Part of a pattern of media omissions and deception in its coverage of Syria
On December 8, 2024, Syria’s long-standing ruler Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia after being deposed by Sunni militia forces in what New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman called the “biggest…most game-changing event in the Middle East in the last 45 years.”[1]
Friedman was enthusiastic about the regime change, though Syria’s new head of state, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, had a $10 million bounty placed on his head by the U.S. State Department in 2017 as a wanted terrorist.[2]
The “blazer-wearing revolutionary,” as CNN called him,[3] had been imprisoned from 2006 to 2011 at Abu Ghraib and other U.S. military prisons for supporting al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at a security consulting firm in New York was quoted in The New York Times as stating that, under Jolani’s rule, northwest Syria was “a harsh place where critics are silenced, tortured, jailed and disappeared.”[4] Hookahs and music were also banned, as they were under the Taliban in Afghanistan.[5]
Unperturbed by all that, the Biden administration expressed elation at Assad’s downfall, stating afterwards that Syria now faced a “historic opportunity for peace” and ”the establishment of a new Syrian state…at long last the Assad regime has fallen.”[6]
U.S. media echoed Biden’s triumphalism and became filled with stories about ghastly atrocities allegedly carried out by Assad and the gaudy riches that his family had supposedly accumulated.[7]
Ignored were reports of field executions by Syria’s new Islamist rulers, desecration of ancient shrines, and house-to-house searches of Assad supporters susceptible to revenge attacks.[8]
The Al-Nusra Front and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham under Jolani’s leadership had perpetrated suicide bombings and sectarian cleansing massacres against Shia Muslims, Druze and Alawites during the 2012-2017 phases of the Syrian civil war, which were also not discussed.[9]
A New York Times article by Neil MacFarquhar characteristically entitled “The Assad Family’s Legacy Is One of Savage Oppression” compared the Assads to the fictional Corleone Mafia family and quoted from a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Andrew J. Tabler, who stated that the Assads “cared nothing about the Syrian people. They launched Scud missiles against their own people —who does that?—while the chemical weapons were a sign of just how far they would go to hold on to power.”
The article further quoted from a former college friend of Assad who joined the opposition out of disgust over the lack of reform, who said that “they were not running a country with a history of 5,000 years of civilization. They were running it like the Mafia, as if it was a private estate, the whole country was their backyard inherited from their father.”[10]
Reappropriating Orientalist stereotypes of Middle Eastern rulers as despotic and savage, MacFarquhar’s piece advanced disinformation about chemical weapons attacks that had been disproven years ago by MIT scientist Theodore Postol, a weapons adviser to the U.S. Navy’s Chief of Operations, and journalist Seymour Hersh, among others.[11]
The Times article further obscures the factors underlying the Assad dynasty’s durability, though does acknowledge that Syria was “known as the most unstable country in the Middle East after War War II” with “at least eight coups carried out right before Hafez al-Assad took power in 1970.”[12]
The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed in the wake of Assad’s downfall by reporter Sune Engel Rasmussen that celebrated the “Syrian revolution” for “dealing a historic blow to Iran.” Rasmussen wrote that Iran had “spent decades and billions of dollars building a network of militias and governments that allowed it to exercise political and military influence across the Middle East,” however, in a “matter of weeks, the pillars of that alliance came crashing down, with the fall of Bashar al-Assad serving as Iran’s latest strategic catastrophe.”[13]
Rasmussen continued to note that Syria under Assad’s leadership had provided Iran with land access to Hezbollah, the centerpiece of its self-labeled “axis of resistance” which, thanks to Tehran’s support became the world’s best-armed non-state actor, but was now effectively dismantled.
In Rasmussen’s assessment, Israeli policy since October 7 could now be considered a great success as, “in more than a year of attacks, Israel has devastated Hamas, Iran’s main Palestinian ally…killed most of the leadership of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that is Iran’s most powerful ally, and sent its surviving top commanders into hiding. Assad’s toppling [further] destroys the entire front line of Iran’s so-called ‘forward defense.’”
Amazingly, Rasmussen’s triumphalist account attempted to rebrand Israeli military aggression and crimes that have resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people—most of whom were women and children—as a “strategic success.”
Rasmussen pays no heed at all to the historical factors that fueled the rise of Hamas and Hezbollah and massive human suffering Israeli policies have caused. Nor to the U.S. empowerment of the al-Qaeda-linked jihadists in Syria or the danger of a war with Iran.
