Genocide is being carried out in Syria – Abbas Juma

Speaking with Alpha News, Russian international journalist Abbas Juma commented on the situation in Syria, reports that Russia and the United States have asked the UN Security Council to hold urgent closed consultations on the situation in Western Syria, as well as Iran’s stance on negotiations with the Donald Trump administration.

“Syria’s new government and its sympathizers are making every effort to distance themselves from this massacre, portraying it as something not orchestrated from above but as events occurring in remote villages beyond the central government’s serious control. They claim that the central government will address the issue and punish those responsible. But in my opinion, this is absolutely not the case because the official government has done everything to ensure that these sentiments and individuals thrive and act with absolute impunity.

Moreover, today, during the genocide, when people turn to this very new government, they receive at best an indifferent response: ‘we can do nothing.’ This is indeed genocide—mass murder driven by religious hatred, which has persisted for centuries and began long before Assad,” Juma said.

The expert emphasized the close ties between the current Syrian authorities and Turkey.

“The current government is entirely aligned with Turkey. They initiated this march on Damascus and trained terrorists in Idlib for many years. Let me remind you that Idlib was called a ‘de-escalation zone.’ This was the result of agreements between Russia, Iran and Turkey, with each country acting as a guarantor of this de-escalation. However, in the Turkish zone, where Ankara was the guarantor, not only did the number of weapons fail to decrease, but they increased many times over. People became far more aggressive. It was a total occupation. There were Turkish institutions, the Turkish language and schools according to Turkish standards—everything in Turkish. They appropriated this area and made it a springboard for training these terrorists. Let me remind you that there were hundreds of thousands of them there,” Juma said.

According to the expert, reports that Russia and the United States have requested the UN Security Council to hold urgent closed consultations on the situation in Western Syria show that relations between the two countries are evolving to a new level.

“This is truly surprising, but it is as surprising as all the recent events tied to Donald Trump’s new administration. I cannot assess this episode in isolation from the negotiations, the infamous squabble between Trump and Zelensky in the Oval Office, or the vote in the UN Security Council on the resolution. Because for the first time, America took a stance against Ukraine publicly, together, by the way, with Israel, and then passed its own resolution, which did not label Russia as an aggressor, and we supported this resolution. All these events are unprecedented in the context of the special military operation. Under Biden, we did not communicate at all, there was complete silence. Now, not only are we communicating, but we are also reaching a higher level of engagement. However, we should not delude ourselves,” Juma said.

He also commented on the EU’s strange reaction to the massacre of Alawites and Christians in Western Syria, noting that Brussels had effectively sidestepped the issue, accusing only pro-Assad forces of attacking the security services of the new Syrian government.

“Europe’s current rabid, anti-Russian, Russophobic elite welcomes everything that might cause discomfort to Russia. European leaders are still in shock from Trump’s rise to power in the United States. Globalists, technocrats, focused on fighting Russia, now do not really understand what to do. They are panicking, realizing they no longer have a seat at the negotiating table,” Juma emphasized.

He also commented on the recent high-profile resignations in Iran, in particular that of Iranian Vice President Mohammad Javad Zarif.

“Many Iranians believe Zarif and his team were directly sabotaging and did not act in the interests of the Islamic Republic. In fact, skepticism towards these individuals has existed in Iran for a very long time, not just among conservatives. That is, they are not trusted, and the recent resignations align with the general attitude towards them and the trend that these people are pursuing—rapprochement with the West and negotiation processes. The Iranian top leadership is extremely skeptical of any negotiation process with today’s West and with today’s America,” Juma said.

Touching on Iran’s negotiations with the US regarding Tehran’s nuclear program and the lifting of sanctions, the journalist noted that relations between Iran and the US-led West remain in a limbo—neither war nor peace.

“After numerous attempts, the Iranians came to the conclusion that negotiating with the US is futile. This does not mean that the Iranians have abandoned negotiations as such. They’ve decided that, given how rapidly circumstances are evolving, they will wait until the US is genuinely ready for dialogue. In general, the West is structured in such a way and treats Iran in such a way that the work of Iranian President Pezeshkian and his team to establish relations with the West is fruitless. They are ineffective, so they are fired, and so on. Relations between Iran and the US-led West remain in a limbo—neither war nor peace. The sanctions pressure persists, the hostility is crazy, all sides reject each other, but at the same time, no one dares to commit serious aggression that would unleash a fairly serious large-scale conflict with no foreseeable end,” Juma concluded.