This is John Batchel, conversation with colleague Sinan Chidi, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies,

about Syria cut up into pieces by powers, Russia, the U.S., Israel, Turkey.

Iran was a player. Iran did dominate Syria. Iran had Assad as an ally, as a wingman, all gone.

Sanon speaks here to the results of the fall of Assad and the flight to Moscow.

And what it leads to is a surprising observation about how Turkey is gained and Iran has

not more, much more tonight. Here's Sennon Chidi to comment on the Balkanization of Syria.

More, more, much more coming.

Yeah, as you correctly say, there's a lot of moving parts here.

And it's hard to sort of pass these out so that it's intelligible and understanding, understandable to folks that are interested in this.

Not least of all because of the sort of plethora of countries, but also non-state

actors that you just mentioned, but also because the ground constantly shifts, right, in terms of,

you know, alliances and in terms of, you know, who wants what. But if we could sort of like a,

take a bird's eye view and sort of try to impact the question of what does Turkey seek,

I mean, at its, at its most fundamental level,

I mean, Turkey is seeking to essentially project power.

It very much perceives itself as the rising and dominant power in the region,

and it would essentially like to augment that as possible.

It sees it that way, mainly because following the October 7 war against Hamas and

Hezbollah, what we see is a significantly weakened Iran.