In 2016, Steven Bannon interviewed me about the Middle East for his very popular talk radio show. The kind of questions he asked me showed clearly that he really knew very little of the region. But Bannon is smart. He asked smart questions. One of those was who is the trouble maker of the region? I answered that possibly this could be Turkey's leader Recep Erdogan who had just survived a coup d'état masterminded by arguably the most powerful leader of the region, Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan who is often called MBZ. I argued that Erdogan had such huge geopolitical ambitions, the money, the military resources and the true grit to actually make Turkey a regional power, competing with KSA and UAE. I said that Erdogan had a lot to prove and was eager to make a wave and that he might just pull it off if he can keep a cool head.

To my great surprise, I noted a couple of weeks later Bannon do an interview with a Saudi newspaper and repeated all of what I had told him verbatim. He even copied my expressions!

But levity aside, there are some serious points about Erdogan's role and what now he must be thinking about Turkey's positioning in the region.

Syria falling took everyone by surprise. The sheer speed of the Assad regime collapsing as an entire army walked away from the slew of jihadists driving at high speed south, until they reached Damascus, was stunning. Presently we are only left with journalists' clichés. Who are the winners and losers? Does this now weaken Iran thus tempting the U.S. and Israel to take a second shot at it? Or will Israel now target Iran's allies in the region now that the Shia Crescent no longer has a lifeline highway which can be used to supply Hezbollah in Lebanon?

All of these questions still hang in the air as we need to see whether these jihadists from Idlib have the political skills to feather their own beds with regional players. Perhaps within Syria, it might be harder as already, at the time or writing, the HTS is already fighting key towns in the north which are controlled by Turkey's main foe, the PKK, or should we say the YPG as it is known - the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) which is largely made up of Kurds, with a minority of Syrian army defectors thrown into the mix.

Buying natural gas from Russia was a good deal, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said, rejecting suggestions that it may have been a strategic mistake.

Merkel, who served as chancellor from 2005 to 2021, was in Paris this week to promote her memoir. She gave an exclusive interview to state TV channel France 2, in which she was asked about Germany's energy relationship with Russia.

"The gas trade with Russia has a deep-rooted tradition. It began during the Cold War and continued throughout my time in office. I do not think it was a mistake, because we obtained Russian gas at a favorable price," Merkel said in the interview, which aired on Monday evening.

"It was a win-win situation," the former chancellor added.

It looks like any previous crime can be forgotten as long as there's regime change to be achieved.

What reasonable person wouldn't give terrorists the benefit of the doubt? Maybe banking on jihadists will work out this time, eh? If not, the West can always just bomb them into oblivion. That should work out about as well as it always does.

Where have we seen this movie before? Ah, yes. "Anti-Soviet warrior puts his army on the road to peace," journalist Robert Fisk wrote in The Independent in 1993 - about Al-Qaeda founder and former CIA asset against the Soviets in Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden. And we know how that turned out. Now Al-Qaeda's leader in Syria is getting the same treatment from the Western establishment.

It seems like just yesterday Washington and vassals were slamming the same group of jihadists who recently rampaged through Syria and rocked right up to Damascus as former President Bashar Assad fled to Moscow.

A poll showed Reform gaining ground on Labour and the Tories today in the wake of bombshell immigration figures.

Research by More in Common found Nigel Farage's outfit was up three points in the week after official statistics revealed the UK's record for net inflows had been smashed.

The survey - conducted between November 29 and December 2 - put Reform on 21 per cent. Labour dropped two points on 26 per cent and the Conservatives were down one on 28 per cent.

Zionist apologists commonly present support for Israel as a necessary extension of opposition to radical Islam and the threat of Jihadi terrorism. "Support us fighting them here, so you don't have to fight them there" is a common plea to the West from Zionist spokespeople within Israel. Yet when it comes to the Syrian Civil War, the conflict which sparked the major refugee crisis responsible for flooding Europe with millions of Muslims, Israel has been firmly on the side of Jihad, even and most particularly Al-Qaeda.

