“The world is on the brink of a major, major disaster. The prospects are catastrophic. And, I’m not exaggerating at all,” says Gilbert Achcar, a Lebanese professor at SOAS, University of London. He points out that the world is hearing more about the possible use of nuclear weapons than it did during the Cold War.
In an interview with Outlook on the West Asian crisis over Israel’s uncontrolled aggression backed by the US and other Western powers, he says that the episode has completely destroyed all Western pretence of the Rule of Law based on international standards.
“It’s Jungle Rule. We live in a world where might is right. The Western hypocrisy over the Russia-Ukraine war and Israel’s war on Gaza has proved it beyond doubt,” he says.
Watch the full interview with Snigdhendu Bhattacharya on YouTube. He discusses a complex chain of international interests and humanitarian crises.
Reporter: Snigdhendu Bhattacharya
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#NeverEndingWars #ContinuousWars #EndlessWars #PerpetualWars #Outlook #WarAndPeace #Palestine #Gaza #Lebanon
In an interview with Outlook on the West Asian crisis over Israel’s uncontrolled aggression backed by the US and other Western powers, he says that the episode has completely destroyed all Western pretence of the Rule of Law based on international standards.
“It’s Jungle Rule. We live in a world where might is right. The Western hypocrisy over the Russia-Ukraine war and Israel’s war on Gaza has proved it beyond doubt,” he says.
Watch the full interview with Snigdhendu Bhattacharya on YouTube. He discusses a complex chain of international interests and humanitarian crises.
Reporter: Snigdhendu Bhattacharya
Follow us:
Website: https://www.outlookindia.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Outlookindia
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/outlookindia/
X: https://twitter.com/Outlookindia
Whatsapp: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaNrF3v0AgWLA6OnJH0R
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@OutlookMagazine
Dailymotion: https://www.dailymotion.com/outlookindia
#NeverEndingWars #ContinuousWars #EndlessWars #PerpetualWars #Outlook #WarAndPeace #Palestine #Gaza #Lebanon
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NewsTranscript
00:00Israel is continuing on a very aggressive course, the very aggressive course that it
00:15has embarked on, especially since October 23, when the beginning of the war on Gaza
00:23and then Lebanon, and now Syria. I mean, the Israeli armed forces are now in the business
00:33of destroying three territories to a certain extent.
00:43Today we have Professor Gilbert Atkar with us. He is a Lebanese professor who teaches
00:52at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and he is one of the most respected
01:01academics working on this subject globally. It's a pleasure to have you with us, Professor.
01:11So, we would like to hear from you, and let us straight go into the interview.
01:18Thank you very much.
01:20To start with, can you first tell us about the implications of the regime change in Syria?
01:29Well, I wouldn't call that regime change, you know, because regime change is an expression
01:37that has taken a very specific meaning, especially since the US-led invasion of Iraq.
01:44So that would be, you know, some external force working into changing a regime.
01:50No, in that case, I would rather speak of a collapse of the regime.
01:56We have seen a real collapse of the regime in the same way that you had a collapse of the Kabul regime
02:04in 2021, when the US forces started leaving the country.
02:10So, no one called that regime change in the old sense.
02:16Now, it is, of course, an event of huge importance, that's clear.
02:24Why is it so? Because of the role that Syria played as a major platform for Iran, in particular.
02:39And other countries, you know, you had five foreign forces on the Syrian soil.
02:49The first of them is the Israeli, which occupied the Golan Heights in the south of the country.
02:59Since 1967, this has been going on. Then you have the Russian and Iranian forces that intervened.
03:11The Iranians in 2013, or starting from 2013, and the Russians from 2015.
03:17And then you have Turkish troops that invaded, starting from 2016, in particular, some parts of the north,
03:25at the front, at the borders. And you have American troops, which are in the northeast,
03:31in the Kurdish region, in particular. So, it's obvious that the collapse of the Assad regime,
03:41which was shored up by Russia and Iran, has a major strategic significance,
03:51which is why it's such a, you know, I mean, stunning event also at the same time.
