Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa announced on Saturday, March 29 a new transitional government that will seek to navigate Syria away from its decades-long Assad rule and toward closer alignment with its neighbors and the West. The new 22-member cabinet includes broad representation from Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities, as well as the country’s first female (and Christian) minister and, poignantly, the position of Minister for Emergency Response for former White Helmets head Raed al-Saleh. International pressure on al-Sharaa to advance an inclusive government formation process increased last month after scores of civilians were killed when violence erupted between Assad’s Alawite party and fighters ostensibly representing al-Sharaa’s new interim government. In announcing the new government, al-Sharaa pledged to rebuild Syria’s state institutions based on accountability and transparency.
There is no doubt that Syria faces many obstacles on its road ahead. Al-Sharaa’s Islamist past, including as leader of the designated but now disbanded terror organization Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has rightly sparked concerns from Israel, the United States, and their allies. Despite the well-documented steps he has taken toward moderation, it is much too early to predict whether Al-Sharaa is truly committed to guiding Syria away from the authoritarianism that characterized the Assad regime. Notwithstanding these challenges, it would be a tragic mistake for the international community not to use the tools at its disposal to seize upon this strategic opportunity to shape Syria’s future in a way that contributes to Israel’s security and broader regional stability.
Immediately upon seizing power, al-Sharaa launched overtures towards the West, as well as the moderate Arab states. In February, he undertook his first foreign trip to Riyadh in what many viewed as a public distancing of past Syrian ties to Iran. Other members of the new government also visited the UAE, Qatar, and Jordan in advance of al-Sharaa’s participation in an emergency Arab summit on Gaza in Cairo in March. He has in the meantime continued to denounce the Iranian militias that had played a pivotal role in the country, calling them harmful to Syria and a threat to the wider region. Speaking about the US, al-Sharaa lamented the lack of contact with the Trump administration in its early days and has been direct in calling for the restoration of bilateral ties. He has noted, though, that around 2,000 US troops remain on Syrian territory without his government’s approval and has called for any continued presence there to be through agreement with the Syrian state. Al-Sharaa has also called lingering US sanctions as the “gravest risk” to Syria’s future. His early conciliatory tone towards Israel, including asserting that his government does not seek conflict with Israel, has since sharpened, particularly in response to ongoing Israeli incursions into Syria territory. In March, al-Sharaa called on the international community to pressure Israel to withdraw its troops from southern Syria.
The United States has been slow to seize upon the strategic opportunity afforded by Assad’s ouster. The Biden administration sent a senior delegation to Damascus for talks with the interim government in December shortly before leaving office. It also pushed through limited sanctions relief in the form of a six-month general license to ease the flow of humanitarian aid. The inauguration of the new Trump administration put a halt to these efforts as new senior White House officials adopted a more hardline stance that only intensified after the murder of Alawite civilians by former HTS forces in March.
The US was represented at a relatively low level at a March 18 international Syria donors conference in Brussels. The forum did, though, see the first known direct contact between the new administration and the al-Sharaa government. The US in those talks issued a series of conditions for further relaxation of sanctions and recognition of Syria’s territorial integrity. Those conditions include the destruction of remaining chemical weapons, cooperation on counterterrorism, and the exclusion of foreign fighters from the Syrian government. Meanwhile, the US unilaterally retains around 2,000 troops in northeastern Syria in order to, in close cooperation with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), counter resurgent ISIS activities in the area.
Israel, via Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Israel Katz, has declared its post-Assad policy to be the full demilitarization of southern Syria. They remain concerned about Turkey’s influence with the new Syrian government and with the Islamist past of HTS. Israeli officials have also expressed a desire to protect the Syrian Druze community (which maintains ties with its Druze counterparts in Israel) and other minorities in Syria. In the ten days after the fall of Assad, Israel launched more than 600 strikes on military sites throughout Syria. IDF troops swiftly crossed into Syrian territory, occupying the buffer zone established by the 1974 Israel-Syria Agreement on Disengagement, thereby neutering the agreement. The Israeli army has since advanced further into Syria, building new outposts, constructing barriers, and forcing the displacement of civilians.
