- 6/8/2025
The New Atlas explores how the Trump administration continued the legacy of previous U.S. governments by quietly white-washing and enabling Al-Qaeda-linked factions in Syria. 🇺🇸🕵️ From Bush to Obama to Biden — the policy stays the same: regime change through proxy forces. Now, the narrative shifts, but the agenda remains. What’s really behind America’s foreign policy in Syria? Dive into this eye-opening breakdown of deception, continuity, and covert warfare in the Middle East. 🎙️📉
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00:00I have written another article for New Eastern Outlook. It is titled,
00:03Continuity of Agenda. Trump Administration Whitewashes Bush, Obama, Biden-backed Al-Qaeda
00:09in Syria. And of course, President Trump during his first administration also supported Al-Qaeda
00:14in Syria and ISIS. And I will get to all of that here as I read through this article. As I always
00:22do, I will read the article. I will add additional information when and if necessary. And I will show
00:26you all of the sources that I cited while writing this article. So let's begin. U.S. President
00:33Donald Trump announced during his May 2025 trip to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that the U.S. would be
00:38lifting longstanding sanctions on Syria, Reuters reported. So that is right here. Trump says
00:45U.S. to lift Syria sanctions, secure a $600 billion Saudi deal. Reuters would claim the end of sanctions
00:55on Syria would be a huge boost for a country that has been shattered by more than a decade of civil
01:00war. Rebels led by current President Ahmed al-Shara toppled President Bashar al-Assad last
01:08December. That is completely untrue. There was no civil war. And even though he's the alleged leader of
01:17these arms groups, these arms groups were created and directed by the U.S. and its regional proxies,
01:25including Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other Persian Gulf states. During this same trip, President
01:31Trump would also meet and shake hands with the current Syrian president, Ahmed al-Shara, also known as
01:39Abu Mohammed al-Jalani, who, before taking power, headed the still U.S. State Department-designated
01:47Foreign Terrorist Organization, al-Nusra Front, now referred to as Hayat Tahir al-Sham, or HTS.
01:55So he is the leader of a U.S. designated terrorist organization, is still on the U.S. State Department's
02:03list of foreign terrorist organizations. Right here. It was designated on May 15, 2014. That is the name
02:13of al-Jalani or al-Shara's, al-Nusra, ANF, HTS, essentially al-Qaeda in Syria. That's what he was
02:24the head of. He had a $10 million bounty on his head by the U.S. government. It was only just recently
02:32taken off, and now President Trump is shaking hands with him. But again, whether it was President
02:38Donald Trump who won the last U.S. election, or it was Kamala Harris, they both would have met with
02:45him. They both would have whitewashed him, the militants that the U.S. backed in overthrowing
02:51the Syrian government, and they would have all lifted sanctions off of Syria. That was always the
02:56plan. That's why the headline of the article starts with continuity of agenda. In reality,
03:03the conflict in Syria was not a civil war, but rather a proxy war waged by the U.S. alongside
03:08its Persian Gulf allies, Turkey and Israel against the Syrian Arab Republic. The U.S. sanctions President
03:14Trump is now lifting were designed to cripple the Syrian government, economy, and military,
03:19prevent reconstruction and economic recovery, and devastate the civilian population,
03:24all to hollow out the Syrian state to precipitate its eventual collapse, as former U.S. Department
03:30of Defense official Dana Stroll stated publicly in 2019. I know I've showed this video many times.
03:35I'm going to show it to you again. This is a former U.S. Department of Defense official,
03:40Dana Stroll. This is what she said about Syria.
03:42We argued in our recommendation section that taken as a whole, even though the United States said
03:49there's limited appetite domestically here or on the Hill to match the level of resources or even
03:56diplomatic investment of the Iranians and the Russians in Syria, that the United States still
04:01had compelling forms of leverage on the table to shape an outcome that was more conducive and
04:06protective of U.S. interests. And we identified four. So the first one was the one-third of Syrian
04:11territory that was owned via the U.S. military with its local partner, the Syrian Democratic Forces.