04:01And what we see immediately, I mean, the day Assad fled, it was 8.
04:09And from the next morning, on my social media platform, all my Syrian friends,
04:17most of them are refugees living in European countries and other places.
04:23They started in the morning saying, good morning, Syria. So, there was kind of a celebration among Syrians.
04:29Every single Syrian I know, they were celebrating. But then the celebration was also cut short by Israel, mostly.
04:41Of course, there was Turkey and there was also the U.S. These bombardments were there.
04:47But mostly, it is the Israel factor that has kind of cut short their celebratory mode.
04:53And so, the very day that brought the tears of joy in the eyes of Syrians also pushed Palestinians into deeper anxieties.
05:07If you could elaborate a little bit more on the entire complexity of this geopolitical situation and how this is deepening the humanitarian crisis.
05:19I mean, the humanitarian crisis was already there because Syria in the last very few years has already witnessed an economic collapse before the political collapse.
05:33What happened is the development of a mafia-like economy around drugs controlled by the regime.
05:45I mean, some fractions related to the regime, which was really a mafia-like regime itself.
05:55And for the rest of the population, the economic situation was extremely dire. The local currency collapsed.
06:03And therefore, the purchase power of the people collapsed with it.
06:11I mean, the average civil servants would get something like the equivalent of $25 or $30 U.S. dollar per month.
06:21I mean, even in the poorest countries, this is extremely low.
06:31So, you had a humanitarian situation already developing.
06:39And then, you have this collapse of the regime, which opened a very unknown situation.
06:49No one knows where the country is going.
06:53I mean, there are a number of forces still on this country.
06:57The only force that withdrew from the country are the Iranians.
07:04They withdrew with Assad, basically.
07:09But otherwise, you still have four foreign forces and a number of local Syrian forces.
07:19And no one is able to tell what the future would be like.
07:26We know what are the projects of each force, more or less.
07:32But who's going to prevail?
07:36The project that is going to prevail is not known.
07:40Now, Israel has seized this occasion to grab more Syrian land in the Golan and in the chain of mountains that is also at the Lebanese border.
08:07But even more importantly, Israel has launched hundreds of air raids in a very few days, destroying, according to Israeli sources themselves, 80% of the Syrian military potential.
08:32That is the military potential that the regime had, the official or regular army of the regime.
08:44So, they destroyed the naval force of the regime.
08:50They destroyed the air force.
08:52They destroyed the anti-aircraft missiles and the rest.
08:58This is a complete destruction of the military capability of a country by another in almost total global indifference.
09:07I mean, this is amazing that this drew very little objection or protest.
09:16So, Israel is continuing on a very aggressive course, the very aggressive course that it has embarked on, especially since October 23, when the beginning of the war on Gaza happened after the Hamas attack, and then Lebanon, and now Syria.
09:43I mean, the Israeli armed forces are now in the business of destroying three territories to a certain extent, and two supposedly sovereign countries, Lebanon and Syria.
10:01So, yes.
10:03So, all this, of course, is creating even more uncertainty about the future.
10:12And so, at the same time that you had, especially during the first few days or the first week or even now, huge relief and joy at the collapse of such a brutal, tyrannic regime with hundreds of thousands of people who have been incarcerated.
10:43Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people disappeared, killed, you know, in the jails, in the carceral system of the Assad family.
10:54I mean, of course, this has been a huge relief, but as happens frequently in such cases, when you have such a quasi-totalitarian regime collapsing, then, I mean, in the absence of a, you know, ready-made alternative, readily present alternative,
11:18then, of course, at the same time, you have a lot of anxiety about how things will go.
11:25But at the very least, people now can breathe for now, and they are trying to organize.
11:33Now, you have the civil society trying to, you know, to get alive again, to reorganize, to organize, actually.
11:46And that's the most positive element in the present situation.
11:53These attempts by the civil society to organize.
12:00And how does it impact Palestine's cause?