The callous disregard for human welfare extends to Syria itself, whose population has suffered from biblical-scale calamities engendered by a civil war triggered by outsiders and as a result of the imposition of draconian sanctions designed to devastate Syria’s economy so that they would turn against the Assad government.
In 2023, more than 609,000 Syrian children under the age of five were stunted from chronic undernutrition; 12 million Syrians did not have enough food to meet daily dietary needs; 6.9 million people were internally displaced; and an estimated 90% of Syrians were living in poverty. Dr. Hizla al-Assad said that the U.S. war and sanctions had threatened to turn life in Syria back to the Stone Age.[14]
Most revealingly, the fact absent in U.S. media accounts was that the U.S. had engaged in a 13-year regime change operation that started with the Arab Spring and continued with the launching of Operation Timber Sycamore by the Obama administration, the largest covert operation since the CIA’s support for the Afghan mujahadin in the 1980s.
The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and even alternative media outlets like Democracy Now, made it seem like Assad had fallen suddenly and organically as a result of a popular rebellion and that this was a cause for celebration.[15] They avoided any mention of the $1 billion Operation Timber Sycamore.
Blogger Caitlin Johnstone wrote: “We’re all meant to pretend this was a 100 percent organic uprising driven solely and exclusively by the people of Syria despite years and years of evidence to the contrary” and the fact that the “U.S. power alliance [encompassing Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar] crush[ed] Syria using proxy warfare, starvation sanctions, constant bombing operations, and a military occupation explicitly designed to cut Syria off from oil and wheat in order to prevent its reconstruction after the [W]estern-backed civil war.”[16]
The U.S. regime-change operation in Syria had been openly advertised years earlier when General Wesley Clark was told during a visit at the Pentagon after 9/11 that “we’re going to attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years—we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.”[17]
The ultimate geostrategic goal was for the U.S. and Israel to dominate the Middle East, access its rich oil resources, and profit from construction of a $10 billion Qatari oil pipeline passing through Syria that would transport natural gas into Europe, help isolate the Russians, and give the U.S. greater leverage over European politics.[18]
The methods that were utilized to oust Assad fit a long-standing regime-change playbook that had been applied by the U.S. in many countries around the world, including Ukraine and Libya.
The targets for U.S. regime change are inevitably leaders who are independent nationalists intent on resisting U.S. corporate penetration of their country and challenging U.S. global hegemony.
Bashar al-Assad fit the bill for the latter because he has stood up to Israel, aligned closely with Iran and Russia, and adopted nationalistic economic policies.
A pivotal strike against him was his refusal to construct the Trans-Arabian Qatari pipeline through Syria, and his endorsement instead of a Russian-approved “Islamic” pipeline running from Iran’s side of the gas field through Syria and to the ports of Lebanon.
According to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., this latter pipeline would make “Shiite Iran, not Sunni Qatar, the principal supplier to the European energy market” and “dramatically increase [Iran]’s influence in the Middle East and the world”—which the U.S. and Israel would not allow.[19]
Operation Timber Sycamore
Secretly inaugurated by President Barack Obama in 2013,[20] Operation Timber Sycamore was run by the CIA’s Special Activities Division with support from British, Qatari, Saudi and Jordanian intelligence services and the Pentagon. Secret teams were trained at U.S. military bases in Jordan and Turkey where they were prepared for infiltration into Syria.
Weaponry dispensed under the operation, including rocket-propelled grenades, tank-destroying missiles and Kalashnikov assault rifles, consistently ended up in the hands of UN-recognized terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda and IS which summarily executed prisoners and committed other violations of the rules of armed conflict, as was reported in The New York Times.
A military history website noted that a major unintended consequence of Timber Sycamore was to “flood the Middle East’s black market with weapons.”[21]
The staunchest supporter of Timber Sycamore and regime-change operations in Syria was CIA Director John Brennan, who was extremely close with President Obama.[22]
U.S. military personnel deployed to Syria directly included Special Forces, engineering experts and medical and psychological warfare teams who were supplied through a network of small airstrips set up on Syrian soil which received MC-130 and CV-22 transports.[23]
Small numbers of U.S. troops embedded with rebel counterparts—including the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)—and called in air strikes from U.S. bases in Jordan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, and other countries.[24]
According to researcher A. B. Abrams, the U.S. was “in effect invading Syria to seize a portion of its territory and was doing so in a much more subtle and cost-free way than prior operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Grenada, Panama or other target states.”[25]
The CIA effort involved a “rat line” to run weapons from Libya (attacked by NATO in 2011) to the jihadists in Syria. In 2014, Seymour Hersh described the operation in his piece “The Red Line and the Rat Line”:
“A secret agreement reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdoğan administrations… pertained to the rat line. By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria.”
