The following is an edited transcript of the July 31, 2025 interview given by Vanessa Beeley to The LaRouche Organization. Ms. Beeley is an independent journalist, peace activist, photographer, and well-known expert on Southwest Asia affairs. The interview was conducted by Diane Sare, president of The LaRouche Organization. Subheads have been added. The video is available here.

Diane Sare: Hello, today is July 31, 2025, and I’m doing a special interview today with independent journalist Vanessa Beeley, who has spent quite some years in Southwest Asia—or the Middle East, as you may call it. There are many breaking developments, including the two-day conference at the United Nations (UN), where The LaRouche Organization organizers and the Schiller Institute held a rally insisting on the Oasis Plan for economic development, a ceasefire, and an end to the genocide and starvation. That conference has now produced a document about which we will talk.

I’d like to get the latest on what’s happening in Syria, so I’m very happy to again be joined by you, Vanessa. We might as well pick up where we started with the UN conference that was just held, convened by Saudi Arabia and France. Of course, [French President Emmanuel] Macron chickened out and didn’t show up, but did say he would recognize a Palestinian state, maybe in September; who knows? [British Prime Minister Keir] Starmer, despicably, is saying that he’ll recognize Palestine if the Israelis don’t change; which I think is completely disgusting. However, I thought the document was not as bad as it was portrayed to be. At least they are condemning the mass murder; they don’t use the word “genocide.” They also say that the territorial integrity of Gaza and the West Bank has to be observed; you cannot displace Palestinians. They say that there has to be an immediate ceasefire. They want to fund UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East], which was the only agency which was doing anything about getting aid in there, etc. I know that you have a somewhat more pessimistic, but maybe more realistic view of this process, so please go ahead and share your thoughts.

Vanessa Beeley: No, I never think of myself as pessimistic, but looking at it in the historical context, I don’t have any faith in the utterances that come from these states that have effectively ignored the genocide of Palestinians that has been ongoing since 1917 with the Balfour Declaration, and have done nothing to alleviate the suffering of Palestinians for 100 years.

And a country like Egypt, that could have alleviated the Zionist-enforced famine that is now ravaging the women and children—particularly the children and newborn babies—in Gaza, and claiming their lives through absolutely unnecessary starvation and famine. And then, of course, murdering them when they try to go to any of the four distribution points that [U.S. President Donald] Trump is now suggesting should be run by Israel, instead of the U.S. mercenaries under the Gaza so-called Humanitarian Foundation that we now know is linked to Mossad—anyway, it’s linked to the Zionist entity. So, what Trump is suggesting is to withdraw the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation mercenaries who are running it, who have also been filmed firing on the crowds of Palestinians desperately trying to reach the aid distribution points. And, by the way, they can’t get to the aid without facial recognition or all these other methods they have to go through to identify themselves. It’s total sadism, what is going on with regards to the people in Gaza.

And when you talk about this kind of conference—why now? We’re almost two years into the intensified genocide that began after October 7th [2023]. Suddenly, they’re going to recognize a Palestinian state? A Palestinian state which existed anyway. So, all of this kind of political posturing, for me, is just that—it’s just a cynical appeasement of populations that are becoming extremely aggravated by their regimes’ lack of action to actually prevent the genocide. I mean, I watched Keir Starmer stammering his way through the recognition of a Palestinian state, as you said, from the UK, not from within the UN; based on what? On Israel changing its attitude? It hasn’t changed its attitude in 100 years! As I said, this genocide has been ongoing for that length of time. They’re not going to change now. They were effectively a creation of the British anyway, so of course Keir Starmer, who is very much under the control of the arch-enemy of West Asia, [former British Prime Minister] Tony Blair; of course, he’s not going to proactively do anything to prevent what Israel is trying to achieve in the whole region, not only in Palestine.

Enforced Starvation Is a War Crime

Then, if we look at the statement—sorry, I just want to make this very important point. If we look at the headlines today, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, Macron, Trump are all saying, “Yeah, fine. We’ll end the famine.” The famine which is enforced, so therefore it’s a violation of every single Geneva Convention rule of war, humanitarian rule of law, because it’s an enforced starvation. And they’re saying they’re going to lift this enforced starvation, so they’re not going to put penalties on Israel for actually conducting the enforced starvation. But they will lift it if Hamas surrenders. What is this? This is a green light for Israel to continue the genocide, because Hamas and the resistance are never going to surrender. And, the justification that Trump uses, is this claim which was generated by the Zionists, that Hamas is stealing the aid. Well, USAID has just put out a report saying this isn’t true. In all the cases that they considered, none of those cases include Hamas stealing the aid. Actually, the majority of the aid is stolen, or kind of prevented entry to Gaza, by Israel.

So, what is this? This is just a complete green light, which makes a nonsense of the entire discussion for me.

Sare: Well, I think also, equally cynical is this idea of airlifting food. I saw the response from Doctors Without Borders, who said, all your brilliant airlifts don’t even amount to the amount of food in one single truck. So, it’s just so people can feel better while other people are starving to death.

Beeley: Yeah, it takes the pressure off.

