>> Bill Whelan: It's Wednesday, June 21, 2023, and welcome back to Matters of Policy and Politics, a Hoover Institution podcast devoted to governance and balance of power here in America and around the world. I'm Bill Whelan, I'm the Hoover Institution's Virginia Hobbs Carpenter distinguished policy fellow in journalism. But I'm not the only Hoover fellow podcasting these days. I suggest you go to our website, which is hoover.org, click on the tab at the top of the homepage it says commentary.
Head over to where it says multimedia. And up will pop a list of menu of audio podcasts, about 17 and all, including this one which I will modestly say I think is at the top of the list. And that's because we always have great guests on this show, today being no exception. My guest today is Joel Rayburn. Joel is a Hoover Institution visiting fellow, a Middle east historian, and a former diplomat and military officer.
Among the appointments he's held, the US State Department's deputy assistant secretary for Levant affairs, us special envoy for Syria, US chief of mission for Syria. He's here today to talk about what is happening in that very troubled and complicated corner of the world. Joel, thanks for coming on the podcast. >> Joel D. Rayburn: That's my pleasure. >> Bill Whelan: So, first things first, let's talk a little bit about where you are physically at the moment.
Though we're doing a podcast, people can't see it. You are actually in Washington, DC. And over your right shoulder is a portrait of the late, great Fawad Ajami. >> Joel D. Rayburn: That's right, that's right. He was quite a mentor, not just for me but for many people who studied and work on the Middle east. And he's very badly missed. >> Bill Whelan: And that was your tie into the Hoover Institution at first. You were part of our Middle east working group, right?
>> Joel D. Rayburn: That's right. Going back to the days when. When Dr Ajmi made his trek from Washington, DC, where he taught at Johns Hopkins, Seiss for decades, out to the Hoover Institution, circa 2009, 2010. And when he got there and set up the Middle east working group, he asked me to contribute to it. And I was happy to do that for a number of years. >> Bill Whelan: And now let's talk a bit about your interest in the Levant.
I don't know if you are a fan of the movie Lawrence of Arabia, it's one of my favorite films. It's one of those films Joel, that I don't think this young generation can sit through like Dr Zhivago, because it is a long, long saga, but it's an incredible film. And one of my favorite lines Joel, is when he's being interviewed, Lawrence is, and he's asked why his personal interest in the desert, and he says, because it's clean. >> Joel D. Rayburn: It's clean, that's right.
>> Bill Whelan: It's clean. So, Joel Rayburn, what is your interest in the Levant? And maybe we can do this by you explaining what exactly the Levant is for those who do not know. >> Joel D. Rayburn: Well, the Levant region comes from just the french word for sunrise, which the French looked at the eastern Mediterranean in the Middle Ages and in early colonial times, as that was the region where the sun rose at the other end of the Mediterranean Sea.
And so we're talking about the regions that border on the eastern Mediterranean Sea. So a little bit of Turkey, what's now Syria, Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan. And then really, as a direct extension to that region, we're talking about Mesopotamia, we're talking about Iraq, the Kurdistan region and so on. So everything between the Zagros mountains and the Mediterranean Sea.
So when I think of the Levant territory, I think of that you might also think of it as the fertile crescent, the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys and where they run through. But essentially, it's a region that constituted the arabic speaking provinces of the ottoman empire for centuries. >> Bill Whelan: But a big world Joel, why are you just that particular slice of the world?
>> Joel D. Rayburn: Well, because there's so much going on there historically, because it's a strategic region, because it's an unsettled region. It's a turbulent region. It is a field of competition among great powers. It's a field of competition among some really important ideologies. And it's been that way since time immemorial. We're talking about the holy land. And so it's a fascinating region, but it's also strategically important and that's why I've chosen to focus on it.
>> Bill Whelan: Let's start by looking at Syria. I would like to take you back, Joel, to march the arab french economic summit in Paris. I believe March 15 being the 12th anniversary of the pro democracy demonstrations in Syria, and an individual scene at the summit in Paris was a gentleman by the name of Mousan Mahas. I apologize if I got the name wrong, Joel. He is the head of the Damascus chamber of commerce. He is close to Bashar al Assad, the Syrian leader.
And his presence in Paris raises a question. Joel, is the west going wobbly on Syria? >> Joel D. Rayburn: I don't think the west is. I don't think the western countries are the arab countries. The arab capitals certainly are, but I don't think, I don't think the western capitals are the european capitals and I don't think the United States is.
