00:00I mean, those events in December of last year took everyone by surprise.
00:05I mean, did you see the writing on the wall for Bashar al-Assad?
00:08Did you see it coming when it came?
00:12No, what I would, you know, the way I thought about Syria in those last couple of years
00:17was that sooner or later, a lot of really terrible chickens would come home to roost,
00:23that there would be pressures there that would accumulate precisely because of the effect
00:30of the events of the Gaza conflict, the effect on Iran of its efforts to mobilize its axis
00:38of resistance, which ultimately, against Israel, which ultimately led to a pretty shattering
00:43set of attacks by Israel against Hezbollah and a series of attacks or exchanges, military
00:51exchanges between Israel and Iran.
00:53So there was always pressure that the Israelis were putting on Syria in that period.
01:02But yes, I was as surprised as anyone that all of a sudden, from one minute to the next,
01:08Assad fled.
01:09It was quite remarkable.
01:11And even the fighters themselves that made up Shara's large tent, shall we say, were surprised
01:21by how easily they swept down from Aleppo to Damascus.
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