistan.
That's what's going to happen in Iran if we try to overturn the regime there.
And it's certainly what happened in Syria.
And you get very long and bloody civil wars with tons of ethnic cleansing.
And that's, you know, it's not a good thing.
And people need to just put regime change out of their minds because Western regime change, you know, the tank, isn't going to produce democracy.
It's going to produce civil war in societies which are trying to find a way to live together and build a common political community.
Joshua Landis, Sandra Mackey, Chair and Professor of Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.