Sare: Exactly! It is monstrously ugly, but I do think this is breaking. Unfortunately, it’s not going to be in time for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who have probably already perished. But it is my view that unless the so-called West—which is now the Global Minority, I’m happy to say, not the Majority—changes dramatically, completely dramatically, a nonlinear break from this world outlook, then what we can expect will be worse. It may not be in that region; it may be a nuclear war. When you have this kind of unbelievable disregard for human life, it’s a case where, unlike in Nazi Germany, when people claimed not to know—although I believe many of them did know, at least in Germany, but it’s plausible that people in Kansas were not aware of what was happening in the concentration camps. But this genocide has been in front of everyone’s eyes.

I do think that the Palestinian people frankly have done an unbelievable job in getting the truth out, despite everything—despite the journalists being killed, and so on. And you see it, bit by bit. I will tell you, we were out on the corner of 42nd [Street] and 2nd Avenue [in Manhattan], which is across the street from the Israeli consulate, with signs saying, “Ceasefire; Build the Oasis Plan.” We’ve been often in New York City with various things that we’ve gotten out. We’ve had to move a number of times, because people who turn out later to be with the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] threaten to beat us up, or turn over our tables, or things like that. This time, there were very few people—there were some, but I would say it was less than 2%—who said things like, “Oh no, Israel has to do everything that it’s doing; it’s justified.” One guy said, “We need an IDF in the U.S.”

Beeley: You have one.

Sare: I know; they do train a lot of our police departments.

Beeley: Exactly! That wish has come true.

Sare: Yeah, exactly. But others, including one person I happened to speak with last night, who had been really very pro-Zionist, a Jewish, affluent, New Yorker, who I hadn’t spoken with in some time because I just found him so unbearable on this matter. He said, “I happened to go by your rally the other day, and I’m really happy for what you’re saying. It seems very reasonable.” That was surprising to me, because it means that even people who have been supportive of Israel’s actions up to this time are now changing. These images of starving children— Imagine a mother having to choose— I can’t even imagine the anguish that people are suffering. I think it is having an effect. The question is to direct it to the appropriate action.

Was Hamas a Creation of Israel?

I wanted to take up something that we only touched on, and it’s super controversial, but I do think it has to be addressed. What are your thoughts on what actually was behind the so-called October 7th [2023] attacks; if you want to say anything about it from where you are. Because, first of all, it’s completely impossible, at the very minimum, that Israel was not aware of it. I am much more suspicious, given [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s funding and support of Hamas for some time, that there’s more to it than that. The timing struck me as absolutely perfect both for Bibi Netanyahu personally, who was perhaps headed for jail, and [for the colonial players] with what had happened in August 2023 with the meeting of the BRICS in South Africa. If you look at which were the new BRICS nations coming in, they’re all surrounding that region—Egypt, Saudi Arabia (which never quite leapt over the threshold to join), Iran, Ethiopia. I could imagine the colonial players—particularly the British and their financial interests—really wanting to throw a monkey wrench into this whole process. Plus, Ukraine was losing the war with Russia. It just seemed all too perfectly timed. Do you have thoughts on that?

Beeley: First of all, I just want to push back slightly, because this is a very popular conspiracy theory among, let’s say, the Alt-Left, that Hamas was created by Israel to effectively freeze out the PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] and the genuine resistance factions within Palestine. Where I would, let’s say, argue with this—and Hamas did play a role in the destabilization of Syria under the old leadership, which was effectively Khaled Mashal, who did pivot the Palestinian resistance from the resistance axis of Iran and the entire resistance region towards funding from Qatar and Saudi Arabia. And to a large degree, Israel was enabling that funding to come into Hamas.

From around 2017 onwards, Hezbollah were in discussions with Hamas, and you started to see a change in the leadership. In 2021, Hamas leaders came to Damascus to meet with [Syrian] President [Bashar] al-Assad, which was an indication of a change in Hamas leadership. And then, of course, that led to at least one operation [by Hamas] against Israel, which of course led to Israeli disproportionate aggression in return.

Sare: When was that first one that you brought up?

Beeley: My head is a bit hazy today on that, but I think it’s 2023. [The year] 2021 was the Great March of Return, which was the largely peaceful protests in Gaza against the Zionist siege and imprisonment. And of course, what happened was that the Zionists fired into the crowd and murdered many with sniper fire and so on. So, people who claim that Palestinians should protest peacefully, well, that’s what happens when they protest peacefully.

I do actually believe that Israel was caught off-guard, because—and there are a number of people— Again, Alistair Crooke, whom I follow [in] his regular interviews on the subject; and he knows Israel very well. I think they were caught off-guard, because to a degree they’ve become very arrogant. They believe in their own hubris; they believe that they had all of the Gaza population nailed down. They knew exactly what they were doing and when; everything was surveilled. And of course it is, to a large degree, just as it is in Hebron, for example, which is effectively a genocidal smart city under the control of the Zionists, where every move by the Palestinian inhabitants is surveilled and tracked, often leading to their summary execution on the streets of Hebron.

But I think what happened is, they were caught by surprise. I think then the opportunity was seized; and that’s why we saw the Hannibal doctrine being conducted by the IOF [Israeli Occupying Force] and the massacre of their own people. Those people could not have been burned alive, as they were, with machine guns and the rudimentary weapons that the Palestinian resistance had. That could not have happened.