And so essentially what we've seen over the last five, six months is that the Arab countries and the European Union and the United States have diverged in their policies toward the Syrian conflict. And we're no longer on the same page. The Arab League has chosen to normalize relations with Bashar al Assad to break him out of the isolation, international isolation that he and regime have most deservedly been in.
While the European Union is moving in the opposite direction, European courts are taking members of the Assad regime to trial now for war crimes, crimes against humanity. And that's just gathering steam. It's gonna happen more and more. And in the United States, Congress has shown that its patience for normalization with the Assad regime is just not there. And so Congress is in the middle of doubling down on the isolation of Bashar al Assad. That's where we are.
We're on diverging policy paths with our Arab allies is what's going on. >> Bill Whelan: Can you explain what exactly Syria is looking at the way of sanctions. >> Joel D. Rayburn: So the Syrian regime is heavily under Us and EU sanctions because of the war crimes atrocities, as well as the support for terrorism, their military alliance with the Iranian regime and so on. And in the United States, the sanctions that we placed on the Assad regime culminated in what we call the Caesar act.
It was named after the anonymous Syrian regime photographer who smuggled out of Syria the photos of starved, tortured corpses of detainees, tens of thousands of them that were in the Assad regimes prisons. And Congress reacted to that by passing the Caesar act, which imposed some very stiff sanctions on the Assad regime. And unfortunately, for the last two and a half years or so, under the Biden administration, there hasn't been much enforcement of those sanctions.
And so Congress is in the middle, the House of Representatives is in the middle of considering a bill that would double down on those sanctions and essentially require the executive branch to enforce them. >> Bill Whelan: And these are economic sanctions. >> Joel D. Rayburn: They're economic sanctions, their sanctions on the regime. There are sanctions on the regime's financial system. There are secondary sanctions on anyone who does business with the regime.
So if you enter into a contract with the syrian government or with some, you know, state owned enterprise that's an extension of syrian government, then you're vulnerable to secondary sanctions. Under the act. >> Bill Whelan: Right. So you mentioned, Joel, the Arab League voting to reinstate Syria's membership after almost a 12 year suspension. I think that suspension came into effect in November 2011. Joel, here's what the Qatari PM said at the time of the suspension being lifted.
Here's what he said back in 2011. Excuse me. Syria is a dear country for all of us and it pains us to make this decision. We hope that there will be a brave move from Syria to stop the violence and begin a real dialogue toward real reform. So naive person that I am. Twelve years, almost twelve years later when the suspension is lifted, has Syria lived up to this goal of, number one, stopping the violence, and secondly, beginning a real dialogue toward real reform?
>> Joel D. Rayburn: Well, no. What happened in the interim is that the Assad regime killed several hundred thousand people. They disappeared over 200,000 people. They used chemical weapons several hundred times against their own population, and they invited in the Iranian regime military to establish new IRGC outposts in Syria that the IRGC has begun using against Israel. So there's been an escalation on all levels.
And so no, things went in exactly the opposite direction as not just the countries, but everyone hoped they would go back in 2011. >> Bill Whelan: My point here is 12 years ago, the suspension's put in place. And this is the pretty clear goal of suspension. We want to stop the violence. We want real reform, we want you to clean up your act. But here we are almost twelve years later and clearly that hasn't happened. So why the change in policy?
>> Joel D. Rayburn: Well, I think the first is that there's been fatigue among the arab capitals in particular over just because there's been no resolution and because I think now in 2023, a lot of the arab capitals just concluded that the United States doesn't have a coherent plan for bringing the conflict to a close on an acceptable footing.
The Iranian regime, I think, worked with the Chinese to influence the Arab capitals to accept the normalization of Assad as part of a broader deal deescalating conflict in the region. I think it's very misguided. I don't think it's gonna work. But I do think that's one of the things that happened. I think the normalization of Assad, I suspect, was something that Saudi Arabia, for example, agreed to in their Beijing negotiations with the Iranians that were brokered by the Chinese, of course.
So I think that's essentially what has happened. It's fatigue, it's frustration with no real direction from the current US administration. And then just the idea that in addition to that that Assad has reverted to his old tried and true method of being both arsonist and fireman in the surrounding countries. So he has begun to dump narcotics onto the Gulf countries, Saudi Arabia in particular. And it's become a real problem.
It's become a real epidemic of amphetamine-based narcotics that are being produced by the Syrian regime, smuggled by the Syrian regime. And so I think part of the deal to normalize with Assad is essentially to pay him ransom to get him to stop the drug trafficking into the gulf countries, or at least to get him to tone it down so that it can be down to a manageable level. Of course, that gives him, it's a lever of control now that he has with the gulf countries. So it's not a good development.
