Former U.S. Amb. to Syria Robert Ford is our guest for the 33rd episode. He served as U.S. Amb. to Syria from 2010-2014, after a 30-year career including a stint as U.S. Ambassador to Algeria.

We began our discussion with his assessment of the Syrian cease-fire, announced at the G-20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany, by President Trump and President Putin.

From there, we discussed why Russia is involved in Syria and what Russia’s goals are. We discussed Bashir al-Assad and how his rule of Syria has changed, as well as how the effort to take back Raqqa is going, whether Assad will use chemical weapons again, what the U.S. can do to deter Assad, whether a political settlement is possible, what advice he would privately give to President Trump, and what his experience was like as Ambassador in Damascus.