super jili The Syria Opportunity

How can the United States take advantage of the great but tricky strategic opportunity that the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s tyranny in Damascus offers us? Mainly through a combination of meaningful incentives for, and credible threats against, our enemies, frenemies, allies and would-be friends. Let’s go down the list.

Syria. The large question hanging over our Syria policy is whether the rebel group chiefly responsible for toppling the Assad regime, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or Organization for the Liberation of the Levant, is sincere in its renunciation of terrorism and Taliban-style Islamism. The Biden administration can offer an immediate gesture of good will by lifting the State Department’s $10 million reward for Mohammad al-Jolani, the H.T.S. leader.

But U.S. sanctions on Syria, and H.T.S.’s status as a designated terrorist organization, should be lifted only on conditional bases. Will Syria’s new rulers allow freedom of worship for religious minorities and freedom of dress for women? Will they accept the de facto autonomy of Syria’s Kurds? Will they cooperate with international efforts to destroy ISIS? If H.T.S. really wants to cement a different relationship with Washington, it can also demand Russia’s military withdrawal from Syria, much as Egypt’s Anwar Sadat did in the 1970s.

Lebanon. “If we lose Syria, then we will no longer have Hezbollah.” That prediction about the terrorist militia came from Soheil Karimi, a hard-line Iranian commentator. Already decimated by Israel, Hezbollah will struggle to survive as Lebanon’s dominant political entity if it doesn’t have an easy way to rearm itself. It’s in the interests of Israel, the United States and the Lebanese people that Hezbollah’s 40-plus-year reign of ruin end.

How? The legal basis is full application of the U.N. Security Council’s Resolution 1701, which insists “there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state.” Hezbollah has brazenly flouted the demand for 18 years. Donald Trump can help enforce it by declaring in one of his social media posts that he will not consider Israel bound to honor its cease-fire deal with Hezbollah until the group fully disarms.

Ultimately, Hezbollah should be put to a fundamental choice: Participate in Lebanese politics as a normal political party that plays by the rules or face further military humiliation at the hands of the Zionist enemy.

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