It's not a good development for the US, it's not a good development for our allies. >> Bill Whelan: And you said he also plays the role of fireman in the region. Explain that. >> Joel D. Rayburn: Well, it's his own regime that is producing and then trafficking the narcotics into the Gulf, and then he's stepping forward and offering himself as the solution to the problem. It's a very Tony Soprano, very New York, five families way. My goodness. You mean down at the esplanade?
You're having problems getting your concrete delivered? Don't worry. Let me see if I can step in and help you with that problem. And, your trash isn't being picked up? Don't worry. I have a waste management company. We might be able to take over the contract and help you out with that. So it's a very mafiosi way of doing business. But that's the way the Assad regime has always behaved. They do it.
Lebanon has been the main place that they do it, where they turn the rheostat up and then down on their militant networks, that they support Hezbollah, Hamas, Azamijad, and so on over the decades. And then they offer themselves as the solution to rein in those problems. >> Bill Whelan: Are you surprised that Assad has survived? And, Joel, how did he manage to survive? Whereas Gaddafi did not? >> Joel D. Rayburn: One of the reasons these survived is cuz Gaddafi did not.
And when Qaddafi's allies, the Russians, the Iranians and so on, saw that that happened and they saw Assad was going to go the same way, then they intervened in a major way with military forces and military assistance that they really didn't have time to do in Libya. But also in Libya, NATO intervened in a way that NATO did not intervene in Syria.
The Obama administration had and President Obama had his famous red line moment where he had previously said that if Assad were to deploy chemical weapons, that that would be a red line for the United States. And then Assad did do that and got caught, and then President Obama didn't react. And I think that that was the entire region, all the arab countries consider that to be the really great missed opportunity to. To use pressure to get Assad to step aside and have a transition in power.
What happened after that? The iranian regime intervened with Hezbollah in a major way in the internal conflict. And then when even that wasn't enough to rescue Assad in 2015, Vladimir Putin made the decision in September, October 2015 to use the Russian military and intervene. And he deployed the russian air force down to Syria, and they began bombing opposition held territories and just rubbled whole cities, like at least half of Aleppo, for example.
And that's essentially when the tide of the military conflict turned and the United States and other allies didn't match that escalation. And so what we were left with after that was political pressure and economic pressure, that we had a coherent plan for that. During the Trump administration, at least I believed, I was one of the people that formulated and executed it. So I liked it, and I thought it was working.
But then that was discontinued at the beginning of 2021 when the Biden administration came in. So that's kind of where we are. That's why he's been very fortunate in his adversaries, Bashar al-Assad. >> Bill Whelan: And what is the state of his relationship with Putin and Russia right now? Because today is the 21 June, Joel. Tomorrow is the 16th month anniversary of the Ukraine invasion. I'm guessing Moscow is somewhat distracted. But is Putin still engaged in Syria?
Is Russia still fully engaged in Syria, or has it been affected by Ukraine? >> Joel D. Rayburn: Well, the Russians are still there, but they're there in a way that they cannot escalate in Syria if they needed to. For example, if they got into another confrontation with Turkey, as they have from time to time since 2015, they would not be able to escalate and confront the Turks because their resources are tied up fighting. Their resources are tied.
That's right. So they have a foothold hold in Syria. I don't think they're not going to withdraw from Syria, but they can't escalate in Syria. They have a pretty low ceiling on what they can do in Syria. But on the other hand, you ask, what is Assad's relationship with Putin? Well, I mean, it's pretty strong in that Assad can't do without Putin.
If the Russian military and Vladimir Putin Putin were to withdraw their support from Assad, say today, I mean, within two weeks, Assad would be losing the war again because his military is just gone. He just doesn't have the capability to defend his regime territory. He needs the Russians there as a deterrent to the Turks and as sort of a quick reaction force to save his military when it's needed.
>> Bill Whelan: It sounds like there might be a void here, Joel, and in world politics, where there's a void, there is China. And here's my question for you. Syria offers perhaps a situation for China to invest cash if it wants to, to a struggling government. It likes to offer infrastructure, and it loves to get a toehold in corners of the world where it's not. Is China involved in Syria right now? >> Joel D. Rayburn: Well, they're involved, but only indirectly.