12:03The Hamas, in particular, I mean, looked at the Syrian regime as part of what the so-called axis of resistance that is dominated by Tehran, by Iran.
12:21And even though Hamas had been at odds with the Assad regime for several years because they supported the opposition to the regime, they supported the uprising against the regime in 2011,
12:38they ended up mending fences with the regime as, you know, part of their also re-establishing alliance with Iran.
12:55And when they launched their operation on 7 October 2023, they appealed to Iran and the so-called axis of resistance to join them in the battle to liberate Palestine, as they proclaimed at that point.
13:17Now, with the collapse of the regime, we have seen Hamas congratulating the Syrian people.
13:26So, again, they are changing tack, if one could say.
13:31And they are now betting on the fact that those Islamic forces that have played a key role in the downfall of the regime, which include forces linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.
13:52And as you know, Hamas itself is a branch, is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a regional organization.
14:01So, they get into the situation where after having regarded Assad as an ally, they again see his downfall as something positive.
14:20So, I think at this level, it is not clear what whatever, I mean, actually, because we don't know what kind of political power will result in Syria from all this.
14:41We can't say anything about what its position would be about Palestine.
14:47But one thing is sure, the destruction of the military potential of the Syrian state, of course, weakens very much all opposition to the Israeli state.
15:02How do you think Hezbollah is going to be impacted?
15:06Hezbollah is, I mean, a major casualty, if you want, of all this, in the sense that they have been dealt very severe blows by Israel since Israel launched its offensive last September until late November.
15:31So, during a couple of months, you've had a very intensive attack by the Israeli forces on Hezbollah, which went far beyond anything that we have seen in Lebanon before, far beyond the 2006 Israeli onslaught on Hezbollah.
15:53And this time, unlike 2006, this time the Israeli attack managed to really deal a very heavy blow to Hezbollah.
16:09They completely decapitated the organization, as you know, including the secretary general who was assassinated, but I mean, practically the vast majority of the key leaders of the organization were killed, assassinated.
16:27The capacity, the military capacity has been destroyed to a large extent.
16:33And now with the downfall of the Syrian regime, which was the conduit through which Iran could send weapons to Hezbollah, the prospect of Hezbollah being rearmed, as happened after 2006,
16:49this time, this is practically, if not impossible, at the very least, this would be extremely difficult.
17:01I mean, I can't see or imagine how Iran could rearm Hezbollah, how Hezbollah could reconstitute the kind of arsenal that they had prior to all this.
17:15So, yes, major defeat for Hezbollah, major defeat for Iran.
17:21Iran has lost a lot in all this, is very much weakened.
17:27And this happens at a time when Donald Trump has been re-elected or elected for a second term in the United States.
17:38We know how hostile Donald Trump is or has been to Iran during his first term.
17:49We know that he is surrounded by people who are very much anti-Iran.
17:57And therefore, Iran has a good reason to fear an attack, either by a combined attack of the United States and Israel or of the United States alone under Donald Trump, targeting its nuclear installations in particular.
18:21This has become very possible, very likely, I would say.
18:28And yes, this is the most important thing that people will be watching in the coming period, you know, next year.
18:39And that would be the key point, because Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, will push very hard for an attack on Iran.
18:51This is very clearly something that he has been wishing for for very long.
18:55He can't do it alone. Israel can't do it alone.
18:58They need the United States for that.
19:00And now is the time for that in the mind of Netanyahu with his friend Donald Trump back at the White House.
19:12Do you see the possibility of any other axis of resistance or whatever it may be called developing against the U.S.-Israel alliance?
19:25This so-called axis of resistance, the only two, I mean, besides Iran itself, the only two Iranian allies that are still there with some capacity are the pro-Iran Shia militias in Iraq.
19:47But their effectiveness, I mean, regarding Israel or even the United States is very limited.
19:58Every time they try to strike at U.S. forces, they got powerful retaliation from the United States.
20:08And then you have Yemen, the Yemenis, the Houthis in Yemen, that is North Yemen, who have been launching missiles, as you know, in the Red Sea and also on Israel.