In the past several weeks, the IDF has increased the number and intensity of airstrikes and ground incursions into the southwestern region. The situation escalated dramatically when on March 25, local gunmen attempted to prevent an IDF incursion and were met with lethal force. This deadly escalation was avoidable and if Israel withdraws from Syrian territory, de-escalation remains possible. Assad’s fall was a major defeat for Iran to Israel’s north, given the refusal by the new Syrian leadership to provide the Islamic Republic a platform to attack Israel. Indeed, since the fall of Assad, there has not been any targeting of Israel from Syria. Interim government security forces have destroyed Iranian rocket launch sites and blocked weapons shipments to Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. The consequent irony is that the two outside actors now most actively working against the new Syrian government are Israel and Iran.
The US and Israel are not the only powers seeking to shape Syria’s future, making it all the more urgent that we proactively manage the emerging power struggle in a way that preserves our collective interests. The Gulf states, despite varying degrees of early skepticism, see a convergence of interests with the new Syrian regime – namely curbing Iranian interests and stemming the flows of drugs that had funded the Assad regime – and have sought to influence the new government through an early embrace of al-Sharaa and, more recently, by welcoming the formation of the transitional government. Egypt and Jordan, on the other hand, remain wary of al-Sharaa’s Islamist roots. Assad’s departure was met with jubilation in Lebanon, but horror in ally Iraq, particularly given concerns that ISIS could exploit any eventual power vacuum to reclaim lost territory.
Russia has long maintained bases at Tartarus and Hmeimim and used those as a platform from which to operate throughout the Middle East and Africa. Those bases are now under Syria control although it appears possible al-Sharaa may be willing to renegotiate the terms of continued access in exchange for diplomatic support and financial compensation. Reports suggest that Netanyahu may support a partial reemergence of Russia in Syria in order to weaken the transitional government and serve as a counterbalance to Turkey (with which Israel has an increasingly fraught relationship) and its support for what Israel continues to view as an Islamist al-Sharaa government.
Turkey has long been driven by its desire to kneecap the People’s Defense Units (YPG) in its insurgency against Turkey by preventing Kurdish separatist movements from Iran through Iraq and into Syria. The Erdogan government had in recent years softened its hardline stance against the Assad regime and, via the Astana process in 2017, even signed on to an effort that essentially would have divided Syria up into “de-escalation zones” overseen by Turkey, Russia, and Iran. Turkey supported HTS in its move against the Assad regime in December 2024, however, parlaying its vital assistance into considerable influence over the new al-Sharaa government. Turkey has since used that influence to press for the elimination of Kurdish autonomy, via the US-partnered SDF, in northeastern Syria and the assimilation of formerly independent Kurdish elements into the Syrian state. The March agreement by the SDF to merge its elements into Syrian state institutions was a big win for Turkey in these efforts, although that now appears to be in jeopardy after no member of SDF was included in the newly-formed cabinet.
Europe isn’t without its own interests in Syria. The 2015 refugee crisis that stemmed from the Syrian civil war ultimately gave rise to the far-right political movements that have since taken over a number of European governments. Renewed regional instability coupled with a resurgent ISIS could further destabilize Europe itself. It is perhaps for these reasons that Europe has led the way in extending sanctions relief to the new Syrian government.
Despite the continued distrust of the new Syrian leadership, the US and Israel have considerable interests that are best served by expanding, rather than limiting, cooperation and empowering the transitional government.
United States: US strategic interests in Syria are easily defined: (i) deny Iran a vast platform from which to undertake its malign regional activities, (ii) deny Russia access to the Eastern Mediterranean which it has used to destabilize NATO and to transfer weapons and militants to the Ukrainian battlefield, (iii) secure gains against a resurgent ISIS, and (iv) expand potential for normalization between Israel and its Arab neighbors by supporting the establishment of a moderate Arab partner in the heart of a disrupted “Shia Crescent.”
Israel: Israel shares many of the same strategic interests as the United States, diverging primarily when it comes to its understanding of the threat Russia poses should it be permitted to reestablish footholds in Syria and beyond. To ensure Israel is best positioned to achieve its strategic objectives, the Netanyahu government should: