In an interview with Tucker Carlson, American economist Jeffrey Sachs revealed that the fall of the Assad regime in Syria was not a sudden outcome but a “culmination of a long-term effort by Israel to reshape the Middle East in its image.”
One of the world’s leading experts on economic development, Sachs stated that efforts to overthrow al-Assad in 2024 began 30 years ago. To understand what happened in Syria, he cited the incident when Wesley Clark, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO from 1997 to 2000, went to the Pentagon after 9/11 and was told that there would be seven wars in the span of the next five years to “remake the Middle East.”
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The seven countries in the list were Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan. Out of these seven countries, the US has been in war with six of them on behalf of Israel, including in Syria, observed Sachs.
He traced all the way back to 1996, when American advisors made a political document called ‘A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,’ or commonly known as ‘Clean Break,’ for Benjamin Netanyahu when he became the Prime Minister of Israel. “After 9/11, it went into full gear with the Iraq wars being the first of those wars,” said Sachs.
Highlighting Netanyahu’s modus operandi, Sachs said, “Israel was not going to have land for peace, the idea that Israel would have a Palestinian state next door. No, we’re (Israel) going to have ‘Greater Israel,’ and we’re just going to bash anybody that doesn’t like it, and we’re going to do that by bringing down any government that supports the Palestinians.”
‘From the river to the sea,’ the Palestine chant of resistance, is the literal idea and vision of Israel. Controlling or annexing the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea is the idea of ‘Greater Israel,’ emphasised Sachs.
“It has been Netanyahu’s MO since 1996, and he has been the PM more than half the time. And the US goes to war on his behalf. What happened in Syria is the culmination of that effort,” he added.
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Sachs revealed that according to the timeline of the ‘Seven Wars’ document, after the Iraq War, Syria was supposed to be the next in line. But because the US got “bogged down” in Iraq and the subsequent insurgency in the region, the US did not move forward with Syria.
“It (the war in Syria) was to happen 20 years ago. What brought Assad down started under Obama,” he said. Barack Obama, the 44th President of the USA, ordered the CIA to overthrow Assad in 2011. Under his regime, there was a war in Libya as well.
When Carlson asked if Syria was ever a threat to the US, Sachs said a defiant no.
“Syria was not a threat to the US whatsoever, but it was deemed to be by Netanyahu a threat to Israel because of a simple reason. He wants to rule all over Palestine, the Palestinian people, and doesn’t want a Palestinian state. That has led to a militant opposition, Hamas, Hezbollah, and others,” he stated.
As he counted down each of the seven countries and their current status, Sachs warned, “The only war that hasn’t happened is Iran. If you watch every day now, the mainstream media is pushing for a US war with Iran. Netanyahu wants it. They want 7 out of 7.”
Calling the fall of al-Assad part of a “30-year effort,” Sachs noted, “This is Netanyahu’s war to remake the Middle East. It’s been a disaster and continues to be a disaster. But as Netanyahu himself said after Assad left, “We’ve remade the Middle East.’”
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The economist also emphasised, “It doesn’t really matter who is the president. This is long-term deep state policy.”
Following the fall of al-Assad regime, Israel has launched more than 300 bomb attacks in Syria. Israel PM Netanyahu told the Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) to to grab the buffer zone, established in a 1974 ceasefire with Syria, shortly after al-Assad was overthrown. He said the occupied Golan Heights would remain with Israel “for eternity.”
On Sunday, Israel carried out its most violent attack since 2012 in the region with an Israeli bomb going off in northwestern Syria near the city of Tartus, leading to a supposed giant mushroom cloud fireball. The powerful explosion was measured as a 3.1 magnitude earthquake on the seismic sensor, according to a war monitor group, cited by various media reports.