04:17Now, this was a light footprint on the U.S. military, only about a thousand troops over the
04:21course of the Syria study group's report, and then the tens of thousands of forces, both Kurdish
04:28and Arab, under the Syrian Democratic Forces. And that one-third of Syria is the resource-rich,
04:33it's the economic powerhouse of Syria. So where the hydrocarbons are, which obviously is very much in
04:38the public debate here in Washington these days, as well as the agricultural powerhouse. But we argued
04:43that it wasn't just about this one-third of Syrian territory that the U.S. military and our military
04:48presence owned, both to fight ISIS and also as leverage for affecting the overall political process
04:55for the broader Syrian conflict. There were three other areas of leverage. One is political and
05:00diplomatic isolation of the Assad regime. This is, in our assessment, one of Russia's goals in the
05:06Middle East is the propaganda win for Russia of rehabilitating Assad on the international stage,
05:12basically forcing the international community to normalize him and welcome him back in without any
05:17behavioral changes. So holding the line on diplomatic isolation, preventing embassies from going back
05:22into Damascus. Two is the economic sanctions architecture. So some of this is part of the
05:28maximum pressure campaign of the Trump administration on Iran, but there's a whole suite of both executive
05:34and congressional sanctions on Syria and Bashar al-Assad, both for human rights abuses in Syria and to the
05:40backers of Assad for their activities in support of him in Syria. And three was reconstruction aid. So the
05:47United States remains the overall largest single donor of humanitarian aid to Syrians both inside
05:53Syria and refugees outside of Syria. And there was some stabilization assistance in the part of Syria that
06:00was liberated from ISIS and controlled via the Syrian Democratic Forces in north and eastern Syria. The rest of
06:07Syria, though, is is rubble. And what the Russians want and what Assad wants is economic reconstruction. And that is
06:15something that the United States can basically hold a card on via the international financial institutions and our cooperation with the
06:21Europeans. So we argued that absent behavioral changes by the Assad regime, we should hold the line on preventing
06:28reconstruction aid and technical expertise from going back into Syria.
06:31So the plan of these sanctions, the plan of blocking reconstruction was to precipitate the
06:38complete collapse of Syria, to allow these terrorists that the U.S. was arming and backing to overrun the
06:44entire country. I constantly warn that even though the U.S. seems to be an irreversible decline, its military
06:52powers being matched or exceeded by nations like Russia and China, they still possess tremendous asymmetric
06:57capabilities, politically capturing and controlling nations, politically undermining, subverting and destroying nations.
07:04This is still something they're very good at. And the rest of the world is very bad at defending against. The U.S.
07:10proxy war included a U.S.-led campaign training, funding, equipping and arming a network of extremists, including al-Shara al-Jalani's
07:17terrorist, al-Nusra HTS. Throughout the conflict in Syria, even U.S.-based publications like the New York Times admitted as early as
07:242012, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was facilitating the flow of billions of dollars in weapons, ammunition,
07:31equipment from Turkey to Syria. Right here. I've cited this article in hundreds of articles that I have written on
07:41Syria, the U.S. proxy war on Syria, since it was published in 2012. I remember when this was published and I have
07:49covered this many, many times. And it admits that it was the CIA overseeing all of the weapons, equipment,
07:57flowing across the borders into Syria to facilitate this proxy war against the central government.
08:04The U.S. openly sought to overthrow. While the official narrative was the U.S. was arming moderate rebels,
08:10no explanation was ever given as to how or why terrorist organizations like al-Nusra HTS
08:16quickly ended up dominating the Western-backed militancy. If the U.S. and its allies were providing
08:22billions in aid to moderate rebels, who was providing even greater amounts of aid to extremist
08:28organizations allowing them to dominate the U.S.-backed proxy war on Syria? How is that possible?