Sare: Just for our listeners who may not know what the Hannibal doctrine is, could you just say what that is, so people are clear?

Beeley: Basically, it’s that it is better to kill your own people than allow them to be taken hostage, because, of course, there is value in the hostages for the resistance. And also, from the perspective that if military [personnel] are taken prisoner, they may well have information that they would give to the resistance. So, it’s better to kill your own people than allow them to be taken captive by the resistance; that’s basically the bottom line. And that is exactly what we’ve seen. There is multiple documentation of this, and evidence of this. I believe there have even been admissions from within the IDF as to this actually happening.

But as I said, I think, very early on, we saw the drone footage of all of the cars which were completely burnt out. This can’t happen with a handful of resistance fighters. It’s impossible. And then you have all the testimonies of people who were taking shelter in their homes who were being fired on by the Israeli tanks, and [those] who were actually killed by the Israeli tank fire. All of the stories of the babies in ovens, and so on, have been discredited multiple times. If you look at the organization that was collating that evidence, ZAKA [Zihuy Korbanot Ason, Disaster Victim Identification], the head of that organization [Yehuda Meshi Zahav] has been accused and [investigated by the police] for pedophilia. And by the way, the Israeli Ambassador [to the United Arab Emirates Yossi Avraham Shelley] has just been withdrawn for indecent behavior in a bar in the UAE. This isn’t a one-off aspect of Israeli society; it’s well-known to be a haven for pedophiles. Pedophiles in the U.S. who want to escape prosecution, sometimes convert to Judaism, and then, of course, they’re given a Green Card immediately to enter Israel, where they’re not prosecuted. But they continue to live without prosecution. And there are multiple reports even in Israeli media. There was a recent one in Israel Hayom, where they were talking about ritual child-abuse by the ultra-orthodox Jewish communities in Israel itself. It’s an endemic problem in Israel, particularly within the Israeli military.

Depravity Breeds Depravity

Sare: This isn’t surprising, given the mass rape in the prisons, and the fact that you had Israeli soldiers storming a prison to rape people, though some people tried to stop it. Which also brings to mind, I just have to bring in the British. I don’t know if you’ve seen the book by [deceased British] Princess Diana’s brother [Charles Spencer] about the abuse of children in the boys’ boarding schools in the UK, which is extremely prevalent. They think that you do it because— I’m not going to go through the lurid details that he describes, including what was done to him in these schools. But it is what Theodor Adorno said, if you know that name. He was one of the people with the Congress for Cultural Freedom in Hollywood. He said the ultimate aim of so-called modern music, popular music, is necrophilia, a certain pleasure of death, an erotic pleasure of seeing people suffer and be killed. This is deliberately cultivated. I have to say, my own hypothesis of why the U.S. Congress has been so silent is, what are the issues that some of our congressmen may have? Why don’t you see a child as a human being? Why are you not moved by this?

But go ahead.

Beeley: And of course, the covering up of the entire [Jeffrey] Epstein case is a strong indicator of the fact that [the U.S.] Congress has an awful lot of things that it wants to cover up. The same goes for the British Parliament. Sonia Poulton, a brilliant investigative journalist, made a documentary—I think it was quite a few years ago now, maybe ten years—on the pedophiles in Parliament. Jackie Dubois, another very good independent British journalist, has written quite recently about the cases of pedophilia in the British Parliament. So, this is something which, as I said, is endemic among the powerful.

What I find quite interesting is that, prior to the fall of the Roman Empire, what did we see? We saw depravity on levels that we had never seen before. That, in my view, is exactly what we’re seeing now in the supremacist hegemonic bloc; which at the moment, in my opinion, also is led by the Zionist movement. That is what we’re seeing. When we see a stream of images coming out of Gaza of Israeli soldiers putting on women’s clothing, and literally hanging a child’s toy by the neck and then filming themselves in front of it, or making fun of each other. It’s sick; it’s a sickness beyond comprehension for most of us, thank God.

What it is for me is an indicator of where we’re headed if we don’t stop this.

Sare: Exactly! I do think we have today this emergence of a new paradigm among the BRICS nations. I want to get back to what’s happening in Syria, but I don’t know if you saw the interview that President Lula of Brazil did with the New York Times, which he did because, here he is, the President of Brazil, a large nation just to our south, but he can’t get anyone in Washington to meet with him or talk to him. It reminds me of the Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak saying, no one will talk to me; or Anatoly Antonov, who was the previous Russian ambassador. He’s the loneliest man in town. Here’s the President of Brazil; you have [President] Donald Trump running around trumpeting about all his tariffs, and bragging about his meetings and how the world leaders are rushing to kiss his ass; just foolishness—but no one will talk to the President of Brazil. Instead, we’re putting sanctions on [Brazilian] Supreme Court judges there, because they won’t relent on the [former Brazilian President Jair] Bolsonaro case. And Lula was quite defiant; he said, look, I’m not interested in taking sides in a trade war between China and the United States. We’re going to sell to whoever is interested in buying. The Supreme Court and our judges are a matter of our sovereignty, so you have absolutely no jurisdiction over that. You’re not going to decide it. Don’t say I don’t know how to negotiate. (He was, as you probably know, a labor union negotiator). There is absolutely no reason not to talk to us, but we have other options. I am not relinquishing the sovereignty of my nation. I’m not going to grovel.

