Syria as a regime-change template
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Syria as a regime-change template is the argument John Kiriakou makes when asked whether the United States should force a change of government elsewhere: that the Syrian case shows the organic version works better, and that Washington's contribution should be correspondingly small.

"Syria ought to be the template for how we move forward on these."

What he considers permissible

Kiriakou does not argue for doing nothing. "There's no problem from a policy perspective to supply aid, for example, whether it's economic aid or military aid, to the Kurds or to free Syrian fighters."

What he objects to is the alternative: "going into a country and just occupying it and thinking that you're going to succeed just because we're the good guys is not a workable plan." Syria, on his reading, "is something that should be studied in the halls of international intelligence services and implemented with more of a hands-off approach."

The admission he volunteers

In the middle of the endorsement he supplies the case against American competence in the same theatre: "oddly enough, we had the CIA most recently in Syria. We had the CIA supplying al-Qaeda, and the Pentagon supplying a completely different group that was at war with al-Qaeda. So we almost came out on top in spite of ourselves there."

The man the process produced is treated separately, in al-Julani.

Three agencies, three proxies

Kiriakou's summary of the American position before 2025 is that there was no single position at all: "the CIA supported al-Qaeda in Syria. The State Department supported the Kurds, and the Defense Department supported an independent rebel group. So we had the most screwed up policy on Syria that was possible."

He states the record of the man who emerged from it without softening, "this guy was an al-Qaeda leader. He was the number two in ISIS. He broke off from ISIS, claiming at the time he wanted to moderate", and then argues that dealing with him is nonetheless correct, on the precedent of Castro and Batista.

See also

- Al-Julani
- Venezuela regime change (2026)
- U.S. foreign policy process
- Bashar al-Assad