08:33The answer is simple. There were never any moderate rebels. The U.S. planned years before the conflict
08:39ever began to use extremists as proxies to overthrow governments across the region, including Syria's.
08:46Here's another article that I have referenced many, many times. This was published in 2007,
08:53so years before the Arab Spring began and the U.S. began overthrowing all of these countries,
08:58the U.S. having organized the Arab Spring to begin with. This is the redirection by Seymour Hersh.
09:04And it very explicitly says to undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shia, the Bush administration,
09:11so we're talking about the Bush Jr. administration, this is how far back it goes, has decided in effect
09:16to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the administration has cooperated
09:20with Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken
09:25Hezbollah, the Shia organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine
09:31operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A byproduct of these activities has been the bolstering
09:37of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America
09:42and sympathetic to Al Qaeda. But they are hostile to America only in the most superficial way.
09:48They are created, armed, and backed by the U.S. This is why people have to do much deeper analysis.
09:56Follow the money and the weapons. So just listen to rhetoric and make up your mind.
10:01Follow the money. Who's really behind these organizations? You can create an organization
10:05that looks opposed to you to create distance between yourself and the organization,
10:10all the horrible things that it does, as Al Qaeda has done for decades now.
10:15Horrible, horrible things the U.S. would like to distance itself from, even though all the money,
10:20all the weapons, everything was deliberately handed over to them, laundered through the
10:26U.S.'s regional proxies, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Turkey.
10:32But these were militants the U.S. created and used deliberately.
10:39Preparations to build up militant groups as well as their political wings, especially the Muslim Brotherhood,
10:44were already ongoing when Hirsch wrote his 2007 article and continued until the U.S.
10:50engineered Arab Spring unfolded in 2011 under the Obama administration.
10:55Many people say, Brian, the Arab Spring was legitimate.
10:58Millions of people just spontaneously all came out of their houses at the same time
11:03and organized and to overthrow their governments. This is totally organic.
11:07That's not how protests work. And the U.S. even eventually admitted that it funded all of it.
11:12And if you do the actual research and you looked up all the organizations that were leading these mobs in the streets,
11:18you can see all of the evidence of U.S. government funding for them years before it all started.
11:25I did the research. I presented it for many years. All the NED money. There were seminars.
11:32The leaders of these opposition groups attended years before the Arab Spring began,
11:37training them to go back to their home country and overthrow it years later.
11:43So this is what the New York Times in this 2011 article,
11:47U.S. groups helped nurture Arab uprising. It doesn't get more obvious than that.
11:51A number of groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region
11:56received training and financing from groups like the International Republic Institute,
12:00the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington,
12:05according to interviews in recent weeks and American diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks.
12:10Thank goodness for WikiLeaks. They exposed all of it and they forced the U.S. to deal with this reality,
12:17that they were involved in all of this. The same article also admitted the Republican and Democratic Institutes
12:22are loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic parties. They're created by Congress
12:27and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations.
12:36The National Endowment receives about $100 million annually from Congress. Freedom House also gets the bulk of its money from the American government,
12:43mainly from the State Department. So these are not non-governmental organizations.
12:47They are U.S. government organizations used to carry out political interference worldwide, including up to and all throughout the Arab Spring.
12:55That was a U.S.-engineered reorganization of the entire region.
13:00The chaos the U.S.-engineered Arab Spring created was used as an opportunity to launch multiple wars and proxy wars across the region,
13:07including a NATO-led regime change operation against Libya and North Africa, U.S.-backed Saudi-led coalition targeting Ansarallah in Yemen,
13:15and the U.S. proxy war in Syria, which eventually involved the U.S. invasion and occupation of eastern Syria,
13:20while NATO member Turkey invaded and occupied its northern regions.
13:24Throughout the first Trump administration, 2017 to 2021, brutal U.S. sanctions and the illegal occupation of Syria, Syrian territory,
13:33which began under the Obama administration, were continued or even expanded.