I think this is indicative. Sadly, the Europeans—and I’m not sure how that relationship works, to tell you the truth—which way the dictatorship goes between Europe and the United States. It’s a kind of peculiarly corrupt, stinky operation.

But if you have China, Russia, India, Brazil, South Africa, and now Iran and Ethiopia, you have all of these nations who obviously don’t agree with each other. Many of them are sort of trying to straddle a fence or whatever; but it’s completely different. The United States does not have the power to wage the kind of economic warfare that we thought that we did.

To your point about the Israelis being caught off-guard, I think there’s a real blindness in the so-called leadership of the United States, that we have all this power that we actually don’t have anymore, because people have other options. If I had a choice between having an alliance with someone who was going to build ports and roads and modern infrastructure, and a partnership with someone who was going to put sanctions on me, starve my people, and overthrow my government, I don’t think it would be that hard of a choice.

Corridor Wars

Beeley: Yes, I agree with you, and I was heartened to see that the Iranian Foreign Minister [Abbas Araghchi] has laid the conditions down for any negotiations. First, demanding reparations from the U.S. for the damage to the Fordow nuclear plant; and the red line being that Iran has the right to enrich uranium for civilian use. It’s kind of nice to see that finally Iran is putting its foot down and is no longer playing nice with the United States. It will be kind of interesting to see how the Trump administration responds to that.

China: Really the whole tariff war there was just kind of ridiculous, because it had so much of a backlash on Trump, and it kind of disappeared off into the ether at the end of the day. I think, however, what we are seeing—and I’m only just starting to dig into this—is this whole “corridor war” which is happening. We’re moving, in a sense, beyond normal conflict, normal aggression, which for the U.S. is a state of being in conflict with one or another country for the majority of its existence.

But I think now, for example, if we look at Azerbaijan, we’re seeing the United States basically talking about, through its corporations, running the Zangezur corridor, which runs through Azerbaijan and Armenia, and actually touches on the northwest border with Iran; so, it’s clearly a threat to Iran. That is why it [Iran] is proposing the Aras corridor, which will circumnavigate both Azerbaijan and Armenia, and drop down into Iranian territory. But I think right now, you have Russia trying to protect its south Caucasus from the threat of this corridor, and Israel and the U.S. having control of it. I think Türkiye is also racing to maintain its middle corridor, which depends very much on Baku and Azerbaijan to operate successfully. I think India to some degree in its alliance with Israel and the U.S. and the Gulf Arab states, with the India-Middle East corridor, is also trying to get in on the picture.

So, therefore, I think what we’re seeing now, and what we are going to see, is that many of these BRICS countries will start to try to come to agreements potentially with the United States. I’m seeing now, for example, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and Netanyahu—who had a phone call the other day—almost immediately the so-called al-Qaeda President of Syria [Ahmed al-Sharaa, aka Abu Mohammed al-Jolani leader of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham] is invited to Baku, to Azerbaijan, for a security meeting with Israel. Of course, that follows on from the security meeting at the beginning of July in Baku, which led to the conflict in Suwayda, Syria. We can come on to that. So, after this phone call, we see—he’s a co-founder of al-Qaeda in Syria, but he’s now the Foreign Minister of the al-Qaeda government in Syria—Asaad al-Shaibani is now being invited to Moscow, along with the so-called Defense Minister [Murhaf Abu Qasra—ed.], who was also a former terrorist committing atrocities against the Syrian people.

So, I totally agree with you that the United States is not in a position to bully its way through its trade and economic policy. But I think we are going to see shifting alliances that are perhaps rather unexpected in the short- and mid-term. That’s how I read what’s going on now, because we are definitely seeing a flourishing alliance now between Russia and Israel; particularly, as we’ve talked about before, in Syria, with Russia depending on Israel to lobby Trump to keep the Russian base on the eastern coastal region of Syria to prevent [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan’s [apparently intended] ultimate expansion into Syria. So, I think with the fall of Syria, what we’ve actually seen unleashed is a race for domination of resources in West Asia. And those resources don’t only include hydrocarbons, oil; they include most importantly rare earth minerals and water. Those two commodities are going to be the new oil, in a sense. Because if America wants to release itself from the economic grip of China through the rare earth mineral trade, then it’s going to have to seize territory where it can mine rare earth minerals. And, of course, that was part of the deal in Ukraine. That was the attraction of the Ukraine deal for Trump.

Sare: Yes, although my understanding is that the vast majority of these minerals are in the parts of Ukraine that are now part of Russia; although they have plenty otherwise. Maybe that’s the lesson.

Why don’t you say something about southern Syria and what has been happening there? Your overview, I think, is very clear; and makes sense.

Long Term Plan, or Reaction to Events?