And I don't think they're going to get involved financially in the way that they do in some other places. And the simple reason is that Assad already gave away everything that could be given away to the Russians and the Iranians in order to pay for, to compensate them for their military assistance. So there's not really, if you think about what would be the revenue producing assets and sectors inside Syria, there's not really anything for the Chinese to get. They would have to.
The Russians and the Iranians have cornered that. And I just don't see. I don't see there's any money to be made by the Chinese, and I don't think they see it either. >> Bill Whelan: Let's shift countries now. And speaking of the clean desert, Joel, let's go to Saudi Arabia. Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi Crown Prince, it was only a decade ago the Saudis were funding anti-Assad militias.
Worth noting here is MBS giving a speech telling the world to basically look the other way when it comes to Syria. And his words, Joel, quote, it is important to leave internal affairs to the country's people as they are best able to manage them. So what is MBS telling the world? >> Joel D. Rayburn: Well, for a long time, for 12 years, the Saudis were very much in opposition to Assad, in particular to Assad's alliance with the Iranian regime.
But I think the Saudis were sort of painted into a corner strategically because of the pressure and the threat coming from the Iranian regime. And I think they lost faith that the US was going to guarantee their safety, that they were gonna be under a reliable military defense umbrella from the United States. And so they decided to do essentially a truce with the iranian regime.
And as I mentioned before, I believe, I suspect, the Saudis haven't said this, but I suspect that part of their entering into this truce with the Iranians. Essentially because what the Saudis want most from the Iranians is for the Iranians to stop threatening their critical infrastructure, like Aramco's assets in the Persian Gulf, and also for the Iranians to stop firing ballistic missiles at Saudi cities from Yemen via the Iranians Houthi proxies.
So I suspect that the quid pro quo for that, that if the Saudis are negotiating with Iranians, hey, stop. Stop attacking us with ballistic missiles, that the Iranians might say, well, we might be able to explore that if you will stop your isolation, if you will stop the Arab countries, the Arab League, from freezing out Bashar al Assad, normalize with him so his life gets easier. And as a byproduct that the Iranians lives get easier in Syria, I suspect that's what happened.
And they did that in the absence of what they believe is coherent US policy, not just in Syria, but in the broader region. They were taken aback when the Iranians attacked the Aramco asset facilities in 2019. And in our administration, the Trump administration, we didn't immediately respond. We responded three months later to a different provocation by taking out the IRGC chief Qasem Soleimani.
But then in 2022, when the Emiratis were attacked, came under missile attack from Iranian proxies in early 2022, and again, the United States didn't do anything to stop it or deter the Iranians from doing that. I think the Gulf country said, right, okay, we're gonna have to make our own. We're gonna have to pursue our own solutions here.
And maybe that's just seeing if we can come up with this truce with these guys who are attacking us, because the Americans aren't doing anything about it, about the threat.
And not only that, I think they saw that the Biden administration had decided to try to go back and revive the Iran nuclear agreement, which, if it happens, would amount to a financial windfall for the iranian regime, that they could then turn around and use to buy arms again, or produce arms and pay proxies against the Saudis. And so in the absence of us leadership, I think this is what we get. We get China and we get normalization of Assad.
>> Bill Whelan: So the State Department, why does the Biden administration see the world this way? Joel, explain really the difference between the Biden administration's approach to the Levant versus the Trump administration's. >> Joel D. Rayburn: Well, I think it's the absence in the Biden administration. I don't see a coherent geopolitical view. I don't see that they look at a geopolitical landscape and they calculate their policies that way.
They formulate their policies and their national security strategies in that way. And so starting in the Obama administration and continuing, let's be honest, to some people, during the Trump presidency as well, and on into the Biden administration, the mantra has been, we're going to leave the Middle east, we're going to pivot to Asia, we're going to pivot to the Pacific, and so on.
And while we haven't actually done that, we've said that we want to do that so many times that we convinced the, we convinced the Middle east that we do want to leave. And so they've calculated that we're on our way out. The reason that we've done that, I don't think it's because we've said, okay, we're going to put all our chips into the game in the Pacific because we're not actually doing that either.
I think it's because whereas Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, when they think of great power competition, they think of the globe as a field of competition or a chessboard, and the Middle east is one of them. The Middle east is a field of competition. It's a playing field. And they're going to compete with us for influence and allies in that vital region which provides the world with an enormous amount of its energy supply, among other things.
And the Biden administration and the Obama administration for it just refused to see the Middle East that way as a field of great power competition, as a region that's strategically significant for American interests. And so we haven't had in those two administrations a coherent national security strategy for the Middle East. We have never formulated under those two administrations a coherent plan to deter the iranian regime from destabilizing the entire region around it.
