The Media Line: ‘Iran Is Today’s Nazi Threat’: Syrian Insider Delivers Stark Warning, Urges Israel To Embrace Opportunity for Peace

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‘Iran Is Today’s Nazi Threat’: Syrian Insider Delivers Stark Warning, Urges Israel To Embrace Opportunity for Peace

Mzahem Alsaloum, a survivor of Assad-regime torture, warns that time is running out for Israel to support a new Syrian leadership eager to normalize ties

By Gabriel Colodro/The Media Line

“My life is about surviving. It has been about surviving, and it still is in Syria,” says Mzahem Alsaloum, seated in an empty room of a Parisian hotel during the ELNET 2025 International Policy Conference. “I’m just like the Jewish ancestors who spent their lives always surviving.”

Alsaloum speaks with urgency and precision. A former Syrian intelligence analyst and now director of a global human intelligence firm, he says he is convinced that Syria is facing a new wave of destabilization—this time from the very actors the international community believes have lost ground.

Born in Deir ez-Zur, a city “known for many battles,” Alsaloum describes a proud yet devastated homeland. “My city is the first that not only fought against [former Syrian President Bashar] Assad and Iran and Russia,” he explains. “It also has been under a big, tough siege from both sides: ISIL [the Islamic State group] and the Assad regime.” The consequences, he says, were devastating. “We paid for that by having 95% of my city’s population [as] refugees or displaced people.”

Pressed about the personal toll, Alsaloum responds without hesitation. “My brother was tortured to death by a jihadi group. He was tortured for 11 days to death. And I survived torture from the Assad regime.”

That trauma nearly consumed him. “I was going through the trauma of my brother’s death, and I wanted to do something crazy that would lead to killing me, to take my revenge,” he recalls. “The first Jew I met in my life was a rabbi. … He told me, ‘You have to learn how to survive. Your problem is that you want to carry the weight of all of Syria on your shoulders.’”

“It took me a year and a half to recognize that,” he admits. “Then I got more and more involved in the career that I’m doing right now.”

Just two weeks before the interview, he returned to Syria. “That operation was like a suicidal operation for me,” he says. “I didn’t dare to text my friend, the rabbi … because he would think that I didn’t learn the lesson he was trying to teach me.”

His decision to go back, he explains, was driven by a sense of urgency and abandonment. “I was motivated by the fact that America has no interest in Syria, has no interest in Lebanon,” he said. “We have a new American administration that wants to bring the world back to 1939.” Without naming President Donald Trump directly, Alsaloum clearly criticized Washington’s current posture. He warned that Iran and its allies—Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish militias—“are the worst enemies that we’ve ever had since the Nazis … committed the Holocaust.”

He believes these Iranian-backed forces are actively working to undermine Syria’s recovery. “They collaborated with the IRGC [Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], with the Shiite militia groups, with the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] … and with Hezbollah. And they started running operations rooms into these areas, and they got equipped, supplied, and started getting orders to plan a coup attempt.”

The outcome, he says, was horrifying. “Within the first two or three hours of that attempt, they burned alive these elite security forces who were deployed to protect the Alawite people. And they started knocking on the doors of the Sunni houses, and they massacred 104 people.”

Still, Alsaloum insists the violence was not part of an orchestrated campaign of ethnic cleansing. “Despite that 14,000 armed men went there, there was no ethnic cleansing [due to] the number of civilians that were killed, 100 to 200, and the most important fact: It wasn’t systematic.”

He also accuses various groups of spreading falsehoods to manipulate public perception. “We have seen three types of propaganda and misinformation campaigns. They were conducted by Iranian people, SDF [the Syrian Democratic Forces], and PKK, and a third type, unfortunately: far-right Israeli people who were participating in publishing such propaganda.”

On Syria’s new leadership under President Ahmed al-Sharaa, Alsaloum expresses cautious optimism. “They have the will and the intention to rebuild the country. And they’re building the country under the rules of peace. … Let’s make peace in the region and let’s rebuild the country.”

“They want to sign … the Syrian-Israeli version of the Abraham Accords,” he adds. “Even people with an Islamist background … will tell you, ‘Yeah, we are very keen to make peace with Israel.’”

Still, he says, that enthusiasm faded in recent months. “When people saw the current administration, the current government in Israel … doing mistakes that are pushed by the trauma of the 7th of October terrorist attack, this has made a lot of people take a step back and say, ‘Whatever we do for them, they will never be pleased.’”

That frustration, he adds, has been exploited by extremist groups. “We have seen propaganda coming from ISIL, saying, the Jews, whatever you will do for them, even if you join their club and provide concessions, they will not please you. And Iran and its proxies have also used that in their propaganda.”

Despite the growing resentment, Alsaloum says Syria’s leadership remains committed to building peace. “The motivation [of the Syrian president] is that he wants to build a country based on the understanding that you cannot build a developed country in this region without having peace with Israel.”

Speaking on Iran’s role in the region, Alsaloum draws a chilling analogy. “It’s the same as if you tell the Jewish people, after releasing them from Auschwitz … what do you think about being tolerant with Hitler, with the Nazis? The case in Syria, about Iran, is like that right now.”

He also questions Israel’s current alignment. “Right now … under this policy of protecting minorities, Israel is supporting groups that they were historically Iranian assets. … We are repeating the 7th of October scenario.”

Those alliances, he warns, could backfire. “They will equip [themselves] … and those groups, they will have only Iran backing them again and using them again to attack Israel and to attack the new Syria.”

He concludes with a reflection on history, legacy, and opportunity. “The first generation of the Israeli leadership was able to build a greater brand … because they believed in that pain, because they lived part of it during the Holocaust.”

“It took them 33 years … to tell the world that Israel is a strong ally … but it takes 33 months only to destroy a brand,” he warns. “You have lost six months of this potential right now. You still have 27 months.”

“So my advice to you is that take advantage of this potential. Meanwhile, keep fighting against terrorists, don’t show them tolerance. But take the potential of Syria.”