Hello, everybody. I’m here coming to you from Okura Kuru in New Zealand. Today we’re going to talk about, more consequences of the Syrian civil war coming to an abrupt shift with the fall of the Assad regime. And today we’re going to talk specifically about Iran. Now, Iran’s primary method for intervening in affairs in the Arab world has been through Syria, because here you have a nominally Arab Sunni state in the middle of the region. 

Now, Syria has never been ruled by the Sunni Arabs in the modern age. It’s always been by the Assad family, who are a minority called Alawites, which are generally considered to be a heretical sect. But by influencing, affecting, emboldening and empowering the Assad dynasty, the Iranians were basically able to keep everyone on their toes and off balance. 

One of the things to keep in mind if you’re a country like Iran, which is basically a mountain fortress, is that, if everyone can concentrate on you, you don’t stand a chance. So the trick for successful management is to make sure people are occupied with other problems. And in a world where the dominant superpower is a naval power, the United States. 

You want to keep them locked down with concerns on land somewhere else. And so that’s why the Iranians were always active in Syria. That’s why the Russians were active in Syria. It was just a distraction play more than anything else. Well, now that Syria has fallen, now that the Assads are gone, now that Syria is going to find a different course, Iran is discovering that everything that has worked for in the last 40 years is kind of falling apart all at once. 

Hezbollah, which is the militant faction in Lebanon that intervened in the Syrian civil war and has gone to war with Israel a couple times, has basically been beheaded. And the question is whether it can reform at all. And Hamas is now in a box. That’s the militant group in Gaza, and there’s really nothing left, which means that everyone can focus on Iranian issues that are closer to Iran proper, which is a real problem for the regime. 

Now, I don’t think that overthrowing Iran is even remotely realistic. This isn’t Russia, where it’s a cluster of people at the top. This isn’t China where it’s a one man show. This is not 

Syria where there’s a dynasty. Iran is a theocracy. And so there’s a class of over 10,000 mullahs that rule the country. 

And that would be a hell of an assassination program in order to overthrow the political system. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t threats. And that doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways that Iran can be contained and contained. And mostly that’s going to have to do with local issues that have to do with naval prominence and energy policy. Keep in mind that the Persian Gulf is where half of all internationally traded oil is sourced from Iran, even in low times, is going to be a major oil producer and exporter. 

So as you crunch down the outer perimeter of where the Iranians have influence, and it moves from Lebanon to Syria to Iraq in the Persian Gulf, it is easier for external powers to pressure Iran right at home. In many ways, this is the worst of all worlds. And what we’re probably going to see in the next few years is Iran being forced to respond in kind within its own inner periphery. 

And so that’s less stuff going on in the Levant. That’s less stuff going far away in places like Yemen. And it means having to deal with opposition, both international and local, right around their inner perimeter. Expect to see more going on with Pakistan and the Baluchi rebels that are operate on both sides of the border. With now the Iranians more on the offensive and suffering from Baluchi attacks, rather than empowering them somewhere else. 

Expect to see Azerbaijan, which is majority Shia but secular, taking a more pro-American line to contain Iranian power to the north. Expect to see Iraq empowered, which, you know, Iraq is a majority Shia state, but they’re Arabs and not Persians. And in times when Iran tends to get, how should I say this? Insecure, they tend to be very active in what we think of as Mesopotamia, today’s Iraq. 

And I would expect that to become much more inflamed, especially as Turkey becomes more involved in the broader region. But the real issue, the real fight is going to be between Iran and Saudi Arabia, because they are the two biggest energy powers. They were the two largest economies in the Persian Gulf. And in any scenario where Iran is on the defensive. 

Saudi Arabia has a really big checkbook. And while Sunni militants have hit out at the United States and hit out at Israel and hit out Russia and everyone else, the ethnic group, the religious group that the Sunni Arab militants like okay, are most opposed to are Shia Persians. Most of these groups were originally founded with the intent of taking Iran or its predecessors down a notch or three. 

So expect to see a lot more violence as Saudi Arabia starts to write a lot of checks to hem in Iran on all possible points of the compass. And the only way that Iran can return the favor in any meaningful sense is to do a normal war. So, ironically, the end of Iran’s power in the western parts of the Middle East, in places like Syria, is probably going to lead to a more aggressive Iran. 

And from their point of view, a defensive Iran. And the only way that they can stop the attacks that are likely to increase upon them is to take the fight to a country like Saudi Arabia. That’s, to be perfectly honest, doesn’t have a functional military on its own. So the next chapter of Middle Eastern history isn’t going to be any more or less violent than the one that came before. 

It’s just the violence is going to be further east and closer to Iran’s borders.

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from Egmont National Park. That’s Mount Taranaki in the background. And I’m walking through the ahu Kawakawa swamp, which is nonstandard. Anyway, we’re gonna continue talking about the consequences of the fall of the Syrian government. And today we’re going to cover Israel. There’s an old adage going back to the late 70s, that says that there is no war without Egypt and no peace without Syria. 

The last major Israeli, Arab conflict was in 1973, and it was a surprise attack. That probably shouldn’t have happened, but it ended with a resounding Israeli victory. And after that, it set the stage for peace talks with the Egyptians, which concluded under Jimmy Carter in 1979. But Syria always stayed on the outside. And the whole concept of that phrase is that Israel is a vulnerable state, and until it has peace with all of its neighbors, it has peace with none of its neighbors, because there just isn’t any strategic depth. 

But now the situation has changed. And there is an opportunity here for Israel to do a few things differently, should it so choose, the border with Egypt is internationally monitored, and Egypt is as close to a friend as the Israelis have in the region. And that provides some strategic opportunities here, especially since now that the, northeastern border is open. 

