Syria is a hot mess.  There’s only one face with a genuine smile today, Turkish Leader Recep Erdogan who has been attempting to leverage support for the “rebels” in Syria for a decade.  Through the years U.S. policy in Syria essentially armed and supported various factions of al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, and eventually Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), whose leader, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, is essentially the Defacto head of the rebels who now control it.

What happens next is anyone’s guess.  The various elements of Islamic rebellion fall under the political umbrella of the Muslim Brotherhood; however, they have yet to show an ability to effectively govern in any region or state without extreme authoritarian rule.  Odds are high that Syria will tilt in that direction and eventually fall upon the only governing mechanism they understand, Sharia Law.

Joe Biden hails the efforts of the Syrian Rebels as a victory; however, these are the same rebels we armed and then fought repeatedly -in various iterations- as an outcome of U.S policy under the Obama/Biden administration. Lessons never learned from Benghazi, Syria is a hot mess.

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(Via Fox News) – Islamist leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani, who led a lightning offensive through Syria, has a long history of extremism despite a recent appeal to moderate policies.

[…]  Golani would cut ties with al Qaeda in 2016 and lead a merger between HTS and other Islamist groups in northwest Syria in 2017, bringing him control of territory that had fallen out of government hands during the country’s long civil war.

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According to Reuters, “Syrian rebels announced they gained full control over the key city of Homs early on Sunday after only a day of fighting, leaving President Bashar al-Assad’s 24-year rule dangling by a thread as insurgents marched on the capital, Damascus.”

Responding to the situation on the ground, President Elect Donald Trump says we should stay out of it.

[Source]

Meanwhile a joint statement was released from officials from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Russia after an emergency meeting in Doha.

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Everyone watching Mideast politics connected the November 11th visit of Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer to President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home just a day before Dermer sat down to discuss a potential ceasefire agreement with Biden’s Secretary of State Tony Blinken.

President Trump’s resounding win in the November 5th U.S. election changed things.

Without doubt, Israel watched the final weeks of the election and saw Arab and Muslim-Americans supporting President Trump specifically because Trump has expressed very publicly the bloodshed must stop, and it must stop quickly.  President Trump won Michigan in part due to that support.

“Just stop the killing” is a message President Trump has repeated frequently, and not just about the middle east.  The pragmatic and forceful Trump demand to stop killing people and get to the negotiating table also looms heavily over Ukraine and Russia.  However, in the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, both sides want to be well positioned when President Trump takes office.

That backdrop, the scale of Trump’s presence in the geopolitical dynamic, is admitted by even the most severe of President Trump’s critics at the Washington Post, New York Times and Politico.  The domestic political media may not like Donald Trump, but they cannot deny the impact of his doctrine when it comes to stopping senseless violence and halting hatred.  Both Israel and Lebanon understand this dynamic.  Even Iran knows it is in their best interests to restrain Hezbollah, as the Trump horizon dawns again.

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If you look at the structure of the announcements, there does appear to be a strategy at play; yes, including the likelihood of Marco Rubio as Secretary of State.

Using the announcement of Steven C. Witkoff to be Special Envoy to the Middle East, I’ll try to put it together.

[SOURCE]

If President Trump pulls Marco Rubio out of the Senate, he opens up the position of Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).  Rubio would love the opportunity to load his presidential aspiration resume with Secretary of State, for later use. However, this also opens the opportunity for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to appoint an interim senator who would be more MAGA-minded, trustworthy and loyal (dare I say Gaetz).

With Rubio removed from the equation of the IC problem, the issue becomes mitigating (think neutering) the Secretary of State from undermining the Trump Doctrine; which, as you know, is the key Trump foreign policy approach using economic power combined with diplomacy.

President Trump has long expressed being sick and tired of U.S. mid-east policy, endless wars, endless spending etc.  President Trump in term-1 created the Abraham Accords to establish long-term peace and stability in the region, as a countermeasure to all the prior administrations stirring shit up there.  Essentially, the Abraham Accords create peace, get us out and allow policy to focus on more pressing foreign concerns, vis-a-vis China.

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A few years ago, I called her the most dangerous woman in the DC Pentagon silo.

Example #102, why:

[Source]

It’s right there, plain as day, if you are inoculated against cognitive dissonance.

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Lee Smith follows the pattern of FBI setups, and notes how the Iran assassination plot was established:

The day before Thomas Matthew Crooks sprayed gunfire at President Trump, the FBI arrested Asif Merchant, a Pakistani national who was admitted into the U.S. via parole for “significant public benefit.” The Dallas office of the FBI sponsored Merchant’s parole for the purposes of “security interests.” {READ ABOUT IT}

From that origination arrest, an action that supports and evidences the DNI warning of an Iranian assassination effort against President Trump, a purposeful narrative is established.