13:37While many supporters of President Trump have attempted to claim his administration wanted to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria,
13:43the Trump administration repeatedly and eagerly launched military strikes across Syria and carried out attacks on Syria's ally, Iran,
13:52including the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, who at the time was in fact waging a regional war against U.S.-backed terrorist organizations,
14:00including and especially al-Nusra HTS and the self-proclaimed Islamic State, also known as ISIS, as even U.S. government-funded media PBS admitted at the time.
14:11We've got this article here.
14:13Qasem Soleimani's complex legacy in Iraq.
14:16It has to be complex because if they just admitted and told you that he was there fighting ISIS and al-Qaeda and the U.S. killed him because he was doing a good job of it
14:26and the U.S. was actually behind ISIS and al-Qaeda, that would be a little too easy for people to understand.
14:31And then it would be easy for people to decide whether or not to continue supporting U.S. foreign policy.
14:37And of course, they would decide not to if they knew the truth.
14:40Thus, President Trump lifting U.S. sanctions on Syria now that U.S.-backed terrorists have succeeded in Washington's goal of overthrowing the Syrian government
14:48is simply the next step in what was clearly continuity of agenda, allowing U.S.-backed proxies to consolidate control over Syria
14:55and prepare it as a springboard for wider regional violence aimed at Iran and what remains of its network of allies and partners.
15:04Just like they did with Libya. Once they overthrew Libya, they used it as a springboard to send all of those fighters, all of those weapons to Syria,
15:11but also to other places in North Africa to destabilize and destroy everything and to create a constant pretext for U.S. AFRICOM to remain engaged on the continent.
15:24Let's continue. While al-Nusra HTS remains a U.S. State Department designated foreign terrorist organization at the time of this writing,
15:32if history can serve as a guide, attempts will be made to delist it, allowing the U.S. to more overtly aid it as Washington's confrontation with Iran continues.
15:41A similar process took place during the U.S.-led NATO war in Libya.
15:45The U.S. had likewise armed and backed the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. So if al-Nusra is al-Qaeda in Syria, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group is al-Qaeda in Libya.
15:55So it was backing the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, even though it was also listed on the foreign terrorist organization.
16:02Let's see if we can find it on the list. So under delisted foreign terrorist organizations, there's the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.
16:09Let's see. Libyan Islamic Fighting Group remained on the U.S. State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations until long after the successful overthrow of the Libyan government.
16:19Despite providing weapons, training, equipment, and even air cover for the organization,
16:24the U.S. sought to maintain plausible deniability as the terrorist organization committed ethnic and religious driven atrocities all throughout and immediately after the conflict.
16:35In late 2015, the organization was officially delisted by the U.S. State Department, even as the organization and its members continued carrying out terrorism,
16:45not only across the Arab world, but within the borders of its Western sponsors, including the 2017 Manchester attack in the United Kingdom, the BBC reported.
16:56Do you remember the Manchester attack? Right here, the BBC, the Libyan Jihad Connection. Who was it?
17:05The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. That was the organization the terrorists who carried out the attack were drawn from.
17:13And the U.K. participated in the U.S. and the U.K. participated in the war on Libya.
17:17And they supported the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, just like they supported al-Qaeda alongside the U.S. everywhere across the region.
17:24And they brought these extremists back to the U.K. They knew who they were and how dangerous they were.
17:31And they essentially, by not immediately detaining them, they allowed these attacks to take place.
17:40And then what does that do at home? That allows the British and the American governments to divide their public, cultivate extremism on one hand,
17:51Islamophobia and racism on the other hand. They got everybody divided and distracted against one another.
17:56Nobody decides to cooperate together to deal with the government, which is the actual problem.
18:02U.S. President Donald Trump ran for office both in 2017 and 2024 on the promise of draining the swamp and fighting against the deep state.
18:11During his first administration and now continuing throughout his second administration, he has instead demonstrably played his role in continuing all of the policies of the deep state.