So this is gonna take a few places. First of all, the Golan Heights, that’s a chunk of territory that the Israelis captured from the Syrians in a series of conflicts throughout, the 20th century. It hasn’t really been settled, because there’s always this idea that there was eventually going to be a land for peace deal. Well, that doesn’t have to happen now. 

So you should expect to see the Israelis make the most of what is actually some significantly fertile territory that, could help a country that imports over half of its foodstuffs. Second, the remaining security concerns are now somewhat limited. There’s this thing called the Shia Crescent that starts in Iran, goes through Iraq, through northern Syria and into Lebanon. 

And the idea is this is the area that the Iranians would use to project power. And one of the big fuck ups that the Americans did with the Iraq war is basically shatter what was an Arab Sunni power that ruled that area and allowed the Iranians to penetrate into the region very, very deeply. They don’t control Iraq, but they’re certainly the first power in the country. 

Well, now, with Syria broken. The Shia crescent has been cut in half, and the Iranians can no longer drive or even reliably fly equipment or arms or men, to the western part of the crescent, which means that Hezbollah, which is the militant group that the Iranians founded and sponsored, but the Syrians manage, that operates mostly in Lebanon. 

Is now, I don’t want to say dead. That’s maybe the wrong word, but certainly gutted. And it will have to do with its own resources and without the Syrians or the Iranians to manage them or reinforce them or provide them with weapons. That’s not a lot. And that’s before you consider that over the last couple of months, the Israelis have done a damn solid job of gutting the entire, Hezbollah leadership. 

So there’s still a lot of anger. There’s still plenty of people to recruit from. But as a functional organization, Hezbollah is functionally gone at this point. And with Syria now gone, there’s really no way to rehabilitate it very quickly. This is not the cold War. This is not a period of heavy globalization where freedom of the seas is sacrosanct. 

This is a world where if you want to get equipment from A to B, you have to basically get it there yourselves and provide the military escort that’s necessary. And Iran’s not a naval power. Okay. That just leaves where this all started. In recent days, Hamas in Gaza. Now, my assessment of what’s going on there really hasn’t changed. 

Hamas, rules Gaza. Gaza is occupied territory. As long as it’s occupied territory, there will be no end of people who are willing to fight the occupiers. And the occupiers are the Israelis. The only question is whether or not the organization that runs the place can get enough equipment and weapons, to fight back in a meaningful way like they did, a year ago, October, when they did that big assault that killed a thousand people. 

The Israelis are in the process of crunching that down. They’re building a cordon in the edge of Gaza, and then cutting it in half, basically splitting into tiny little cantons that they feel they can manage more directly. Now, this will guarantee that the population will always be hostile to them. But you’re talking about a low level simmering insurgency, as opposed to something that could generate the military organization that’s necessary to actually attack a state. 

So it’s ugly. It will continue to be ugly in fact, it will probably from a human rights point of view and a starvation point of you get uglier. But that doesn’t mean it’s a threat to the state of Israel. And that’s everybody, everyone around, Israel has now been clipped or befriended. Jordan is basically an economic satellite who’s indirectly sponsored by Israel and the United States. 

Egypt is relatively friendly. Lebanon, in a good day, is a failed state, and without Hezbollah, they might actually be able to make a go of being a semi ish kind of sort of normal state. And Iran lacks the ability to, dick around in Israeli affairs so long as there is no Syria. Now, there’s two things to keep in mind for a longer term. 

First of all, Syria itself. One of the reasons that the Israelis never got involved in the Syrian civil war is they felt that if the majority in Syria was able to take control, the Sunni Arabs, then they would be dealing with something like Gaza and Hamas, but on a much larger scale. And so they didn’t like Assad or Assad Syria, but they felt it was the least bad option. 

So as whatever post-assad Syria consolidates into a new form, the Israelis are going to be acting very, very cautiously. You’re going to be watching very, very closely. And they’re May based on the way politics evolves, maybe a strong, far stronger case for Israeli intervention in post civil war Syria than there was during civil war. 

Syria, of course, will probably have a second civil war. Now all the Sunni Arabs figure out who’s in charge. So as long as it hasn’t consolidated, Israel is fine. Once it starts to consolidate, Israel is going to be watching very closely because it might not like the form that it takes. What’s next? Second. And the bigger question, the longer term question and the question that ultimately is going to occupy, Israeli strategic thinkers for decades is the relationship with Turkey. 

Now, in the past, the Israel Jews got along with the Ottoman Empire. And during the Cold War, the Israelis got along with Cold War era Turkey. But that is not where we are right now. Turkey is in the process of redefining what it is to be Turkish, and based on how that definition goes. There may or may not be room for Israel in that definition. 

The issue is, is that Turkey is a major power and there is nothing that Israel could ever do to change that. And so Israel is stuck dealing with whatever the new Turkish identity happens to be. Now, me taking the arm chair, look, a a turkey that partners with Israel is one that de facto controls the entire eastern Mediterranean. 

Egypt would probably be brought along for the ride and becomes a major regional power in its own right. An Israel that doesn’t get along with Turkey is one that is locked down in a series of local conflicts. That greatly sap its power and its ability to project in any direction. So if the government of Turkey can decide that Jews are okay, then we go one direction. 

And for the powers of Europe, all of a sudden Turkey is a major player that they can’t be ignored. If the Turkish leadership decides that the Jews are the problem, then we have a very different situation with the European side, with the Israelis, to keep the Turks boxed up. Now that is a debate and a question and a time frame that would be decided years from now. 

But now that Syria has been broken, that is the next big thing on the Israeli and the Turkish agenda.