Beeley: Well, I think what we’ve been seeing is a lot of maneuvering by the United States through [its Ambassador to Türkiye] Tom Barrack, who I call Trump’s economic hit man. He is being made a relatively inexperienced Middle East envoy to Syria and Lebanon. Just as we talked about really calling for Hamas to surrender so the famine will end, Tom Barrack is putting pressure on the Lebanese government for Hezbollah to disarm. It’s the same thing; effectively, it’s a green light, either for civil war within Lebanon itself, or for an invasion from Israel and [Syrian interim President] Jolani’s Takfiri forces, particularly the foreign mercenaries, who make up about 30% to 40% of his militia. How we know this, is because Tom Barrack basically issued a threat to Lebanon that, if you don’t toe the line, there’s potential that Jolani will annex northern Lebanon as part of Greater Syria. So, Barrack has been very clear, actually, that unless Hezbollah disarms, and unless the government does as it’s told, Lebanon isn’t going to receive funding for reconstruction after Israel destroyed the south. It’s not going to receive other benefits from the United States, either. Effectively, Lebanon will be plunged into war, which I think, personally, is the most likely scenario right now.

We’ve already had attacks on the northern border from Jolani’s Takfiri elements yesterday. The Lebanese forces, the official Army, had to intervene and send reinforcements; they were fired on. The Takfiri elements are gathered on the eastern border of Lebanon, and have carried out incursions into Lebanese territory. So, here we know that something is about to kick off, because America is putting more and more pressure on the government to do something that they know is impossible. They know that even though Hezbollah is not popular with some factions in Lebanon, it has the majority popularity. And in a scenario where Takfiri elements are going to invade Lebanon, everyone will support Hezbollah to protect their communities. So, I just wanted to explain that in the context of what’s happening in Syria, because everything is connected at the moment.

It will make more sense when I explain more of what happened in Syria. Because, after the ceasefire with Iran—which was entirely of benefit to Israel and prevented the possible annihilation of Israel’s military capability, to be honest, listening to reports that have come out since the ceasefire. After the ceasefire, we know this meant a pivot towards the weakening and the destruction of the resistance in Lebanon, the complete partitioning of Syria, and the weakening of the resistance in Iraq in case of a later escalation against Iran in the long war against Iran. Actually, that’s just one thing I wanted to mention, because you mentioned Netanyahu’s precarious position in power. Yet, what I find very interesting is that, if people look at the Brookings Institution’s “Which Path to Persia?” report, which was written in 2009, it has a number of chapters going into detail on the strategy of how to bring down Iran through “regime change” from within and from outside. One chapter is called “Leave It to Bibi.” This was written back in 2009, and the war happened in 2025. So, this is the degree to which the U.S. perceives Netanyahu’s stability in power as very important to their strategy in the region. That’s my opinion; that’s how I read it, because I found this extraordinary, that in 2009 they didn’t say, “Leave It to Israel,” in the knowledge that perhaps this war would happen in five years, ten years, whatever. But it was called “Leave It to Bibi.” And remember that it was Netanyahu who commissioned the Clean Break doctrine in 1996-97, written by the CIA, which was a strategy paper that is now coming to fruition with the partitioning of the Middle East and so on. So, I just wanted to put that in there, because I think, while yes, of course Netanyahu is a corrupt creature, he’s a horrible creature, but he’s the U.S.’s creature. And I think his position is pretty much assured while he’s acting in the role that the United States wants him to. I think that’s kind of important for people to get a grasp of.

ISIS and Al-Qaeda: The New Zionist Enforcers

So, if we come back to Syria, what happened was, Jolani had already had a security meeting with Israel, I think back in April in the Gulf. Then, in July, there was a meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan. There were very early claims that he had met with an envoy of Netanyahu. They were denied, but then they were admitted by a press release by the government of Azerbaijan itself—Ilham Aliyev, the President. At that point, it became clear that while perhaps full normalization with Israel was a way off, what they had agreed on was a security pact, a security agreement.

What did that agreement entail? That Jolani and his Takfiri militia would effectively become an enforcer for Zionist expansionism in the region. In other words, they would protect Israeli interests by attacking Lebanon, the resistance in Lebanon, and destabilizing Lebanon and Iraq. And they would be allowed to take over territory which would give them a corridor from Iraq to Lebanon which would, one, prevent the resistance in Iraq from coming to the help of the resistance in Lebanon, and vice versa. But it would also enable Jolani to channel ISIS elements from the northeast and the east and the desert into Lebanon to carry out suicide bombings and other such isolated attacks, to destabilize communities here in Lebanon. We’ve already seen arrests of these terrorist cells inside Lebanon by the security forces; so, it’s happening.

Then, the second thing that happened as a result of this meeting, was this weaponization of the tribal factions inside Syria, who were incited by Jolani’s media and Telegram channels to turn on the Druze in the south. While Jolani was saying, “Oh, it’s nothing to do with me; it’s all the tribes, and I’m trying to stop them,” the reality is that exactly as the Zionists did in Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon in 1982, when they opened the doors for the Falangists to go in and massacre the Palestinians, and they stood back and said, “It’s not ours.” That’s exactly what Jolani did. So, he stirred up the hatred in the tribal factions, and he basically let them go through all the checkpoints. His own militia, which includes ISIS, were fighting alongside the tribal militias and massacring the Druze. There were some of the worst atrocities that we’ve seen; on a par with the coastal massacres, but actually, I think, even more intense. The bloodlust has just increased to a level which is demonic, Satanic, in what they did.