And the result is what we see when the Saudis and the Iranians sit down and start talking and the United States is not involved. >> Bill Whelan: Is that all right, Joel? And I don't mean this in a patronizing, colonial way. The fact is we have a strategic interest, and our interest is, I hate to tell people, interest is oil. And if Saudi Arabia were overwhelmed, we'd have to go in there and stop things, because that is to our national security.
So you see these regional deals being done between the states with the United States not being involved. The question is, should the US Some way be involved, Joel. But how would it be involved without, again, going back to patronizing colonial days? >> Joel D. Rayburn: Well, we don't have to have that. First of all, yes, we should be involved. No, it's not good that the Chinese are moving into essentially the broker role or the strategic guarantor role that we have held since 1973.
Remember that the Soviets were expelled from the Middle East in the wake of the 1973 war, and the Russians didn't come back until 2015. So it's really astounding that since 2015, we've allowed two other, two essentially adversarial superpowers to come into this region where we have been preeminent for 50 years, among other things. And you're absolutely right about that it's oil. It's the energy production there. The Chinese don't produce their own energy. They buy it from the Persian Gulf.
When we are the security guarantors for the Persian Gulf, we essentially dominate, militarily, the Chinese gas tank. And I don't know why we would just hand over the keys to the Chinese to their gas tank and say, here you go, we're weary of the Persian Gulf. You can now have control of your own gas tank as you prepare for your own strategic competition to try to destroy us. I don't know why we would do that.
Other than that, as I say, we have here in Washington, and I think it's happened since 1989, since the fall of Berlin Wall, that we have a generation of policymakers who've grown up without having to know, without essentially a working memory of the cold war and the idea of an existential threat and the world as a competition between us and our adversaries.
>> Bill Whelan: Let's go back to the gas tank for a second, and I want your sense on how badly you think Mohammed bin Salman wants to see Syrian sanctions lifted because he does have a card to play here. If he really wanted it to happen, you could mess around with the oil market. That's too far-fetched. >> Joel D. Rayburn: Yeah, I suspect the Saudis are going through the motions of political normalization with Assad.
But the idea that the Saudis are going to expend their political capital on behalf of Bashar al Assad or to try to help Assad get out from under US sanctions, I don't see them doing that. I have a feeling that this is a policy that they've done, that it's a placeholder for something in the future, and they've done it again as part of this Chinese deal. That's my suspicion. So I think it's kind of the normalization of Syria where Riyadh is concerned. I suspect it's skin deep.
I don't think there's a real national security policy there on the saudi side. >> Bill Whelan: Okay, let's bounce over to Iran now, Joel. There was a report in the Washington Post recently that Iran's army militants in Syria training forces to use bombs to target us personnel. The same post report also mentioned that Russia, Syria, and Iran are working on a broader effort, it was called a coordination center to essentially push the United States out of Syria.
So first question, are those three nations conspiring to push us out of Syria? >> Joel D. Rayburn: Yeah, and they have been for several years. >> Bill Whelan: And they talk to each other and they coordinate on this? >> Joel D. Rayburn: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, even back when I was the US envoy for Syria, there was a lot of evidence that indicated that.
That the Iranian regime with Iraqi militants and the Syrian regime, with support from the Russians, at least, at a minimum, strategic support from the Russians, political support from the Russians. That they had the objective of pressuring us in the Euphrates valley and east of the Euphrates, where we have the counter ISIS campaign, and we have a small us contingent there, military contingent, that they were coordinating to try to pressure us to leave.
Now, they're very weak, and they can't really accomplish that, but this is not new, that they've been coordinating along these lines. >> Bill Whelan: All right, so you described Assad's relationship with Putin and Russia. Can you explain his relationship, clarify his relationship with the regime in Tehran? >> Joel D. Rayburn: Sure. The syrian regime since 1979 has been the iranian regime's only arab state ally, or it's been their oldest one. I guess they have a couple more here and there now.
But I think it's an unshakable relationship. It's not just a marriage of convenience, it's a strategic alliance. And I think Assad has a worldview where he believes that China, Russia, the Iranian regime, and he are gonna win the 21st century, and that the Europeans and the US are old and decrepit and we're fading powers and that he's on the right side of the winner, the side that's gonna win the 21st century.
