Date: Sunday, 19 October 2025
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/the-first-ever-objective-comprehensive
https://theduran.com/the-first-ever-objective-comprehensive-news-report-on-todays
The First-Ever Objective Comprehensive News-Report on Today’s Syria
18 October 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
https://beeley.substack.com/p/a-dark-day-in-russian-history-i-discuss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgkjMMMryV8
“Vanessa Beeley | Putin Al-Jolani Meeting Explained: Russia Israel Axis Reshapes Middle East”
Jamarl Thomas interviews Vanessa Beeley, 51 minutes
18 October 2025
Vanessa Beeley is the most-knowledgeable and objective expert reporter on Syria — she understands and honestly reports the power-relationships that have been shaping and continue to shape Syria. No other reporter comes even close to matching her as an honest and expert journalist about Syria. This video is therefore a must for anyone who wants to understand today’s Syria and how it came about and where it’s heading, and why it is heading there.
Her topic also includes Syria’s relationships to Israel, Russia, U.S., Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Hezbollah, ISIS, Al Qaeda, and Africa, and also the relationships between those forces.
Practically everyone will learn from it crucial things they didn’t know, nor even imagine. (Mainstream reporting, throughout the U.S. empire, on Syria, is and has always been a pack of lies generated from the U.S. Government and its agents.) For example, only a genius such as she is able credibly to answer the questions from her interviewer in this segment:
BEELEY: He [Assad] wasn't fully
36:57
doing what he I think Russia wanted him to do, which was to expel Iran and
37:03
Hezbollah completely. Remember back in 2018 there was a bit of a row between
37:09
Iran and Russia because Russia was pushing Assad to do that back then. So that was back in 2018, right?
37:16
INTERVIEWER: Why was Russia, this is — why was Russia pushing him to expel Iran? Both of these
37:21
countries were working together in order to beat back the terrorists the first time around.
37:28
BEELEY: Um, I think, because Russia basically wanted um the share of the the largest
37:33
share of influence in Syria. Iran was seen as a threat because if if Iran uh expanded into
37:41
Syria, this is how I believe Russia saw it. And I was told this by a number of Russian officials over the years that I
37:48
was in Syria, that they saw Iran not so much as an ally, but as a competitor in
37:55
Syria. You know, we we have to remember this is real politics. this this isn’t,
38:01
um, even though Russia has now the the the strategic partnership with Iran, it
38:07
still doesn't have a mutual defense clause in it. So, in other words, if Israel goes to war again with Iran,
38:14
Russia is not physically going to come in and help Iran, but it will do that
38:20
for North Korea. It has a mutual defense pact with North Korea where they will come to each other's defense if either
38:26
country is attacked. They don't have that clause in the agreement with Iran. And they need Iran to some degree. They
38:34
need Iran for the north south trade corridor um which of course is now under
38:39
threat with with the Turkish Israeli US expansion into uh Armenia and Azerbaijan
38:45
and the Zangezur corridor [the "Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity" (TRIPP)]. So that's why Russia is now negotiating
38:51
more enthusiastically with the Taliban in Afghanistan. So, so what I'm saying is, it it
38:58
all makes sense when you look at it from a realistic perspective and and when you take the ideological content out of the
39:05
discussion — that that's how I tend to view it, in a sense. I understand what Russia is doing. Who who whoever caused
39:14
the loss of Assad, that's another like very complicated conversation. But
39:19
however it happened, ultimately Russia had to make sure that they maintained
39:25
their presence in Syria. And so if that means uh legitimizing and
39:31
recognizing a takfiri [jihadist] government, clearly for Russia, that's not a problem. And, and I just
39:37
want to come back to this point on, um, the terrorists, the takfiries that are
39:43
under Jolani's command. There's a huge number. I mean numbers
39:48
vary um but back in I think it was 2014 there were something like 14,000
39:55
Chechens among the takfiris in Syria and also the Uyghurs
40:02
from China. So China and Russia have an interest in keeping the terrorists inside Syria, right? They don't want them
40:09
to come back. Um, between 1999 and 2014,
40:15
there were multiple massive terrorist attacks by Chechen groups in Russia.
40:22
And Putin actually said, "We would rather fight them in Syria than fight
40:27
them in St. Petersburg or Moscow.”
40:30
…
Although I’m certainly no specialist on Syria — as she certainly is — I have previously reported on it from a geostrategic standpoint, and these articles relate to what Beeley says in this interview — for example, my 14 September 2018 “U.S. Protects Al Qaeda in Syria, Proven”, which also links through to some of my prior articles on that same topic.
I might also point out the following interesting aspect of her interview:
And it’s interesting to note that when Damascus fell,
21:42
the first to enter Damascus [were], not HTS, not Golani, they [the Russians] were the first. And
21:48
they were the ones who actually apparently, according to various um testimonies, they were the ones that
21:55
extricated President Assad and took him to the airport and from there we know he went to and and then to Moscow where
22:03
he's been given humanitarian asylum not political asylum which I find still is
22:09
bothering me. What's the difference? Um the difference is basically I think under Russian law
22:17
political asylum gives you immediately far more rights. You you have the right
22:22
to become a Russian citizen. Um you have some defense against extradition.
22:31
Um humanitarian asylum is is sort of less inclusive, less comprehensive.
22:38
Um, I'm I'm not an expert on Russian law, but I did look it up um on AI, so I
22:44
can't guarantee that the answer is 100%.
22:46
Regardless of whether that AI is true, Beeley’s understanding of that matter does at least appear to be false. (and I have sometimes been critical of her relying upon sources — in this instance AI — that don’t meet my standards; this might again have been such a case).
Also on October 18th, Steven Sahiounie, who is perhaps the second-best journalist on Syria, headlined “Syrian-Russian talks in Moscow establish new era of cooperation”, and reported in one section:
The Bashar al-Assad Question
A sensitive, yet unavoidable, point of discussion was the status of former President Bashar al-Assad. Sources indicated that the Syrian President would ask Moscow to hand over his predecessor.
However, Russia’s stance, articulated by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov prior to al-Sharaa’s visit, is clear: Moscow granted Assad and his family humanitarian asylum, making his handover non-negotiable and stressing that such a move would severely damage Russia’s reputation.
President al-Sharaa acknowledged the complexity, stating that Damascus would pursue all legal avenues to demand accountability for the former president without entering into a costly conflict with Russia. Russian experts unanimously advise that the Assad issue should be removed from the bilateral agenda, emphasizing that the focus should be on developing future relations and signing new agreements based on mutual interests.
This is in keeping with Russia’s being, like many countries are, extremely opposed to extradition in any instance where (such as extraditing Assad to be ‘tried’ by Syria’s Al Qaeda, against which Assad had been heavily at war ever since 2012 when Obama hired it to overthrow Assad) fair and entirely honest legal process cannot reasonably be expected in and by the requesting country (now headed by Syria’s Al Qaeda). Russia was backing, and had backed, the decidedly SECULAR Government by Assad. I believe that Beeley, great though she is, goes overboard by charging Putin with “realpolitik” (which she referred to, at 37:55, as “real politics”). Putin definitely DOES have an ideology. For him, power is NOT the ultimate objective — neither for himself, nor for his nation.
Russia will not extradite Assad.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