And all of this is to enable Israel to be able to say, “Oh, we’ll come in and protect you. We’ll provide protection. We’ll bomb HTS [Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham], and we’ll bomb the tribal factions. We’re your friends. We’ll bring in the Palestinian Druze to settle in this area, and we’ll provide you with weapons. We’re the good guys.”

Why Empires Collapse

Sare: Right; very duplicitous. Now, you had written this paper we discussed before about the role of the British, Tony Blair; [UK National Security Advisor] Jonathan Powell is coming more to the fore. I am going to push back on the American question, because I think our nation was not founded to behave this way. John Quincy Adams, in his July 4, 1821 address, when he was Secretary of State before he was President, was very clear. He said, we haven’t invaded anyone for 45 years, so we got a little bit of a start there. He said if we get involved in any other country’s wars, we will no longer be the ruler of our own spirit. He was very clear; and of course you know, later he came back into the Congress: the famous Amistad case against slavery. I think that really was the intent of the Founders of the republic; but we’ve never been able to— They say to form “a more perfect Union,” I think, because they were very well aware of the shortcomings of the time. The fight internally here, has been between these factions that strongly believed in the equality of every human being and inalienable rights coming from that; versus this financier [faction]—we had it in Boston, we had it in New York, we had Andrew Jackson, we had some of the most horrific traitors who had this oligarchical outlook.

I do have to admit that, perhaps, since the death of [President] Franklin D. Roosevelt and [President] Truman’s decision to drop the nuclear bomb, there have been very few voices of what I consider the actual republican (with a small r) tradition in our nation. It’s been a total war. We’ve seen Presidents assassinated, and leaders like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [assassinated]. The British actually had a hand in this. I think their dream is—and you heard it—they want the United States to rejoin the Commonwealth; which I find a completely disgusting, abhorrent idea. Because it further hides the point that we are not supposed to be like this, and if that’s what you do— It’s what you said about empire: Every empire collapses of its own weight. Because if you’re going to enact this kind of aggression and looting and sickness against other human beings, then you’ve destroyed any purpose of existence. The human race actually cannot survive that way, and we saw it with [ancient] Rome. I keep thinking of various things from the Peloponnesian Wars [431-404 B.C.—ed.], particularly when the plagues swept through, if you remember. Everyone panicked and said, “Let me just be as degenerate as I possibly can, because I’m not going to live that long anyway.”

I think, because it’s the 250th year of our Declaration of Independence, that a possible chamber of resonance with Americans to get them to revolt against these horrible empire-like policies, is to remind people that if you look at everything in the Declaration of Independence as to why we left the British, our country is now doing all of those things: occupying other people with standing armies; unwarranted search and seizure; total lack of justice; no freedom of speech. We are now doing exactly what we rebelled against. So, part of what I’m trying to do here as an American is to wake people up, and say, “Hey, this is not you. We are not ‘peace through strength.’ ” What a despicable, stupid idea!

Beeley: Because, ultimately, it’s not even peace through strength; it’s peace through force. And that’s a huge difference; language is very important. I saw a headline in the New Alliance Institute: Instead of talking about regime change, they’re now talking about “regime evolution,” which sounds lovely. Because this is what happens—people fall for this kind of packaging of really the absolutely abhorrent tactics to arrive at a control of resources or a country. Syrians are absolutely irrelevant, Palestinians are irrelevant, in the bigger game. And this is what we have to stop.

Sare: So are the Europeans, the Europeans—

Beeley: Everyone is.

Sare: What is [European Commission president] Ursula von der Leyen? “The American LNG [liquid natural gas] is so much less expensive”—just a bald-faced lie. “Hi, everyone. We’re getting ready for war with Russia, and to prepare, you’re going to starve and freeze to death in the dark; but don’t worry.”

Time for Action, Not Words

Beeley: Yeah, but this is my point. To a degree, I see the war—and we’ve talked about this before—the war is without borders now. It doesn’t matter if you’re American or British or French or German; it doesn’t actually matter. If you’re among the irrelevant class, which is, let’s face it, the huge majority of us, then you are dispensable to the bigger game in this. And I’m sorry, but it goes for Russia, and it goes for China; it goes for everyone, for the transnational ruling class right now.

There’s a genocide right now in Palestine; I think it has to be, of our lifetime, one of the worst long-term atrocities that we’ve had to sit through for almost two years. There isn’t a single country within BRICS, apart from Iran and, of course, Yemen, that is not included in any single big country complex, who have actively, alongside the non-state resistance actors, gone to the aid of Palestine. Other than that, there is not one country that has done anything concrete except condemnation. And condemnation is great for a couple of weeks, but for almost two years, when you continue as one of the major trading partners of the country that is committing the genocide? Here I’m talking about India, I’m talking about China, I’m even talking about Russia. Or, you’re in bed with the collaborators of Israel, which include the UAE and Egypt?