And so he sees it in his interest as being the extension of iranian power projection in the Levant region. It's just not going to change. I think he not only sees material benefit from it, but I think that's his philosophy, it's his worldview. >> Bill Whelan: And what would Assad do if the iranian regime collapsed?
>> Joel D. Rayburn: If either Vladimir Putin's regime or the Iranian regime collapsed or was internally destabilized, I think that would spell the end of Assad, either one or the other. He can't survive without either of them, he's just too shaky. His regime is too brittle. He doesn't have enough money.
He's not that popular with his former loyalist constituency and the country, the region, the territory he controls inside Syria is just an absolute meltdown economically, security-wise, it's a nightmare. So he needs every ounce of russian and iranian support that he can get even now. And if he were to lose that, I think he'd be gone in pretty short order. >> Bill Whelan: But if Assad is gone, then who steps into fill SAP void?
>> Joel D. Rayburn: Well, I think if Assad is gone, if the Assad family is gone, or if they become just sort of figureheads inside Syria, then it opens up all kinds of opportunities for political deal-making, reconciliation, or from some alternative. Let's say a transitional alternative from someone inside the current Syrian government could probably hold things together while all the Syrian sides would meet in a political process and decide where to go.
>> Bill Whelan: But we, the US, would have to make a decision. We'd have to look at that new regime and say, are they friendly? Are they what we like? Do they share our values and then make a choice about whether or not to lift the sanctions? Right? >> Joel D. Rayburn: Well, yeah, of course. Our sanctions aren't dependent on the personality at the top of the syrian government. Our sanctions are dependent on the behavior and policies of the Syrian government.
So in the Caesar Act, for example, it sets out conditions for lifting the sanctions, and they're pretty explicit. And they don't have to do with Assad. They have to do with stop bombing civilians, stop working with the Russians and the Iranians to bomb hospitals and schools and so on. Let your political prisoners out of jail or account for their whereabouts and, and so, and stop supporting Terrorism inside Syria, things like that.
So if there's a successor government to Assad, it would open up all kinds of opportunities for negotiating a resolution of that, negotiating a resolution of the conflict, a settlement of the conflict that might stick, and then negotiating on a reestablishment of relations between the United States and a Syrian government. I don't think it's gonna happen while Assad is there.
Do you ever stop and think what that world would look like, that corner of the world would look like if we had enforced the crossing of the red line? I think it would look a heck of a lot better than it does today. And I don't think you'd have had the ISIS caliphate. I don't think you would have had ISIS taking over vast swaths of eastern Syria and northern and western Iraq. I think there would have been a lot of.
I mean, think of all the people that Assad and his regime killed or have disappeared into their jails, who are, I assume, dead that would still be with us. The refugee crisis, the EU was destabilized by a wave of refugees largely from Syria, 2015 and 2016. That need not have happened if Assad had stepped aside and there had been a transitional phase in Syria.
So not only that, the Iranian regime would not have been able to secure these new strategic outposts, which have led to essentially an undeclared war between Tehran and Israel that threatens to escalate all the time. So, yeah, I think the world would be a lot happier place had President Obama made good on his word back then. >> Bill Whelan: And where is ISIS these days? >> Joel D. Rayburn: ISIS, they're still around. They are in a clandestine manifestation.
They're a clandestine terrorist network across large portions of Syria and Iraq in particular. And they don't go away. They no longer can control territory. They no longer govern territory. They're no longer an army in the field. They're defeated in that sense, but they're still there because the oxygen that they breathe comes from the political conflict around them in Iraq and Syria.
And as long as that political conflict is there, then they'll always be able to find some corner of support to be able to stay alive. So they're still with us, and they're gonna be with us until there's political stabilization across the region. >> Bill Whelan: What conditions would allow that movement to grow again? >> Joel D. Rayburn: I'm convinced they will grow again. If you don't keep them under constant military pressure, they will begin to regenerate.
The day you stop pressuring them militarily or with security forces or in a law enforcement kind of way, they immediately begin to regenerate because they kind of surf, they ride on the underlying political conflict. And that they will, as long as you keep that, as long as that network can survive and find some free space, they will recruit, they'll do their ideological indoctrination, and they'll begin to plan operations in addition to that.
So if the campaign against ISIS were just to stop or to peter out in Iraq and Syria, they would immediately make a comeback. Another way that they could do it is that there are tens of thousands of ISIS fighters and loyalists who are in detention camps, prisons in northeast Syria, and they're guarded by the syrian democratic forces, the kurdish led force, that's our local ally there.
