Eric Zuesse
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
by Vanessa Beeley, 10 August 2026,
posted by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
Official photo of Al Qaeda’s Jolani meeting with UK’s Powell
UK National Security Advisor Jonathan Powell visited the ‘reformed’ Al Qaeda chief [https://archive.ph/qMXaO], rebranded as Ahmad Al Sharaa but better known as the head of some of the most savage terrorist factions in Syria [HTS al-Qaeda and ISIS] since 2011 – Abu Mohammed Al Jolani. Officially talks centred around ‘enhancing bilateral relations” and coordination ‘in a manner that serves shared interests and contributes to regional stability’. Stability however is not something that can be historically attributed to the British in West Asia.
Jonathan Powell, former Chief of Staff under former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and strongly linked to the MI6, was very much a part of the history of grooming Jolani to become the brutal ruler of Syria. I covered Powell’s long-term involvement in a previous article here. The role that Powell played in supporting Blair and the Weapons of Mass Destruction narratives that took Britain to war against Iraq is a well-documented one.
Also attending was so-called Foreign and Expatriates Minister Asaad Al Shaibani, another former Al Qaeda Levant founder now coached by MI6 in international relations.
What was not on the meeting agenda? The ongoing security vacuum in Syria, the daily abductions now expanding to include Sunni Muslim Syrians not only the routinely persecuted religious minorities including Christians, Alawites, Druze, Shia and Ismaili. The nation’s bankruptcy and crony capitalist regime bleeding the country dry and further impoverishing the Syrian people. The lack of water, electricity, fuel and hope. The rising inflation and crippling food prices. The repression and extra-judicial executions, torture, sectarian violence and lawlessness. The descent of Syria into a rubbish tip with roads covered in detritus and filth and no functioning systems of authority other than Saudi-backed religious Sheikhs now determining regional laws based on their oppressive version of Islam.
Nope none of this was discussed. What was clearly discussed however was the role of the Russian personnel in Syria. Two days after Powell’s visit the following happened:
Syria and Russia reached a memorandum of understanding to “reorganise” Moscow’s presence on the Syrian coast. Civilians facilities are to be transferred to HTS state management which removes any slender hope of protection for the Alawite minorities should Jolani’s thugs escalate the attacks as they did in 2025. Russian military bases will be transformed into joint training centres which means that Russia will be training alongside Al Qaeda, the terrorist entity that they had fought against since their entry into the war in 2015.
The agreement follows 18 months intensive negotiations between the Jolani quisling regime and Moscow which included visits by Jolani and Shaibani to the Kremlin where they were welcomed with the pomp and ceremony reserved for ‘heads of state’. Their genocidal campaigns were not mentioned during these meetings to my knowledge. The Syrian people were secondary to Russian interests in maintaining a foothold on the Syrian coast as a launchpad to Africa.
Civilian facilities like Hmeimim Airport will be under the control of HTS and the fourth commercial shipping berth at Tartous Port.
The memorandum sets a deadline of no more than three months to complete the transition, after which the new arrangements will take effect, according to the ministry.
This serious capitulation by Moscow may be attributed to the build up of Ukrainian special forces in Syria or to the ongoing threats from factions within Jolani’s militia who want revenge for the Russian bombs that fell when they were slaughtering Syrians in the US/UK-led regime change war to topple the former Syrian government.
The Shaibani Foreign Ministry has stated that this is the most significant development since negotiations began 18 months ago. “It opens the way for a new phase in Syrian-Russian relations”. One where Russia is increasingly isolated in the ‘Middle East’ and dependent upon forces allied with Ukraine to ensure the security of their bases and personnel inside Syria.
Russian News Agency TASS reported the following:
Russia has two military facilities in Syria – a Russian navy logistics center in the port city of Tartus and the Kmeimim airbase located near the city of Jableh in the Latakia governorate. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a meeting with journalists from Arab countries on October 13, 2025 that Damascus was interested in preserving Russian military bases in Syria, which, however, could be reorganized to serve other purposes.
In February 2025 Jolani spoke with Russian President Putin. According to the TASS press release:
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syria’s new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa have exchanged views on the situation in the country, the Kremlin press service reported, citing the content of the telephone conversation between the heads of state.
“The sides held a substantive exchange of views on the current situation in Syria,” the statement said. “The Russian side stressed its principled position in support of the unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Syrian state,” the press service said.
Under the former President Assad, Russia could negotiate from a position of strength. Since the fall of Damascus and the rise to power of foreign mercenaries (including Chechen terrorists) under the banner of a MI6-remodelled Al Qaeda, Russia negotiates from a position of vulnerability and will continue to do so until perhaps they no longer have a presence in the region.
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MY COMMENT:
Ever since at least 2015, Vanessa Beeley, who lived in Syria during 2015 to 2024, has always been the most knowledgeable and truthful reporter about Syria, for which reason the CIA-edited and written Wikipedia (which blacklists — blocks from linking to — sites that aren’t CIA-approved) article about her, “Vanessa Beeley”, slings at her CIA-MI6 smear-phrases such as “conspiracy theorist,” because nothing that she reported was actually false, and much that Wikipedia says is actually false, such as when they link to the neocon New York Review of Books’ 16 October 2018 “Why Assad and Russia Target the White Helmets” and cite there such sources as NATO’s main PR arm the Atlantic Council, in order to discredit her, with such lies as
The de facto leader of the disinformation campaign is a blogger called Vanessa Beeley, who has been dubbed by The Guardian’s former Middle East editor as “the Syrian conflict’s goddess of propaganda.”
(U.S-and-allied billionaires such as George Soros are major funders of the Guardian.)
This was to get back her for her stellar series exposing the White Helmets as an MI6 front that was working with Al Qaeda in Syria to propagandize for Assad’s overthrow and to help install Al Qaeda into power there (which ultimately happened — with heavy U.S. support, which started in late 2011, just ten years after the 9/11 attacks, which had been paid-for and organized by the top Sauds and G.W. Bush insiders):
https://21stcenturywire.com/2015/10/23/syrias-white-helmets-war-by-way-of-deception-part-1/
https://www.mintpressnews.com/irwin-cotler-white-helmets-israel-whitewashing/261073/.
On 23 June 2026, I emailed to 8 executives and reporters at the Guardian:
Your site’s fundraising pop-up ”This is what we’re up against” says “With no billionaire or big corporate owner, our journalists are free to report without interference,” but what about this, and this, and this, and this? You are funded by foundations controlled by many of the top donors to the neoconservative-neoliberal American Democratic Party. And your ‘news’-reports reflect that. Your statement that “With no billionaire or big corporate owner, our journalists are free to report without interference” has actually no credibility — you merely represent neoconservative-neoliberal billionaires who are liberals, against neoconservative-neoliberal billionaires who are conservatives. (ALL billionaires are neoconservative and neoliberal.) Your statement that “With no billionaire or big corporate owner, our journalists are free to report without interference,” MIGHT have been true in an earlier era, but certainly it s false now.
I didn’t expect a reply, and none came.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