At what point do we say “Enough!”? At what point do we call upon these governments and these organizations that claim to be non-aligned, to actually take concrete steps to stop what is happening? That could begin with a boycott; it doesn’t have to mean conflict. It doesn’t have to mean measures of aggression. It can start with boycott. People say to me, “Oh, but China is only supplying air fryers or something to Israel.” But that’s not true; they’re invested in the settlement programs; they’re invested in Haifa port. They are actively supporting Israel through trade. Their non-conflict drones are being converted by Israel into drones that are carrying out the attacks on the Palestinians.

My point is, they’re not responsible for what’s going on, for sure, because that responsibility lies entirely, as you said, with Britain and the entire Zionist bloc alliance. However, they have the power from an economic perspective and from a political and diplomatic perspective to be able to put a heck of lot more pressure on them than they are doing currently. And stop talking about a two-state solution; start talking realistically about what should happen with Palestine. That it should be one state—Palestine—where, as before 1917, Jews and Muslims and Christians and atheists and every single denomination lived peacefully together. Sorry, I’m a bit sort of wired today. There’s so much going on, it’s very difficult to—

Sare: I think the people there will have to decide, but obviously you can’t even run around talking about a two-state solution if you don’t officially, formally recognize Palestine as existing, which has yet to happen.

Your comments remind me of what Naledi Pandor, the former Minister of International Relations and Cooperation of South Africa [2019-2024], said to one of the Schiller Institute conferences. I was sort of actually taken aback by her optimism that the North could weigh in, not realizing all the things that had been done to boycott the South African apartheid regime by so many people around the world. The Global North actually had very much participated in an arms embargo, an economic embargo; refusing to seat the South African delegation at the UN, because they were all white. So, that is really well-taken, and I think that kind of pressure absolutely can and must be brought to bear.

Beeley: Yeah! And actually, the Soviet Union was training the ANC [African National Congress] military; so, it was actively supporting the resistance against the apartheid regime. But when it comes to Israel, no.

Sare: Then, it’s up to us, as [poet Percy] Shelley said, “we are many; they are few,” as you were pointing out. We have to get organized in a better way.

Now, I will tell you one thing that I have some hope in, not if it’s merely left to what the Trump administration intends to do with it, but we are trying to broaden and deepen this investigation of what happened with Russiagate. I think it’s very important. [U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi] Gabbard, partly because of her position in the Trump administration and trying to stay there, is focusing on the attacks on Trump by Hillary Clinton, [former President Barack] Obama, etc. But, my point—and we’ll be producing a white paper to get out to all of Washington on this—is that the purpose of this was the British game, which, frankly, goes back to 1945, to get the United States to have a war with Russia. [British Prime Minister] Winston Churchill was working on this then—Operation Unthinkable. So, what was the point of saying that Russia had meddled in the elections? It was to ensure that normal relations with Russia could not happen, and that you would already create the conditions where Trump in his first term was on a war trajectory with Russia. And that’s the intent.

If you look at how all of this unfolded, you see Robert Hannigan of GCHQ [Government Communications Headquarters - Britain’s counterpart to the U.S. NSA] coming over here and meeting with [then-CIA director] John Brennan in June of 2016. These people are so arrogant, they just speak publicly about what they’re doing, because they think no one will be able to do anything or pay attention. They said, “We were the first”—British intelligence—“[to discover] that the Russians were hacking the DNC [Democratic National Committee] servers.” So, they created this narrative, which was then fed in— I mean as far as Obama and Tony Blair, I think they’re like this; they might even be the same person, I don’t know; maybe they don’t appear in the same room together.

But I’m hoping that because the Americans are very weary, that there are still enough people alive—although most of them unfortunately are World War II veterans who have passed away. Hopefully, there are still people alive who remember the assassinations of [President John F.] Kennedy and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and [Senator] Bobby Kennedy; and they’ve always felt—including the family members of those people—that we never got the truth on these assassinations, and that there’s something very wrong in the intelligence process and community in the United States. That includes emphatically, I will say, the news media. How is it that John Brennan, the head of the CIA, torturer-in-chief, comes over and is a news anchorman at MSNBC? Maybe people should think about that.

But I want to seize on this. I think these things can come together and that perhaps we can get a break; that we can break out some of this stuff; that we can purge some of this war-mongering, treason faction out of here. I’m sure you’ve seen that there are real ruptures in Trump’s own base, like [Rep.] Marjorie Taylor Greene [R-GA], who now is the first congressperson who called what Israel is committing in Gaza genocide. She was completely irate and public about it when Trump bombed Iran. I think there are some serious fractures which, with proper leadership, we may be able to—sort of like tuning a laser, if we can get it right; or, an opera singer who breaks the glass with the right pitch. If we get it right, maybe we can shatter this control that has been over us for so long.

