Geopolitical Roundtable: Middle East & Caucasus in Crisis | Syriana Analysis

What’s being created across this region is not a peaceful architecture. It’s a war ecosystem.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down again with George Szamuely and Peter Lavelle on their show The Gaggle, for what turned into a long, sobering dive into the collapse of Syrian nationhood, the real meaning behind the latest Israeli strikes, and the broader American-Israeli strategy of permanent fragmentation across West Asia. There’s a sickness afflicting Syria and its neighbors, one imposed from without but now metastasizing from within.

Let’s begin in Suwayda—a once relatively stable Syrian-Druze-majority region in southern Syria, now plunged into violent chaos. They told us Suwayda was a local issue. A tribal misunderstanding. Just Bedouins and Druze clashing over territory. Nonsense.

What happened in Suwayda was the latest act in a long, orchestrated play: the disintegration of Syria into sectarian bantustans, ruled by militias, protected by foreign powers, and poisoned with despair.

I said this a year ago, and I’ll say it again now: this is a foreign-designed permanent war, meant to dismantle Syrian nationhood, community by community, identity by identity until we forget what Syria ever was.

Let’s speak plainly. Julani didn’t march into Suwayda to impose governance. He came to cleanse. His al-Qaeda thugs, armed with Wahhabi ideology, called the Druze “kuffar” and dragged fathers from their homes to be executed in the street. And then, as if on cue, Israel swooped in, bombed his convoy, and declared itself the savior of the Druze. The script was written long before the cameras rolled.

And you know what? It worked. When your children are being slaughtered for the crime of existing, you’ll accept protection from anyone. Even Israel. That is the psychological operation. Terrorize them, then offer shelter. You break their will and then sell them false salvation.

And this is not new. This is not even creative. It’s colonialism, dressed up as humanitarianism. They used to call it “protecting minorities.” Now they call it “buffer zones.” Either way, it’s the same game.

The so-called "David’s Corridor" from the occupied Golan Heights through Suwayda to the Tanf base and onto the Euphrates is no fantasy. It’s already half built. A demilitarized strip under Israeli and American watch, cutting southern Syria off from Damascus. Autonomous councils are being formed. School curricula rewritten. Fuel, electricity, and hospitals detached from the state. It’s the Kurdish model, now applied to the Druze.

You don’t need to conquer Syria to destroy it. You just need to carve it up into non-communicating enclaves, each begging for foreign aid and fighting its neighbors. And if that doesn’t look like a new Sykes-Picot, you’re not paying attention.

And who gave Julani the green light to move on to Suwayda? He went to Baku, met with Israeli officials, “misunderstood” the winks and nods from Washington’s envoy Tom Barrack, and launched his campaign of blood. But I don’t think he misunderstood anything. He knew exactly what he was doing. And so did his backers—the Turks, the British, the Americans. The same people who spent years laundering his image, calling him a “former extremist,” now want him to be Syria’s strongman.

I must ask: Why Julani? Why a man whose ideology rejects everyone outside his narrow Takfiri interpretation? Why not any of the civilian opposition figures—Sunnis, nationalists, intellectuals—who fled Assad but retained their civility and humanity? The answer is obvious. Julani will divide. The others might unite.

What’s happening now is worse than war. It is the systematic erasure of Syrian national identity. A year ago, we still said “Syrians.” Now we say “Druze,” “Alawites,” “Kurds,” “Sunnis,” “Christians.” What was once a mosaic is now a map of fault lines.

And yet, we Syrians bear part of the blame. We disarmed too quickly. We believed the lies again. We thought that if we cooperated, if we behaved, if we submitted, maybe we’d get peace. Instead, we got partition.

And let me say something to those in Lebanon still calling for Hezbollah’s disarmament. Look at what happened in Suwayda. A Druze scientist, a man who spent 14 years in exile, returned home thinking the war was over, only to be executed on camera for the crime of being born Druze. The man who killed him couldn’t read his own name if you handed him a passport. That is the new Syria, built by Western NGOs and Arab-funded propaganda outlets like Al Jazeera.

So to the Lebanese who think they are immune: You are not. Al-Qaeda and its affiliates are recruiting in Tripoli and Akkar. The plan is already in motion. Create a Sunni-Shia civil war. And while you bleed, Israel watches and waits.

And what of Iran? Cornered. Pressured from Azerbaijan and Turkey in the north, threatened by Israel and America in the south. They played it safe, believing patience would protect them. But the walls are closing in. Tehran can no longer afford to lead from behind. The frontlines are now at its borders.

Pashinyan in Armenia? He is not a president. He is an employee tasked with dismantling his own country from within. He purged the army. He handed over Karabakh. And now he undermines the church and the very idea of Armenian identity. I’m a fourth-generation survivor of the Armenian genocide. I know what national death looks like. It starts with the loss of memory.

When people forget who they are, they become easy to rule or easy to erase.

Turkey, meanwhile, plays both sides masterfully. Erdogan is many things, but he is not stupid. He arms al-Qaeda with one hand and negotiates with Moscow with the other. He sends drones to Ukraine while cutting deals with Tehran. His vision is clear: Turkish power, exported into Central Asia and the Arab world, using Muslim Brotherhood proxies and economic leverage. And unlike Iran, Turkey moves quickly. They don’t wait to be attacked. They attack first.

Let me be clear: I have no illusions about Assad. His regime was repressive, often corrupt. But let me ask you: under Julani, what will you have? No political rights, and no right to live if you are born Druze, Alawite, Christian, or even the wrong kind of Sunni.

At least under political authoritarianism, you could survive if you avoided politics. Under Salafi rule, your existence is the crime.

And to those clinging to international law—wake up. There is no law. There are only weapons and narratives. The West uses “law” like a club, swinging it only when it suits its interests. If law mattered, Palestinians would be free. If law mattered, Iraq wouldn’t have been invaded. If law mattered, Syria wouldn’t be divided.

What’s being created across this region is not a peaceful architecture. It’s a war ecosystem. Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Armenia—they are all being carved, isolated, neutralized. And at the center of this plan is the same state that has never accepted its own borders: Israel. A greater Israel, fed by Arab division, fueled by American firepower, protected by lies.

So I say this again: Syria is dying. But not from within. From above. From outside. From carefully crafted chaos.

We don’t need five mini-states. We don’t need a federal system. We need memory. We need history. We need to remember who we were before they made us forget.

And maybe, just maybe, we need to stop waiting for someone to save us and start saving ourselves.

—Kevork Almassian is a Syrian journalist, geopolitical analyst, and the founder of Syriana Analysis.