Toppling Assad Was Likely Israeli-U.S. Intel Ops Since Invasion of Lebanon, Former CIA Case Officer
Calls Turkey a minor player, and says plan likely involved White House, Amos Hochstein, the Israeli-born U.S. diplomat, and Israel
The fall of Damascus was likely the result of an Israeli-U.S. intelligence operation that started when Israel decided to invade Lebanon in early October because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knew he had a willing administration in Washington to go along with the plan, Phil Giraldi, a former CIA analyst told Judge Andrew Napolitano’s “Judging Freedom.”
“The idea was to take Hezbollah out of the fighting, which they did. Once they succeeded in doing that, they got a phony ceasefire, which gave Israel a lot of latitude to do whatever it wanted, and then next thing we know, we’re invading Syria and it's the same players, and it's the same players doing the same thing,” he said.
He called Turkey a minor player in the rebel attack, and he believes the plan was concocted by the White House, Amos Hochstein, the Israeli-born U.S. diplomat, with cooperation from the Israelis.
Netanyahu has already taken a victory lap after the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and said it could not have happened without the IDF’s thrashing of Hezbollah and Iran, as his forces took positions in a once-demilitarized part of the Golan Heights, which has been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.
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Netanyahu told reporters on Monday that the Golan Heights, which sits on Israel’s border with Syria, “will forever be an inseparable part of the state of Israel,” as he ordered forces to take up new positions after the retreat of the Syrian army.
The demilitarized zone now occupied by Israeli troops came about in 1974, during an armistice deal. Netanyahu said the agreement “collapsed” now that Syrian troops are no longer there. He insisted that the troops at the new location would be only temporary to ensure that no “hostile force embeds itself right next to the border of Israel,” according to the Financial Times.
Israel’s decision to move so quickly into Syrian territory was criticized by its neighbors. The Egyptian foreign ministry said in a statement that Tel Aviv “exploited” the vacuum left behind after Assad’s demise in the country.
Giraldi is not the first analyst to call the downfall of Assad a U.S.-Israel intelligence operation.