18:23Just as was the case throughout the Bush, Obama and Biden administrations, President Trump will continue overseeing the use of extremist groups to advance U.S. foreign policy objectives around the globe,
18:32including in the Middle East and specifically against the nation of Iran.
18:36President Trump's lifting of sanctions on Syria and his normalization of the leader of a still U.S.-listed terrorist organization demonstrates the vast disparity between President Trump's rhetoric and the reality of what his administration is actually doing.
18:50The world should have learned by now that holding its breath and waiting for the United States to end continuity of agenda on its own is a dangerous, irresponsible fantasy.
18:59And only through cooperation and concerted effort can the global system the U.S. draws its power from be displaced and then replaced.
19:10And the rise of multipolarism used to secure nations and regions around the world from the decades spanning interference and aggression of the United States government and the corporate financier interests determining its policies no matter who sits in the White House.
19:24Those seeking comforts in the delusion that President Trump represents change are betrayed by President Trump's own words, actions and policies as its administration clearly is picking up right where the Biden administration and others left off.
19:39And I would like to hear the excuses and explanations and rationalizations of why President Trump is shaking hands with the leader of a U.S.-listed terrorist organization, why he is authorizing the bombing of Yemen, arming and aiding Israel and bombing Gaza and Lebanon, but not dropping a bomb on Al Jelani's head, the head of a U.S.-listed terrorist organization.
20:04Instead, he's shaking hands with him.
20:05Instead, he's shaking hands with him.
20:06What is the justification for that?
20:08People might argue, well, Russia is there normalizing the new supposed government of Syria.
20:16Russia lost.
20:17That was a proxy war.
20:19Russia was trying to prop up the Syrian government.
20:21The U.S. was trying to destroy it.
20:23The U.S. won.
20:24Russia has no more cards to play in Syria.
20:27They have no choice but to go along with what's happening right now until things change and have an opportunity to change things for the better.
20:36The U.S. created this problem.
20:39President Trump presided over this for four years during his first term, and now he's picking up right where he and the Biden administration left off last.
20:47That is the big difference.
20:49Explain to me what excuse, justification or rationalization there is for President Trump to be doing this versus all of the things he claimed he was going to do coming into office.
21:00He can stand up to all of these other aspects of the so-called deep state, but he can't call out Al Jelani as a terrorist?
21:08Are you going to say he did this because he needed this $600 billion deal with Saudi Arabia?
21:13So then what does this say about American principles?
21:15What does this say about President Trump's own personal principles?
21:18And how reliable of a person does that make him?
21:21So there's a lot of problems and paradoxes and conundrums.
21:27So I really wonder what supporters of President Trump are going to say to excuse or rationalize or justify his role in continuing this policy in the Middle East, which is continuity of agenda.
21:40And who is pushing this agenda forward?
21:42It is the so-called deep state, these unelected corporates and financier interests that drive foreign and domestic policy for the U.S. at the cost of absolutely everyone else, including the American people, for their own benefit.
21:55President Trump is helping this along.
21:57Why? Why is he doing that?
21:59Should make people stop and think and question what they think they believe, what they think they know, and what the truth may actually be.
22:08They may have just been lied to again by another politician in Washington, politicians in Washington who do nothing but lie.
22:18I'm going to leave it there for now.
22:20We have to keep a close eye on the Middle East.
22:22The conflict in the Middle East is not happening in isolation.
22:26It is interconnected with the U.S. proxy war on Russia and Ukraine and this confrontation between the U.S. and China in the Asia Pacific, the U.S. encroaching upon China and confronting China within China's own borders.
22:38It's all interconnected.
22:39The flow of hydrocarbons from the Middle East to China, if that were disrupted, would deal a severe blow to the Chinese economy.
22:46The U.S. knows this and they are setting the stage to achieve that, to deliver that blow.
22:52So you have to keep a close eye on all of this.
22:54We cannot become myopically obsessed with one conflict over the other.
22:58We do need to see how they're interconnected and the bigger picture all of this shapes up into.
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