Trump is the [incoming] president of the United States and will first and foremost be protecting the interests of his country, even if it will be to the detriment of Gulf states.

The rapidity with which Donald Trump is setting up his team indicates that he wants to get to work immediately after the inauguration on January 20. The choice of Steve Witkoff, a close adviser and confidant, as special envoy to the Middle East may indicate that the president plans to deal with this region personally.

During Trump's first term in office (2017-2021), the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), collectively and bilaterally through its member states, maintained close and mutually beneficial relations with the United States. As is known, at that time Trump broke with tradition by choosing Saudi Arabia for his first trip abroad and meeting with the leaders of Gulf states, Arab and Muslim leaders in Riyadh in May, 2017. Although there have at times been disagreements between the two sides, especially vis-à-vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, their strategic partnership continued up until the last days of Trump's tenure. Most likely, this spirit of cooperation will continue and strengthen over the next four years.

Biden has treacherously shown what his real legacy is: bringing back perpetual wars, creating chaos through bribery and corruption, financing coups, unfreezing dormant conflicts and playing one against the other.

As if that weren't enough, a week later, Turkey (the largest NATO army in Europe) launched an offensive in neighbouring Syria through intermediaries led by HTS*, the former Al-Nusra Front*, effectively tearing up the Astana agreements with Moscow and Tehran on its role in Syria. Towards the end of the Biden administration, two major escalations took place in the two largest military conflicts taking place today, in Ukraine and the Middle East, both geographically separated by Turkey, which has now entered the scene.

At whose behest?

It would be naive to think that Erdoğan took the initiative to stage the invasion of Syria without the support, or at least the acquiescence, of the Americans, the British, the Israelis and the Europeans. Organising, training and arming tens of thousands of men on Syrian territory under his authority or in Turkey itself is an operation that requires logistical and intelligence coordination between various state and non-state entities.

"The US is the only power that has allowed itself to occupy Syria since 2014"

Margarita Simonyan made the remarks after Romania canceled the presidential election first round in which a critic of NATO took first place.

Western democracy is dead and the only thing left is to offer condolences, according to RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan. She was commenting on the cancelation of the results of the presidential election in Romania, in which independent candidate Calin Georgescu, a critic of NATO and the EU and a staunch opponent of aiding Ukraine, won the first-round vote.

Romania's Constitutional Court annulled the entire election ahead of a second round vote that was scheduled for Sunday, declaring that the ballot would be re-run at a later date.

According to Romanian media, the court made the decision based on declassified intelligence documents which allegedly found irregularities in Georgescu's performance. They claimed that Georgescu's candidacy was improperly promoted online, including on TikTok, by paid influencers and extremist right-wing groups, and that his campaign may have benefited from Russian interference - an allegation that Moscow has denied.

Georgia has prevented an attempted overthrow of the government orchestrated by foreign powers, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has said. He compared the scenario allegedly prepared for the nation with the situation in Ukraine in 2014.

Speaking on Monday, Kobakhidze referred to the US-backed Maidan coup in Kiev a decade ago, which ousted Ukraine's democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovich, and precipitated the current conflict between Moscow and Kiev.

Thanking the head of the ministry, Vakhtang Gomelauri, and police officers at a cabinet meeting, Kobakhidze said:

"It took the [Georgian] Ministry of Internal Affairs exactly five days to neutralize the resource of violence of the radical opposition. The ministry acted in accordance with standards higher than the American and European ones. This is how the attempt of Maidan in our country was stopped in exactly five days."

The introduction of the Oreshnik missile system in Russia reduces to a minimum the need to use nuclear weapons, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.

Putin made the remarks on Tuesday at a meeting of the Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights.

Russia is not tightening, but improving its nuclear doctrine, Putin said regarding the recent update to the country's nuclear posture. He explained that Russia needs to improve its new missile system more than it does its nuclear doctrine.