Ben Shapiro reacts to the breaking news of Bashar al-Assad’s regime being forced out of Syria—With terrorist rebels, and a region still plagued by risk and uncertainty, the situation is far from simple. Ben unpacks the power vacuum left behind, what this means for Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia. Sponsored by PDS Debt - PDS Debt is offering a free debt analysis. It only takes thirty seconds. Get yours at https://PDSDebt.com/reacts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Folks, so we're here to talk about what just happened. Bashar al-Assad, the Assad regime in Syria, is gone. And chaos is about to break loose. We're going to talk about the upsides and the downsides. In this, Ben reacts first. Your reminder that this is the final day of our 50% off sale over at Daily Wire. Daily Wire Plus, 50% off, but it ends today. It's our best deal of the year.
When it's gone, it is gone for good. With Daily Wire Plus, you stay on top of breaking news. You get the truth behind the headlines, the facts others refuse to cover. Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe right now. Do not wait. This deal ends today. All right, so here's your actual update. On the ground right now, Bashar Assad is out. He apparently is already in Russia.
Bashar Assad has been the ruler with an iron fist of Syria for the last 24 years. He, of course, follows in the footsteps of his father, Hafez al-Assad. And the Assad family has been in charge of Syria for the last 50 years or so. Now, Syria was always a sort of bizarre creation.
of the Sykes-Picot arrangement that emerged from the West, from France and Britain particularly, after World War I. And it's always been a bit of a mess. It has been particularly a mess given the number of different ethnic and religious groups inside Syria. So Syria has within it a large area that is controlled by the Kurds. It has a large area that is controlled by Shia.
It has a large area that is controlled by Sunni. It has Druze. It has Christians. It has all sorts of people who are living in this gigantic area. Geographically, Syria is located to the west of Iraq. It is located to the east of Lebanon and to the northeast of Israel. And Turkey is to its north.
Okay, so if you can sort of imagine all of that, that means that pretty much all of those forces are having some impact inside Syria. Now, Syria's civil war has been ongoing since 2011. And it has essentially pitted the Assad regime, which is backed by Iran and Russia,
on the one hand, against Sunni Islamic militants, terrorists, many associated with ISIS or Al-Qaeda, and then some other sort of hodgepodge rebel groups who are Sunni in origin, some Kurds as well, who are involved in this rebellion against the Assad regime. And those were backed predominantly by Turkey, not the Kurds.
The Kurds, as we'll see, are actually the rivals of Turkey, and Turkey has been using the Hassan Syria in order to launch its own incursions into the border regions of Syria in order to ethnically cleanse and move away the Kurds. So as we say, this entire state is a basket case. It's been a basket case for a long time.
But because Bashar Assad's regime was held up chiefly by Iran and by Russia, because it was used as a thoroughfare by Iran to smuggle arms into Lebanon, to Hezbollah, what that meant is that as Iran weakened and as Russia weakened, so too did the Assad regime. That's the real story of what's happening today and what's happened over the past few weeks. What changed?
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