On the Israel point for the latest MATI. They did what they did for the reasons you mentioned but they also took out all of Assad's chemical weapons and other WMDs, along with their labs, rockets, research facilities, navy, military bases (that were abandoned), aircraft etc to prevent it from getting in the hands of Jihadists because no one knows if the current head of Syria or HTS will be super Islamic or "westernize" because HTS was officially part of Al-Quida and then was a part of ISIS.
Good pod! I'll go back to my A&H hole.