The IC then says Iran is threatening to kill President Trump, and the FBI arrest evidence is cited. With narrative established, and they’re off to the races.

President Trump’s travel and campaigning is subsequently scrutinized by a proactively cautious Secret Service, then comes another threat – perhaps the bigger one.  Only this time when Ryan Wesley Routh is moved into position (luckily intercepted), the same DNI and FBI who previously fingered Iran as the origin, mysteriously avoid pointing out Routh’s connections to another foreign nation, Ukraine.  Why is that?

If you think of IC tradecraft as a series of sequential activities, the Iran threat would have been good cover for Ukraine success.

After all, it’s not like President Trump carries a policy perspective toward Ukraine that is diametrically opposed by financial beneficiaries in Washington DC and the USA government. No, wait…

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Iran has fired over 200 missiles into Israel in a retaliatory attack after Israeli strikes against Hezbollah and Hamas, including assassinations of top commanders. The ballistic missiles are reported to have been launched from inside Iran.

U.S. and Israeli Iron Dome counter measures were deployed along with a dozen interceptors fired from U.S. warships located in the Mediterranean. However, multiple strikes were reported within Israel. The war against Hamas has escalated significantly.

Israel has vowed to hit back against the direct attack from Iran. In a video statement, Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said the “attack will have consequences.” He added: “We have plans. We will act at the time and place of our choosing.”

(Via Politico) – Iran launched a ballistic missile attack targeting Israel on Tuesday as tensions between the two long-time foes ratchet up in the Middle East.

The Israel Defense Forces said on Telegram that “missiles were launched from Iran towards the State of Israel” and ordered Israeli civilians to obey air raid sirens and shelter in place. “The IDF is doing and will do everything necessary to protect the civilians of the State of Israel,” the statement said.

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In an almost identical replay to the 2016 election, Attorney General Merrick Garland held a press conference today to note the indictment of three Iranian suspects for hacking the Trump campaign and attempting to influence the 2024 election outcome.  [37-page-indictment pdf Here]

In 2016 the identified influence agents were from the nation of Russia. In 2024 the identified influence agents, Masoud Jalili, Seyyed Ali Aghamiri and Yasar Balaghi, are from the nation of Iran. All other aspects seemingly remain identical.

According to CBS, “The three defendants — identified in the indictment as Masoud Jalili, Seyyed Ali Aghamiri and Yasar Balaghi — are all members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Prosecutors said they executed a “wide-ranging hacking campaign that used spearphishing and social engineering techniques to target and compromise the accounts of current and former U.S. government officials, members of the media, nongovernmental organizations, and individuals associated with U.S. political campaigns.” (more)

The press conference announcement with Attorney General Merrick Garland is below:

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This stuff is so predictable.  A person would think the DOJ-NSD would make an effort not to just reuse their prior playbook.  Alas, specifically because the IC silos are run by bureaucratic idiots, they just end up rehashing anything that works.

On September 19th CTH said, “I’ll just casually sit back and wait to see what the DOJ NATIONAL SECURITY DIVISION (DOJ-NSD) come up with next. Presumably -if I am correct- we will see some patsy Iranian group named, labeled and blamed for the hacking, likely around the end of this month. However, factually the “hacking” per se’, is probably nothing more than the Biden group Intelligence Community (FBI/DOJ/DNI) exploiting their political surveillance control systems.” {LINK}

Cue Dramatic Music… 

TODAY IN DC:  A grand jury has indicted multiple Iranians on charges related to hacking Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.

The federal charges stem from an Iranian operation that allegedly stole internal Trump campaign communications this summer, according to three people familiar with the investigation who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.

The names of the defendants and the specific criminal charges were not immediately available. A grand jury secretly approved the indictment on Thursday afternoon. The Justice Department is expected to announce the charges as soon as Friday.

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The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee (SHSGAC) wants everyone to know that the Secret Service really made a lot of mistakes in Butler, Pennsylvania, leading to the attempted assassination of President Trump.

Multiple systemic failures of U.S. Secret Service protocols took place.  Ultimately, mistakes were made.

[READ REPORT HERE]

“The Committee finds that USSS failures in planning, communications, security, and allocation of resources for the July 13, 2024 Butler rally were foreseeable, preventable, and directly related to the events resulting in the assassination attempt that day,” the committee reported.

“The Committee also finds that siloed communications and coordination problems between federal, state, and local law enforcement officials remain unaddressed and were a contributing factor to the failures at the July 13 Butler rally,” it added. ~ John Solomon

The Senate report comes on the heels of the Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, telling President Trump that U.S. intelligence has identified Iran as the most likely group attempting to organize death threats and activities against him.

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