7th, has the international community lost sight of who started this war and how it has changed the world's treatment of Israel?

So I think your question points in the right direction, but I would make a subtle distinction.

It's not so much the international community has forgotten who started the war, but it's created a narrative which nonetheless justifies sort of siding against Israel, even though Hamas started the war.

And the foundation of that narrative, it often begins even with a frank admission that Hamas committed atrocities, murder, rape, killing children in front of their parents.

But then it advances a pose which says that Hamas has fought as sort of a scrappy underdog ever since, and it's Israel who has been committing the atrocities.

And this is deeply false in many respects.

If we just look at the fact that Hamas has effectively used the people of Gaza as a human shield, right, we know it has command centers under hospitals like al-Shifa.

So with that in mind, David, what could the United States at this point do to help bring that along? Empowering maybe it's just—I know we're not going to put boots on the ground, at least we're reluctant to do that, but to empower the Iranian people to throw off this regime.

So three years after October 7th, has the international community lost sight of who started this war and how it has changed the world's treatment of Israel?

So, I think your question points in the right direction, but I would make a subtle distinction.

It's not so much the international community has forgotten who started the war, but it's created a narrative which nonetheless justifies sort of siding against Israel, even though Hamas started the war.

And the foundation of that narrative, it often begins even with a frank admission that Hamas committed atrocities, murder, rape.

killing children in front of their parents.

But then it advances a pose which says that Hamas has fought as sort of a scrappy underdog ever since, and it's Israel who has been committing the atrocities.

And this is deeply false in many respects, if we just look at the fact that Hamas has effectively used the people of Gaza as a human shield.

But to empower the Iranian people to throw off this regime.

So, three years after October 7th, has the in- international community lost sight of who started this war and how it has changed the world's treatment of Israel?

So, I think your question points in the right direction, but I would make a subtle distinction.

It's not so much the international community has forgotten who started the war, but it's a created a narrative which nonetheless justifies, uh, sort of siding against Israel even though Hamas started the war.

And the foundation of that narrative, it often begins even with a frank admission that Hamas committed atrocities, murder, rape, killing children in front of their parents.

But then it, uh, advances a pose which says that Hamas has fought as sort of a scrappy underdog ever since, and it's Israel who has been committing the atrocities.

And th- this is deeply false in many respects if we just look at the fact that Hamas has effectively used the people of Gaza as a human shield, right? We know it has command centers under hospitals, like Al Shifa, they've been found, exposed.

Uh, we've even brought Western journalists, uh, to walk in tunnels under them, uh, under the headquarters of the UN in, in Gaza.

But I, I, I think we're in a, in, in a v- a, a very unique place in the Middle East right now, where it is explosive, and it all goes back to what happened on October the 7th.

Well, let's just start with some background. Syria's interim leader, al-Shara, is also the head of the Islamist rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS. This is a group with past links to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. What is the significance of this group making a deal with the Kurdish forces of SDF? Again, that group's supported by the US.

Sure, I think the important thing to note is for several years, uh, al-Shara, even before he was president, and the group have tried to present themselves as moving on a moderating path and no longer being committed to global jihad. I think it's likely the case they have not directly engaged in international terrorism, although they have many ties to other groups that have not repudiated, uh, those things. They've, uh, feuded with other Al-Qaeda groups. They have feuded with the Islamic State rather bitterly, and they've persuaded a lot of people that they've made this move, but I think there's a lot of open questions about how much they've changed. And of course, now they're effectively in charge, uh, al-Shara is the president. He has installed his HTS allies.... uh, throughout the government, especially in the military and security services. And I think the significance of the deal is it's significance in theory and not significance in fact, that it is very unlikely this will lead to an actual integration. The, the nominal goal of all sides is that Syria should have one national army. Um, but the Syrian democratic forces and their, uh, heavily Kurdish components, uh, really, I think have very little faith in Shara, that he has changed. Me- by the same token, Shara will not really want to accept another group having a force that numbers perhaps as much as 100,000 operating with US support on Syrian territory. So, um, the US helped push this deal. It wants to avoid a bigger conflict, but it might simply be a delaying tactic until we can see more things play out in the Syrian transition.

Well, we know Israel and Iran are watching Syria quite closely, for good reason, as is the rest of the world. What does Syria's interim government and its initial actions mean, in particular, for those two countries, Israel and Iran?

Well, I think there's deep hostility toward Iran from the new, uh, Syrian government, right? Iran backed Assad relentlessly during the civil war. They backed all of his atrocities. They s- they helped form militias, sent Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy and terrorist group in Lebanon, to facilitate everything Assad was doing. And those who were on the receiving end are not likely to forget it any time soon. Hundreds of thousands have died. Tens of thousands disappeared. As for Israel, I think you could tell from some of the public statements of their leaders, um, that they believe once someone was an Al-Qaeda commander and he was commander for quite a long time, they have a very hard time believing that tiger has changed its stripes. Um, that, you know, obviously part of the Al-Qaeda worldview is hating Jews, hating Israel, hating America. Um, and so of, uh, all the audiences that have been exposed to the campaign to show HTS's moderation, Shara's moderation, the Israelis are the ones buying it absolutely the least. On the other hand, what's been somewhat surprising is Shara has clearly signaled a number of times he's not looking for a fight. Um, and I think that's likely because he's in such a weak position. He doesn't have unified control of his own country. Um, in the final days of Assad's rule, Israel destroyed most of the weapon stores that Assad had, and then while Shara deals with other challenges, the last thing he needs is another fight, regardless of what he feels about Israel.

David Adesnik is the vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

But it seems reasonably clear that forces in the Alawite area of Syria on the coast, the Alawites are a minority group in Syria, and the past two presidents, Bashar al-Assad and his father, Hafez al-Assad, were Alawites who ruled brutally with a regime that put Alawites in all the top positions. And of course, Assad, the son, was overthrown in December. And thankfully, that did not turn out to be violent in the sense of seeing these kinds of reprisals. But a number of forces who expressed their loyalty to the old regime seem to have attacked some of the security forces from the new regime, and that set off some worse fighting and cycles of reprisal where civilians became the victims. It seems a large number of Alawites, uh, being shot by forces that are on the side of the regime, although not... the new regime, I should say, the new government, not necessarily official security forces. And that's part of the complexity. You don't really have a coherent army right now on the government side.

Yeah.

He was an Islamic State guy. I mean, he is a guy with a pretty bad background who's then said, "Hey, I've gotten a lot better." And as he was fighting this- the- the very murderous Assad regime, a lot of what he said was about how he was going to go after not just the regime, but Alawites, whose, let's just say they have- they're sort of an offshoot of Islam. So theologically speaking, if you're a Al-Qaeda kind of person, you consider them pretty bad from a religious perspective. But then in the actual battles that brought down the regime, we didn't see this kind of targeting, and there haven't been sort of specific repressive measures so much against them since the- the new government, uh, got into place. The bigger issue is the broad view among Syrians, probably, what, 85% or more who are not Alawite, who say this minority spent the past decade and even the past 50 years butchering us, right? As I said-