Regime Change Rears Its Evil Head
On June 22, 2025, Mar Elias Church was attacked by a suicide bomber, martyring over twenty parishioners in the process. Whether by coincidence or evil intent, the attack was perpetrated on the day that Greek Orthodox Christians under the Antiochian Patriarchate celebrate all of Antioch’s saints.
The attack reflects the complete neglect of the current Syrian government of the many religious minorities within her borders, including many sects of Christianity and Islam. Earlier in the year, the new government under President Ahmed al-Sharaa had cracked down on and massacred the Shia Alawite group. The top Christian clerics of the churches in Syria all expressed their condemnation and concern after al-Sharaa had taken power and ousted the previous president, Bashar al-Assad. The outcome of the terrible Syrian Civil War could hardly have gone any worse. And to top it all off, the United States and its NATO allies have continuously supported the ousting of Assad’s government, further intensifying the carnage waged by a multi-sided war. The United States got what it wanted — a country docile to American exploits, no matter how chaotic, turbulent, and despotic their puppet regime is. This is nothing new. We’ve supported Saudi Arabia, despite their slaughter of their Yemeni neighbors. We installed Batista, Cuba’s most insidious dictator (and it’s not even close). We supported South Korea at a time when they had a government whose authoritarianism out performed their neighbors to the North. The CIA and MI6 ousted Mosaddegh in Iran, despite the fact that he was democratically elected, because he nationalized Iranian oil. In his place, we installed the Shah who had already been rejected by the Iranians. It turns out, people don’t like a foreign power coming in and installing military puppets. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was a revolt against American imperialism. I can’t blame them.
I remember when Republicans would virtue signal non-stop about the plight of Christian minorities in the Middle East. And what do they do? They persecute governments and militias that were actively trying to protect Christians. This includes not only Assad’s Syria, but also Ḥezbollah in Lebanon. Even the Iranian government protects their Christian minorities, particularly vestiges of the Armenian Apostolic Church. On the flip side, the resistance army supported by the United States and NATO is headed al-Sharaa who has ties with Al-Qaeda. In fact, he fought against the United States during the fallout of the Iraq War, and was even captured and imprisoned from 2006 to 2011.
Since his release, he has postured himself as a moderate Jihadist, seeking clemency from Western nations. Huh. Interesting. What happened in Abu Ghraib?
The good thing about the internet is that it is getting increasingly more difficult to lie. Images, videos, and on the ground testimony is impossible to argue with. Well, I guess not impossible. When you’re a Hellenist, you can see things that aren’t there and lie to yourself. But for the rest of us, the media captured on the ground speaks for itself. It doesn’t have to be filtered through a television channel or newspaper company in order to be seen. It is a forced return to the old school Walter Cronkite journalistic style. In the 1960s, the news simply broadcasted the Vietnam War. As a result, many Americans (especially the younger ones) grew to disdain our involvement there. In fact, it was Cronkite himself who is credited with largely shifting public opinion of the war in American culture.
We were determined not to make the same mistake in the 1980s and beyond — that is, during the infamous Gulf War (1990–1991), and later the War Against Terror (2001–2021). Yeah that’s right. A war against “global terrorism”. It was a war against an idea. How do you militarily fight against an “idea”? I guess the same way we fought against “communism”. How did these wars work out? Current events speak for themselves. The Taliban still have Afghanistan as if nothing happened. Iraq, led by a British-plant President (Abdul Latif Rashid) faces serious economic issues, remaining insurgencies, and a water crisis due to infrastructural mismanagement. At least there is some hope with Iraq’s Prime Minister, Muhammad al-Sudani, who is unabashedly anti-Zionist and spoke out against the Israeli-led toppling of the Assad government. Still, he remains muzzled by the head of government.
We are still paying for Britain’s imperial aspirations from over a hundred years ago. The Ottoman Empire was an obstacle to their influence in Asia, so they found ways to undermine them by sparking several small revolutions. World War I was the opportunity for the breaking up of Ottoman hegemony. The British were the architects of the so-called “Unification of Saudi Arabia”, sparking the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire. The key was to take advantage of an already brewing Wahhabi revival within certain Arab tribes. It’s the same tactic we pull today. One of the British soldiers aiding the Arab revolt was T.E. Lawrence, who also fought at the Sinai and Palestine Campaign from 1915 to the end of the war in 1918. This was not a war of liberation for Bedouins under Ottoman rule, it was a war to expand British influence and to eliminate their global competitors.
The result by the end of the War was a radical re-bordering process that has played a significant role in the current mess in the Middle East. It was also the British at this time who engineered the Balfour Declaration, paving the way for the Zionist lobby in the British parliament to begin crafting the state of Israel. The dividing line was the Jordan River, the other side of which would be home to another British creation, the Kingdom of Jordan. What resulted were several British-compliant kingdoms throughout the Middle East. When one of these countries sought independence from the British (and later the Americans), they were met with threats of regime change… or even full on regime change. Since World War II, it has only been worse as the United States has stepped up to its father’s plate, continuing its expanding legacy like the Romans following in the footsteps of the Greeks. The United States is like an American teenager. It initially rebelled against its parent, vowing to be nothing like it… and before long, it becomes just like its parent. A spitting image, but way more destructive. The United States was born from revolution against empire, but matured into the very empire it claimed to oppose, now wielding a nuclear arsenal and a vast surveillance empire. It is the only country to have ever used them as a weapon. And it did so twice.
Events like the massacre that occurred on Sunday are not random and do not occur in a vacuum. Religious minorities were generally safe and stable under the Ottoman millet system. It was the destruction of the Empire that led to this situation. In-so-doing, the British and the Americans have set Arab against Arab, Muslim against Muslim, Christian against Christian, and Jew against Jew. They have set brothers against each other for the sake of political prowess and hegemony and for the sake of controlling global economies and energy exports. There is nothing more painful than being betrayed by your own family. Middle Eastern Christians especially feel this, when American Christians sell their wealth to AIPAC.
May God protect the religious minorities in Syria and Iraq, and may he protect all of the citizens of Iran, Lebanon, Gaza, and Yemen.
May the memory of the 20+ Syrian martyrs be eternal.