20:22Now, most of these missiles, especially those launched on Israel, are intercepted.
20:29But every now and then something goes through and Israel, just very recently, escalated its retaliation against Yemen, against the Houthis in Yemen.
20:48And they would probably go beyond that if this carries on.
20:54So, I mean, either these militias in Iraq or the Houthis in Yemen, or today Hezbollah, which is very weakened, none of this represents any strong deterrent for Israel or the United States.
21:15So, basically, Iran has been strategically weakened. It's a strategic defeat that we have witnessed now for Iran.
21:25It is definitely a strategic defeat and they are now in a much weaker position at a time of very increased danger for them.
21:37So, at the same time, we find the Palestinians all the more vulnerable.
21:42Whatever Iran is, we could see that Israel could launch and wage a genocidal war in Gaza for now over a year, okay, in impunity.
22:04So, they destroyed Gaza, basically, they committed a real genocide, as is now exposed and denounced by all human rights organizations, like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Médecins Sans Frontières, that is Doctors Without Borders, plus the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court.
22:31And yet, they have been carrying on, you know, for now 14 months.
22:37So, I mean, the Palestinians are in, I mean, as a people, as a cause, are today in a very, very, very difficult situation.
22:49The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is reviving its role as a kind of proxy for the occupation, and that is also quite, I mean, dangerous for the future of the Palestinian people.
23:14And so, yes, I mean, the situation is extremely difficult.
23:18You were just talking, speaking about the possibility of US under Donald Trump trying to attack Iran, or at least destroy its nuclear facilities.
23:32Now, this reminds me of something that happened two decades ago, when the previous, when George Bush's government, they said that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and invaded Iraq.
23:53And to many, many, many observers, that was the point that pushed the entire West Asia into chaos, and the US invasion of Iraq.
24:08And then, what about the weapons of mass destruction? And full of the so-called International Court of Justice and others, I mean, we have seen Saddam Hussein being tried and hanged for war crimes.
24:29But who will hold America responsible for what they did to Iraq on an acquisition that they couldn't prove?
24:39There is a major difference between the case of Iraq that you mentioned and that of Iran.
24:48Iraq had zero weapons of mass destruction when the United States led the invasion of the country in 2003.
25:00And that was proved because they searched everything, couldn't find any trace of those weapons of mass destruction that they claimed that Iraq had to justify their invasion of the country,
25:14which was actually very hypocritical because, I mean, they have been told by every kind of source, and I'm sure their own intelligence showed that this was not true.
25:26The George W. Bush administration just blatantly lied, you know.
25:31Now, in the case of Iran, first of all, there are nuclear installations, there is important nuclear production potential in the country.
25:48There have been agreements with the International Atomic Agency for control of these facilities.
26:02That was part of also the nuclear deal that the Barack Obama administration in the United States cut with Iran in the year 2015.
26:13But as you know, Donald Trump, during his first term, repudiated this agreement.
26:21And so Iran felt itself freed from its commitment not to enrich uranium beyond a certain limit.
26:32And they have been producing highly enriched uranium, which, of course, normally can serve only one thing, which is the production of nuclear weapons.
26:45And this is obvious, and even the International Atomic Agency has been pointing to that and warning Iran about it.
26:54So you will see, or we might see, something like a race between Iran now, because of its weakening, prompted to accelerate the production of a nuclear weapon as a deterrent against an attack, and the attack.
27:20That's why it's not a matter of years, it's a matter of maybe months, a few months, that we will see something happening at this level.
27:31Either, well, the Iranian leadership completely capitulates and, you know, gets back to allows real inspection of its facilities and all that.
27:45Or it is quite likely, quite possible that the United States would strike at these facilities, I mean, the Donald Trump administration.
27:57So this is the situation in which we are.
28:02And I mean, in that regard, this is, of course, much more dangerous than the invasion of Iran.
28:16Even though you won't have an invasion of Iran, no one is planning to invade Iran.
28:22I mean, no one is crazy for that.
