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Hi, Josh.

How are you, Bob?

I'm doing fine.

How are you doing?

I'm doing very well.

Thank you.

Good.

So I'm a pleasure being on your show.

You are, Josh Landis.

You're in Oklahoma, state of my birth, by the way. Born in Lottin. How many people do you know who can say that? Well, you know more than most Americans know. Well, that's the artillery range. You must have. Your father must have been doing something military. He was a lifer. I was, uh, my family was a military family. He was with the artillery in World War II, and he stuck with it as a career. You're right. I was born at Fort Sill and one.

So, and we, and military affairs will in some sense enter the conversation we're about to have. I should say, you are one of America's foremost experts on Syria. You're a professor at the University of Oklahoma there.

You're head of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

And we are going to talk about something that if you had told me a year ago was even a subject

to talk about, I would have been surprised if you had told me that there was a kind of a brewing crisis involving the following countries, Ukraine, Russia, Sweden, Finland,

Turkey, Syria. I would not have known what you meant. But in fact, that's the case. And I think a lot of

people aren't really familiar with the Turkey, Syria, part of this,

and the possibility that, I guess in some ways, as a as a as a byproduct of the war in Ukraine,

you could wind up with Turkey invading Syria or something. Anyway, if I'm wrong about that,

you can straighten me out.

I want to, before we get to the immediate situation, I'd like to back up and set the stage by just kind of reminding people of, you know, recent Syrian history, the war there, which,

of course, did involve Russia and in a different way, the United States and U.S. allies.

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