In 2012, the UN had negotiated a peace agreement in Syria that was blocked by the Obama administration, which demanded that Assad must go on the first day of the peace agreement.
The U.S. wanted regime change, not peace, and now they have achieved it—at a tremendous cost to the Syrian people.
Thomas L. Friedman, “Whatever Happens in Syria Will Not Stay in Syria,” The New York Times, December 15, 2024, B4. ↑
Mike Whitney, “Black Flag Over Damascus,” The Unz Review, December 8, 2024, https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/black-flag-over-damascus/; Jonathan Cook, Syria’s Assad has fallen—just as the Pentagon planned 23 years ago,” jonathancook,substack.com. December 11, 2024, https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/syrias-assad-has-fallen-just-as-the? ↑
Mostafa Salem, “How Syria’s rebel leader went from radical jihadist to a blazer-wearing ‘revolutionary’” CNN, December 6, 2024, https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/06/middleeast/syria-hts-al-jolani-profile-intl/index.html ↑
Edward Wong, Michael Crowley and Helene Cooper, “U.S. Scrambles to Navigate Perils of a New Syria,” The New York Times, December 9, 2024. ↑
Raja Abdulrahim, “Life Under Syria’s Rebels: Strict Rules, Paved Roads and Pragmatism,” The New York Times, December 18, 2024, A4. ↑
John Browden, “Biden promises to bring US journalist Austin Tice home as he calls fall of Assad ‘a moment of historic opportunity for Syria,” The Independent, December 8, 2024, https://www.yahoo.com/news/biden-promises-bring-us-journalist-190304775. ↑
See as example, Jared Malsin, “‘Executed, Executed, Dead From Sickness’: The Grim Records From Syria’s Notorious Prison,” The Wall Street Journal, December 12, 2024, https://www.wsj.com/news/author/jared-malsin; Jared Downing, “Bashar al-Assad’s private fleet of luxury cars revealed as Syrians loot his palaces after dictator was forced to flee the country,” The New York Post, December 8, 2024, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/bashar-al-assad-s-private-fleet-of-luxury-cars-revealed-as-syrians-loot-his-palaces-after-dictator-was-forced-to-flee-the-country/ar-AA1vuqiQ. CNN set the lowest bar of them all by staging a scene of a supposedly forgotten prisoner in one of Assad’s prisons. ↑
“New regime forces in Syria carry out summary executions in Latakia,” Al Mayadeen, December 10, 2024, https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/armed-groups-in-syria-carry-out-summary-executions-in-lataki; “HTS, armed groups, assault Sayyeda Zeinab Shrine, St. Georges Church,” Al Mayadeen, December 11, 2024, https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/hts–armed-groups-assault-sayyeda-zeinab-shrine–st–georges; https://beeley.substack.com/p/safe-while-syria-burns. ↑
These massacres included: the January 2012 al-Midan bombing; the May 10, 2012, Damascus bombings; the February 2013 Damascus bombings; the Hatla massacre; the Homs school bombing; the Qalb Loze massacre; the Zara’a massacre; the March 2017 Damascus bombings; and the 2017 Aleppo suicide car bombing. https://www.winterwatch.net/2024/12/who-is-the-mossad-impostor-mole-mohammed-al-julani/. CNN reported that, in Idlib, al-Jolani “embarked on a campaign to eliminate ISIS as well as potential threats to his influence, arresting former commanders and eliminating rivals. Human rights groups and local monitors have raised alarm about HTS’ more recent treatment of dissidents in Idlib, alleging that the group conducted harsh crackdowns on protests and tortured and abused dissidents.” Salem, “How Syria’s rebel leader went from radical jihadist to a blazer-wearing ‘revolutionary.’” ↑
Neil MacFarquhar, “The Assad Family’s Legacy Is One of Savage Oppression,” The New York Times, December 8, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/08/world/middleeast/assad-family-legacy-syria.html?auth=linked-google1tap. ↑
See Jeremy Kuzmarov, “Prestigious Weaponry Expert Censored After Demonstrating that a Deadly Poison Gas Attack—Blamed on the Syrian Government—Was Really a False-Flag Operation by U.S.-Funded Terrorists,” CovertAction Magazine, November 22, 2021, https://covertactionmagazine.com/2021/11/22/prestigious-weaponry-expert-censored-after-demonstrating-that-a-deadly-poison-gas-attack-blamed-on-the-syrian-government-was-really-a-false-flag-operation-by-u-s-funded-terrorists/; Seymour M. Hersh, “The Red Line and the Rat Line,” London Review of Books, April 17, 2014; Jeremy Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars: Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2019), 268-74. ↑
