Love this podcast.

Support this show through the A-Cast supporter feature.

It's up to you how much you give,

and there's no regular commitment.

Just click the link in the show description to support now.

The Gulf countries have a compelling economic interest in dealing with the Russians because the United States is now the world's largest producer front lines.

Here are your hosts, Matthew Gault.

After more than seven years, the war in Syria may be reaching a conclusion. Dictator Bishar al-Assad has re-taking much of the country.

He didn't do it alone.

Russia and Iran both played major roles. So where does this leave the United States?

Stephen A. Cook joins us to help us figure it all out. Cook is any Enrico Mate Senior Fellow for Middle East and African

studies at the Council of Foreign Relations, which is very easy to say by the way. He's also the he's also the author of False Dawn

Protest, Democracy and Violence in the new middle east.

It was released in June.

So thank you very much for joining us, Stephen.

Oh, it's my pleasure.

So I always like to start fairly close to the beginning.

And I just want to ask you about your premise for this fascinating article you wrote in foreign policy,

which is that Assad has more or less won the Civil War, but the force that you put in opposition is the United States, and you say that the U.S. lost.

So can you explain what you mean by that?

Well, sure. It is, I think, now self-evident, of course, that the Assad regime will prevail in Syria.

As I said in the peace, there's a lot of fighting to come, but where there have been, where

...