28:24United States, no, that would be just an airstrike.
28:28But it has the potential of igniting the whole region, which is a powder keg already, and an oil barrel.
28:38It's like, you know, sending a rocket into a huge oil barrel or a huge oil reserve.
28:45And that's what you could get.
28:48And yes, so we will have to watch, but I'm afraid the Middle East is not out of the bush.
28:57And we are now coming towards the end of the conversation.
29:03And I would like to know one more thing about you.
29:07It is quite widely discussed that Israel also has nuclear weapons.
29:11How do you see the role of the Western powers on this point?
29:15The role of the Western powers on Iran or in general?
29:20On Israel's nuclear facilities.
29:25Well, the Western powers, the most important among them is actually an integral part of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza.
29:38This is the first, actually the first, I described it in articles as the first joint U.S.-Israeli war ever.
29:47I mean, if you take all the wars in the history of the Israeli state since 1948, when it was founded,
29:57this is the first one which can be described as a fully joint war between the United States and Israel.
30:04The only thing that is missing is troops on the ground.
30:10I mean, the United States is not part of the attack on Gaza, but it has armed,
30:17especially providing the bombs that destroyed the Gaza Strip.
30:22It has funded, it has condoned, defended politically,
30:26it has defended militarily by deploying its troops in the region against any potential action by any enemy of Israel.
30:37And it has blocked any calls for a ceasefire.
30:42So that is a full endorsement combined with a full participation materially in the war.
30:51Now, the other, the European states, you have to see which state, I mean, some of them took what,
31:01I mean, what could be described as relatively righteous positions, just positions, you know,
31:12I mean, states like Spain, Ireland, Ireland to the point that Israel cut its diplomatic or withdrew its ambassador
31:21I mean, these, you have a few countries, Belgium, that took positions that are closer to the respect of international law.
31:32But for most others, especially Germany, the position has been one of full endorsement,
31:41unconditional almost endorsement of what Israel has been doing.
31:45And this has completely ruined, this plus the U.S. attitude,
31:51has completely ruined the pretense of, you know, the Western pretense of rules-based liberal international order, as they call it.
32:05And the double standard, when you compare the reaction to Ukraine, to the Russian invasion of Ukraine,
32:17and to the Israeli invasion of Gaza, the huge difference is, you know, is a complete,
32:25brought a complete discredit to any pretense by the states of respect of international law, equity, human rights, and all that.
32:39So in that sense, I believe that what we have seen is really the final nail in the coffin
32:48of some kind of a Western liberal pretense.
32:56And that's not to say that the alternative is better.
33:02It's just to say that the world in which we are is more and more, unfortunately,
33:09a world that is ruled by the law of the jungle.
33:15That is the law of the strongest.
33:19One last question. Do you have any message for the people in general?
33:27The world people, I mean, everywhere, we are faced with the 21st century equivalent
33:38of the rise of the totalitarian states in the 1930s.
33:45That is a century ago, when you had the rise, especially of Nazism, fascism.
33:52You had Stalinism in the Soviet Union.
33:55I mean, we are getting into a 21st century version of that.
34:00Fortunately, it's less tragic until now, if you compare to what happened with Nazism, fascism, and the rest.
34:13But there is a great risk involved.
34:18And that is combined with something that they didn't know about or didn't feel about in the 20th century or a century ago,
34:27which is the climate.
34:30We are facing a global catastrophe, which has begun.
34:37And therefore, if the people don't rise up and fight for the defense of democracy
34:51against those far-right trends that we see worldwide,
34:57and for peace, for reviving a world based on the UN Charter, on international law,
35:08and a world where instead of spending trillions, trillions of dollars on weapons,
35:18those monies should be spent on the fight against climate change and against poverty.
35:25If this doesn't happen, then our humanity is facing a terrible, terrible fate.
35:37Well, actually, your answer triggered one more question, so we will end it with this final question.
35:43This is about the point that you said, this money on the war on weapons, this weapon industry.
35:50And so it's not only just West Asia, but large parts of Africa is also in a state of civil war.