MacFarquhar, “The Assad Family’s Legacy Is One of Savage Oppression.” ↑
Sune Engel Rasmussen, ““Iran Suffers Blow of ‘Historic Proportions’ With Assad’s Fall.” The Wall Street Journal, December 10, 2024. ↑
Jeremy Kuzmarov, “Mainstream Media Colludes with U.S. Government To Conceal Source of Syria’s Heartbreaking Humanitarian Crisis,” CovertAction Magazine, June 30, 2023, https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/06/30/mainstream-media-colludes-with-u-s-government-to-conceal-source-of-syrias-heartbreaking-humanitarian-crisis/ ↑
See flawed coverage in Democracy Now: https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/10/syria_assad; https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/13/syria_damascus ↑
Caitlin Johnstone, “Syria Is Absorbed Into the Empire,” Consortium News, December 9, 2024, https://consortiumnews.com/2024/12/09/syria-is-absorbed-into-the-empire/ ↑
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAnNJW9_KYA ↑
Whitney, “Black Flag Over Damascus”; Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., “Why the Arabs Don’t Want Us in Syria,” Politico Magazine, February 22, 2016, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/02/rfk-jr-why-arabs-dont-trust-america-213601/ Whitney suggests that, once built, the plan would be to further expand sanctions or use terrorist methods, like in the destruction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, to undercut any competitors. ↑
Kennedy, Jr., “Why the Arabs Don’t Want Us in Syria.” ↑
Timber Sycamore was first proposed by General David Petraeus, the CIA Director from September 2011 to November 2012. Greg Miller and Adam Entous of The Washington Post stated that “the operation has served as the centerpiece of the U.S. strategy to press Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step aside.” The existence of Timber Sycamore was revealed by The New York Times and Al Jazeera shortly after Jane’s Defence Weekly reported, in late 2015, that the U.S. Federal Business Opportunities website was soliciting contracts to ship thousands of tons of weapons from Eastern Europe to Taşucu, Turkey, and Aqaba, Jordan. ↑
The same website noted that some of the weapons under Timber Sycamore were delivered via Ramstein Base in Germany—in breach of German law. Timber Sycamore faced minimal opposition in Congress. Ron Wyden (D-OR) raised concern about the lack of transparency regarding Timber Sycamore but not the goal of U.S. regime change or the right of the U.S. to intervene in Syria or arm terrorists. A main political figure questioning the operation, Tulsi Gabbard, was attacked as “an Assad lover” in neo-McCarthyite terms. Political scientist Federico Manfredi Firmian called Timber Sycamore “one of the United States’ most ill-conceived and deadly covert-action programs,” noting that it fueled the war, and inflicted untold misery on the Syrian people. ↑
Peter Baker and Mark Mazzetti wrote in The New York Times: “In the 67 years since the C.I.A. was founded, few presidents have had as close a bond with their intelligence chiefs as Mr. Obama has forged with Mr. Brennan.” ↑
A. B. Abrams, World War in Syria: Global Conflict on Middle Eastern Battlefields (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2021), 274. ↑
Abrams, World War in Syria, 274. ↑
Abrams, World War in Syria. ↑
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About the Author
Jeremy Kuzmarov holds a Ph.D. in American history from Brandeis University and has taught at numerous colleges across the United States. He is regularly sought out as an expert on U.S. history and politics for radio and TV programs and co-hosts a radio show on New York Public Radio and on Progressive Radio News Network called “Left on Left.” He is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine and is the author of five books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019), The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018), and Warmonger. How Clinton’s Malign Foreign Policy Launched the U.S. Trajectory From Bush II to Biden (Clarity Press, 2023). Besides these books, Kuzmarov has published hundreds of articles and contributed to numerous edited volumes, including one in the prestigious Oxford History of Counterinsurgency . He can be reached at jkuzmarov2@gmail.com and found on substack here.
