Welcome to Pushback. I'm Aaron Mate.

Joining me is Tim Anderson. He is a writer, academic, and director of the Center for Counter-Hegemonic Studies.

His books include The Dirty War on Syria and Axis of Resistance.

Tim Anderson, thank you for joining me.

Thank you, Ron. Thank you for having me.

So I want to have you on because right now the major flashpoint globally is Ukraine,

with a major stand up between the U.S. and Russia there.

But in the process, Syria is overlooked.

And even though the decade-long dirty war has wound down, it's still continuing by other means. The U.S.

has an occupation of U.S. troops there, which does not get covered very much in the

Western media. The U.S. is still maintaining the harshest sanctions in the world on Syria

that are causing major deprivations. And still you have, Russia is still there, you still have

Iranian-backed forces there, and you have Israel periodically bombing Syria, including most recently

in Latakia, which is another thing that just does not get reported, these constant Israeli

strikes on Syria. You were just there for a period of three months, I believe. And I'm just

curious, your impression of where Syria stands today, how you're thinking about Syria and what the

state of it is right now under U.S. occupation and part of the country in the Northeast and under

these crippling sanctions. Yes. So in general, I think we can say that serious a day, early 2020, has largely defeated the

proxy war that was carried out by the US for the last decade or so. The only remaining pockets of terrorism are in and around the safe havens

created by the two the two biggest NATO powers, Turkey in the US and Israel in the south. So in other

words, the circumstances are changed considerably from when the UN Security Council Resolution of

2015 said there is no military solution,

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