12 Comments

Excellent article. I was shocked and disappointed by Assad's easy defeat but now i understand why. Thanks Jo-Jo!

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I think this is more of a rotation than a revolution. Assad is too civilized to plunge his country into a second civil war. His side was not going to win a second round, with Turkiye and USA giving focused help. Half the US fleet is roaming the seas outside of Damascus, too. His beautiful family would have been in danger from Uncle Sam's floating murder machines.

There is really nothing left in Syria to defend, anyways. It produces nothing after the civil war, and the marines are sitting on the oil fields, which was a great move by America. Really killed the Syrian state, along with the sanctions. I wouldn't die for what is left there, and neither would a typical Syrian Arab Army soldier. This is a smart capitulation. Now the West has to prop up another failed state, hastening the bankrupting of America. The optics of supporting ISIS (just look at that new Syrian flag!!) are TERRIBLE, as well.

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I think we should thank Russia for giving Bashar al-Assad asylum and not giving their family the Romanov treament, given the history of these types of forced revolts beforehand, like in pre-war Libya and Tsarist Russia.

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I agree. Its okay to celebrate this sort of thing as a symbolic victory, at least. His General Mahmoud looks like he literally got his balls ripped off with a hammer claw, though. There will be thousands slaughtered, and millions kept living in terror. The next thing America sends there should be nuclear powered Terminator robot forcibly converting these people to Hinduism. It could happen.

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I'm quite a bit more pessimistic than you are. I would love to get some feedback on this, because it makes me somewhat depressed. I think that there's a very good chance that israel will be able to achieve normalization with syria and lebanon, along with israel taking both southern syria and southern lebanon.

1. For syria, israel is taking land. They will probably try to make the case to the syrian government to exchange some of the land in exchange for normalization.

I guess our best hope is some Syrians wake up to prevent this. Additionally maybe iran can set up some militias to fight normalization.

2. I'm particularly worried for lebanon. Israel could start allowing militants to flow into lebanon and use that as a threat to encourage normalization. Additionally, israel could invade lebanon from the east, take the areas where there are few shia, and then try to cut off south lebanon from the north. Then they could use withdrawal to try to achieve a normalization deal.

Here, I'm a bit more hopeful because hezbollah is both very popular in lebanon and a very powerful force. Hezbollah is going to have to fight very hard to be able to prevent normalization and get (some) of their land back.

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US and Israel as peripheral players. Fascinating analysis.

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I think America is going to have buyer's remorse here in about five seconds. They are now basically guarding the oilfields of ISIS for Erdogan to exploit.

I was in southern Turkiye a few years ago. It was incredibly obvious that they are driving billions of litres of fuel from the Syrian oil fields, through Turkiye for sale. That region is basically a medieval agricultural region, but has brand new, Starship Enterprise-lookin' gas stations everywhere, and brand new German trucks constantly hauling fuel from the east.

America just shot three toes off its right foot. The torch of resistance seems to have just been passed from the Shiaa to the Sunni. And while Arabs have been pretty useless in the last century, that is changing. Turkish drones are some of the best, they were used to mangle Armenia and Ukraine. Turkish power growing is not in American interest, its a direct competitor.

Great article. Suck it, Keith Woods, JJ is mad smaht.

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Wait, I wouldn’t go that far. Iran is still an actual adversary to israel. They attack israel directly and so do their allied militias (pmf, ansarallah, and hezbollah).

Turkey can be palestine's primary backer once they cut oil supplies to israel, cut relations, and actually fire a missile at israel.

I think my viewpoint is consistent with the claims of the article.

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Iran's ability to hit Israel through proxies is greatly reduced, though. They could ramp it up with Sunni Jihadist permission. Its hard to tell how these people think. Sometimes I think they like Zionists better than each other.

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Even if, hypothetically, in the worst case scenario, Lebanon and Syria are totally crushed, with both governments normalizing, we'd still be in a situation where Iran is a better ally for the Palestinians than Turkey. This is because Iran is ideologically anti-Israel, their media is anti-Israel, and they don't trade with Israel. On the other hand, Turkey is trading with Israel and all we have from Erdogan is some vague public statements supporting Palestine.

I'm not sure we'll see this worst case scenario. Hezbollah could still hang on in Lebanon and maybe we'll see something better emerge in Syria. But I'm not so hopeful on the latter.

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so about 5,000 of the jihadists are Uighurs trained in Turkish run terrorist camps who will then be infiltrated back into China to be activated when the time comes

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Turkey and HTS's actions are profoundly dishonorable. They could have asked for a right of passage to south lebanon to confront the zionist aggression. Instead they put their own selfish interests first.

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