And if the SDF were to lose control of those detention centers and ISIS were to escape, that's essentially the caliphate in prison right now. So if they break out of prison, then they'll be right back. That's part of their strategy. Actually. For several years, they've been trying to stage jailbreaks in Syria and Iraq to break people out. And occasionally they've been able to do it. >> Bill Whelan: What would they do for money and weapons? >> Joel D. Rayburn: They can always find money.
First of all, that region's awash in weapons. Weapons are not really a problem. They can always find money from supporters outside the region who view them as the side in this broad sectarian war that they want to support. And they can behave like a Mafia extortion network locally so that they will demand protection money and they'll get it in local communities. They will kidnap people and hold them for ransom.
All the same kind of things that you would see in Caracas or Mogadishu or in northern New Jersey. >> Bill Whelan: Two more countries I want to talk about, Joel, in time we have left. One is Turkey. We have Turkish drone strikes going on in northeast Syria. Can you explain what that's all about?
>> Joel D. Rayburn: That is because of the decades long war between Turkey and the PKK, which is the Kurdish Marxist separatist group that wants essentially to dismember Turkey and have the Kurdish speaking territories in Turkey, communities in Turkey, form a greater Kurdistan, so on. And the Turks believe they constitute an existential threat to Turkey. So the PKK has a big stronghold in northern Iraq, up in the mountains that the Turks can't reach, really.
And in northern Syria, in northeast Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces have some elements in them, or they're associated with some elements that are associated with the PKK. And so the Turks consider northeast Syria to be a base for the PKK, to potentially use it against Turkey. >> Bill Whelan: And Assad doesn't have a problem with this? >> Joel D. Rayburn: The Assad regime helped to create the PKK in Damascus in the late 1970s as a tool to use against Turkey.
The Assad regime only has one grand strategy, and that's to host the militant opposition to all of the surrounding governments, all of its neighboring governments. And so they did that to Iraq, they did that to Turkey. And Ocalan and the PKK were hosted in Damascus in the 70s as a tool for Bashar al Assad's father, Hafez al Assad, to use against Turkey.
And so, yeah, Bashar al Assad, if the United States were to leave and the SDF were to be left without protection, without a patron, I have no doubt that Bashar al Assad would love to kind of scoop them up and orient them against Turkey. To use as a tool against Turkey. >> Bill Whelan: Okay, and then finally, Joel, Israel. The israeli air force has been targeting sites belonging to secret iranian groups in Syria. In April, rockets were launched from Syria Israel's way.
Is this the foreseeable future, just sort of strikes back and forth, or do you fear that hostilities will escalate? >> Joel D. Rayburn: Yeah, they could escalate at any time. And it's because the Iranians are there in an unnatural way, in a place where they have no, Iranians have no natural national security interest against Israel. It's ideologically driven. It's driven by Supreme Leader Khamenei as one of the pillars of his regime, and they have expanded.
The Iranian regime has expanded into Syria with weapons to use, so missiles, armed drones. To use against the Israelis, trying to open up a second front that will look like the Hezbollah front against Israel in southern and central Lebanon. If it were ever to come to a confrontation between the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Israel, the Iranians want to be able to open up another front in Syria. They would like to be able to do that in Iraq as well. And that's what they're aiming to do.
It's entirely a provocative tool against Israel, and the Israelis can't allow that to be established, and so they fight back. And this war has been going on for several years. >> Bill Whelan: All right, meanwhile, we have talked, Joel, of another nuclear deal between the US and Iran. Do you put a lot of currency into that? Do you think that's gonna happen? >> Joel D. Rayburn: No, I don't.
Because, I mean, if the Iranian regime is enjoying the Biden administration's lack of commitment to enforcing US sanctions against Tehran right now. So the Iranian regime is able to sell more than a million and a half barrels of oil a day. So they're doing fine, they're not under pressure. If you go back to the latter months of the Trump administration, the Iranians' oil exports have been crunched by our sanctions and our enforcement mechanisms, down under 400,000 barrels a day.
It was unsustainable for the Iranian regime. They were gonna go broke and collapse. But as soon as the Biden administration came in, they've step by step stopped enforcing the sanctions, as sort of a goodwill step to try to encourage the Iranians to return to President Obama's original JCPOA, the Iran nuclear agreement.
But ironically, if the Biden team had really wanted to be successful in bringing back that deal, they should have kept the Trump sanctions on the Iranians and kept the iranian regime under pressure. Then they would have had no choice but to enter back into a deal. And it's kind of too late now anyway. The Iranians have enriched uranium over 60%, which is far beyond any limits that would be acceptable. And they're just not gonna go back.