Resistance Is a Sacred Right

Beeley: I think it’s good to be optimistic about that. I think, from a perspective in this region, when I’m speaking to people connected to the resistance, or even not connected to the resistance but just living here and understanding that the war is not against Hezbollah, it’s against Lebanon and the whole region. To a huge degree, I think now the sentiment is, “We’re on our own. So, therefore, we’re just going to have to fight this war alone, and do our best to survive and come through it intact and facing a better future.” So, I think the two things run in parallel, but I think, regionally, people have sort of washed their hands of the West, because nothing has been done to alleviate their suffering for a hundred years. So, looking at the ICC [International Criminal Court] or the ICJ [International Court of Justice] or the UN to do something—they don’t. As much as they will do the theatrics of it all, ultimately, they’re controlled by the UK, as you pointed out, the U.S. and that whole cabal that effectively controls any decisions within the UN with the vetoes. So, people have kind of given up, to be honest, with change coming from the U.S. or the UK or anywhere in the West that is part of the alliance with Israel. They’ve given up on that; which, in my opinion, is kind of a good thing, because you’re not waiting for the big hand to come down and take you out of trouble. You’re actually going to deal with it yourself.

But I think people in the West also need to understand that when the armed resistance takes prominence, they have the right to do that. Because that’s also enshrined in international law, that if you’re facing occupation or oppression by a hostile force that is intent on basically “ethnically cleansing” you from your territory, you have the right to resist. That’s one thing. The other thing was, while I was kind of slightly mocking the Israeli role in southern Syria, of course it is absolutely appalling what they’re doing. Because effectively, what they’re doing is orchestrating the massacre of the Druze, in order for the Druze—in desperation—to call the Israelis for protection—at which point they annex the Sweida province in the southeast of Syria. Which then enables them to extend the David corridor up the eastern border, using the illegal U.S. military base at al-Tanf at the border with Iraq and Jordan to extend upwards into the Kurdish-held territory in the northeast, which is another partner with CENTCOM and the Pentagon in the northeast of Syria, and to access the water in the Euphrates [River].

While I was kind of trying to make light of it, it has a very serious implication for the people in Syria, because, effectively what this means, is the partitioning, the carving up of Syria. I’ve just written another long piece, which should be published today or tomorrow, about the regional players and how they’re now going to try and carve up Syrian territory. So, it is appalling what they’ve done. I’m speaking to people in Sweida who are telling me about the atrocities that they face. And while they understand Israel’s role, my friend said to me, “Vanessa, my family are facing death. What am I supposed to do?” This is orchestrated by them. When you see your neighbors having their heads cut off in the street or being burned alive, what are you supposed to do? This is being orchestrated by Israel to achieve what it wants.

Sorry, just a very chilling comparison to what Trump is doing to the deportees in the United States. If you look at the Alligator Alcatraz, as it’s been nicknamed, in Florida. There was testimony from a Venezuelan detainee. He said, “We’re literally being forced to accept deportation, because the conditions are so awful here, that in the end, we’re going to voluntarily allow ourselves to be deported.” It’s the same tactic.

Sare: Right; peace through force, like you’re saying. And the idea that we believe in freedom, well, as soon as you’re doing it through force, it is not freedom, it is dictatorship.

Your last comments, because we have to wrap up. But it does bring me to the Oasis Plan, because the question of fresh water is absolutely major in this region. And it is a reason for a lot of the land grabs and strategic moves as people try to get control of the water flows. I just did a symposium with a delightful Italian nuclear engineer and materials engineer, who had taken the Oasis Plan that LaRouche proposed in 1975. He said, as an engineer, let me try and figure out what you need physically to implement it. He was looking at water consumption per capita. In Jordan, I think it’s 500 cubic meters per person per year, which is very little. I said, what is that compared to the West?

I looked it up; water consumption per capita in the United States is 2,800 cubic meters per person per year. That includes everything, of course—industry, agriculture. In France it is 3,200 cubic meters per person per year. So, he determined that in order to get that amount of fresh water in the whole region, not just Palestine, Israel, but the region, you would need 25 new 1400-megawatt nuclear power plants; 25 in that region, just doing desalination. And then a whole bunch of smaller, modular plants; which I found fascinating. He also debunked the whole idea that if you have nuclear power, you’re going to build a nuclear bomb. He said, “Actually, it’s very hard.” Now, with the fourth-generation plants you can’t even do that. He said it doesn’t work that way. If you want a nuclear bomb, you’re going to build a nuclear bomb; it’s actually easier than building a nuclear power plant. This from a nuclear engineer. It was fun. I think we have to think of the future, of where mankind has to get to, or we have no guidance point of whether we’re moving in the right direction.

So, we’ve gone slightly over an hour, and we should probably wrap up. Do you have any final words? I want to thank you very much for joining me again; I know people really appreciate these interviews, and what you give us in terms of a strategic analysis is excellent. So, thank you.

Beeley: Thank you, Diane. I really appreciate it. And I appreciate the platform of being able to speak openly with people. I don’t have anything really to add to that. I just think we have to unite behind the idea of a better world, one that has genuine equality, not this sort of mirage of equality that hides the transnational ruling of the agendas that have nothing to do with equality. They have to do with resources and power grabs and territory grabs that effectively make the existence of the human beings in those targeted zones absolutely negligible for them. Because today, it’s this region; tomorrow, it can be America, or any other part of the world. We keep sort of reiterating this, but I think it’s very important to do that. We have to stop partitioning ourselves into being American or British or whatever; it’s a global issue.

Sare: Absolutely! Thank you so much.