36:02And it is being alleged that this civil war in each country is being quelled by other international players,
36:11which have interest in resources and especially in the weapons manufacturing industry.
36:17How do you see the role of this weapon industry in escalating the entire chaos in the African part and the Western Asian part?
36:34It has been predicted long ago that the world would see an increase in resource wars, as they were called, wars for resources.
36:46But what we are seeing is, I mean, you've had some of these on the African continent for a while, like the Congo,
36:57where you have an ongoing tragedy with global indifference.
37:02I mean, Congo has lost over the last few decades millions of people dying because of those conditions.
37:12Now, we are seeing also the development of state collapses, you know, what they call failed states,
37:25and whole countries sinking into chaos and civil wars.
37:32Not necessarily related to resources, even though, of course, it depends on the case.
37:37For instance, in Libya, of course, this is a country with a very big oil wealth,
37:44and this is fueling the war there, and you've had foreign interference.
37:54So, I mean, you take every of these countries, you'll see several foreign players.
37:59If you take Libya, you have Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Russia on one side, Turkey and Qatar, the Emirate of Qatar on the other side.
38:11Sudan has also gone now into civil wars, you know, which, again, is one where you have some foreign interference,
38:23especially that of the United Arab Emirates.
38:27And you had Yemen, you know, we mentioned Yemen, but Yemen you had years now,
38:35almost 10 years of war in the country, which stopped over the last couple of years.
38:43But this is not a country that is out of this, and that used to be a unified country since 1990.
38:57Now it is again divided.
39:00So, no, this is, I mean, a very worrying trend, which is related, you know,
39:09to the fact that precisely we are more and more into the law of the jungle at the global level.
39:17And I'll tell you the key difference here with the Cold War, the first Cold War,
39:24which was when you had two empires, the US Empire and the Soviet Empire,
39:30and they were in control of, you know, major parts of our planet.
39:36And therefore, that was at the same time, keeping the global situation within a certain degree of stability.
39:47This has, this is ended.
39:51The United States doesn't have the same clout that it had in the second half of the 20th century
40:02and the beginning of our century.
40:06And it is itself out of the bond with the people like Donald Trump and the rest.
40:12You have a Russia that is much more predatory than whatever the Soviet Union was.
40:23The Soviet Union was actually a quite conservative state in terms of going beyond its sphere of influence.
40:35Whereas Russia has been multiplying interventions under Vladimir Putin in the Middle East, in Africa, other places.
40:45And of course, until the invasion of Ukraine.
40:48So, no, we, as I was saying, I mean, we are really facing at the global level, something that is very, very dangerous.
40:58And this is increasing all kinds of humanitarian situations, refugees, masses of refugees.
41:04And then you have a vicious circle, because the more refugees go to the Western countries,
41:10the more far right movement are exploiting this.
41:14Yeah, so we get into a really impossible situation.
41:18And yes, I mean, that's why it is really, really urgent to act to reverse this.
41:27The world is kind of on the brink of a major, major disaster.
41:32Oh, yes, we have begun.
41:35We are in the course now of a disaster, which if we don't stop it,
41:39will can lead to, you know, I mean, all sorts of terrible things.
41:46Add to all this the fact that we are hearing more about use of nuclear weapons than we used to hear, even during the Cold War.
41:56I mean, aside from the Cuban crisis in the Cuban Missile Crisis 1962,
42:01we have never been hearing more than today with Russia and Ukraine and all this about.
42:11And now Iran and those is about the possible use of nuclear weapons.
42:16So, I mean, this is really catastrophic.
42:19And I'm not exaggerating at all.
42:23I think this is we have to acknowledge the degree of the danger for humanity.
42:36And that's why it is absolutely urgent to act against this.
42:44And we shall see.
42:46Let us hope that good sense will prevail,
42:49if not on the imperial forces, at least on the part of the people.
42:56Let us hope and let us hope end this on a note of wishing something,
43:05maybe something that is beyond our imagination right now.
43:11Thank you so much.