At this stage, I think the only possible US approach that would work is to try to reestablish strategic deterrence against the Iranian regime. A deal is just, it's not gonna accomplish anything. >> Bill Whelan: If there were a deal- >> Joel D. Rayburn: Just like they did in the first time. >> Bill Whelan: How would the neighboring nations react, Joel, if there were a deal between the US and Iran, would they see that as a show of strength in Iran?
Would they see that as a show of strength on the part of US in terms of being able to broker a deal? Or would they see just the opposite, a sign of weakness on the part of the US willing to cut a deal? >> Joel D. Rayburn: They see it as a sign of weakness. They've been quite explicit about that. They saw the first deal as a sign of us weakness. They were utterly baffled by it. It doesn't make sense to them.
And if the US continues, if the Biden administration continues with its insistence on restoring some kind of deal, then the region, more and more the Arab countries, more and more are going to go their own way to try to protect themselves against an Iranian regime that they could think is out of control. And they will proliferate their own nuclear capabilities. I'm not saying they'll have a nuclear weapons program.
But if the Iranians are gonna get to have their own enrichment capability, if the United States is gonna do a deal where the Iranians can enrich in Iran, then why on Earth would the Saudis accept what the US has been offering? Which is that the Saudis don't have enrichment, that they have to outsource enrichment in a 123 agreement, as we call it, the Emiratis the same, the Turks the same.
If they're all saying okay, if enrichment is good enough for the Iranians and the US is okay with that, then you can be okay with Saudi enrichment and Emirati enrichment and Egyptian enrichment and Turkish enrichment. And you'll have nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. >> Bill Whelan: Finally, Joel, two nations we haven't mentioned, maybe we could just touch on them lightly here, Jordan and Lebanon.
I think Lebanon, I think Beirut, and if you google pictures of Beirut in the 1950s, how sad what's happened to that once beautiful city on the Mediterranean. >> Joel D. Rayburn: Yeah, it is the postcard for what happens when the Iranian regime essentially takes a dominant role in a place, it is absolutely destroyed. So that's a political system that is dominated by Hezbollah's weapons. No one else is strong enough to do anything about it inside Lebanon, so they run roughshod.
So an Iranian proxy, crazy militia is in the dominant position in that country and it's an absolute collapse. And I don't know, I don't see any way for it to be put back together again in the foreseeable future. >> Bill Whelan: And Jordan. >> Joel D. Rayburn: Jordan is kind of surrounded by this sea of events all around it. And is in a situation where they're never economically very stable. They require US support, they require Israeli support.
They would benefit from Gulf support that they don't get much of. And they're kind of dependent on policies and conditions elsewhere, it's not a comfortable position for them. But they're surrounded by instability and conflict, and it's tough for them to hold things together. They're not a wealthy country. They don't have the same kind of strategic resources that the countries around them do. And they're struggling.
And that's concerning because we depend on them as a strategic partner, as a military partner in the region, as do the Israelis. So it's a tough situation. >> Bill Whelan: All right, let's turn to another complicated part of the world, and that's California, Joel, the home of the Hoover Institution. What are you working on at Hoover these days? >> Joel D. Rayburn: Well, at Hoover, I kind of work on all the things that I just described.
I'm happy to still be in the Middle East Working Group with Russell Berman, who's another awesome senior fellow at Hoover and a professor at Stanford. And so I just try to keep people apprised of strategic trends across this region that we've been talking about and the way in which they affect us interests. And mostly that's been in the negative sense over the last few years, there hasn't been a lot of happy news. So a lot of warnings, a lot of Cassandra-type warnings, but, hopefully.
And then I think Hoover is a great place to try to formulate recommendations for what a coherent policy would look like, what a sound policy would look like. And my old buddy HR McMaster is doing that all day long as well. And so those are the kind of things that I focus on at Hoover. >> Bill Whelan: Great, well, we're glad to have you on board, and I sure appreciate you taking me on a tour today of the Levant.
>> Joel D. Rayburn: My pleasure, hopefully, we can do it again, but then all the problems will be solved by that point. >> Bill Whelan: If you're saying, will we ever have a chance to get together and talk about the complications, yeah, I think that could happen again. >> Joel D. Rayburn: Okay. >> Bill Whelan: Joel Rayburn, thanks a lot for the conversation, I sure enjoyed it. >> Joel D. Rayburn: All right, my pleasure.
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