President Donald Trump is taking a massive gamble by attempting to normalize relations with Syria after decades of bipartisan consensus against formal ties with the war-torn nation, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Trump partially lifted sanctions against Syria on May 13 to help normalize relations with the nation’s new government that took power after toppling former President Bashaar al-Assad’s regime in December 2024. Trump’s softened stance on the new Syrian government could gain the U.S. another ally or partner in the region, but the move risks renewed chaos and diplomatic embarrassment if the interim government cannot hold the nation’s many disparate groups together, experts told the DCNF.
Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, was a former member of al-Qaeda who defected from the terror outfit due to ideological differences in 2017 to form Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the group that ultimately took control of Damascus in just two weeks after starting its offensive.
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“Obviously, it is a bit of a gamble,” Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, told the DCNF. “If you take a look at historical cases in which an entity has been on a terrorist list and then has transitioned towards becoming more acceptable as they become a political party or take over a country, whether it’s the [African National Congress], the [Irish Republican Army], or the [Palestinian Liberation Organization], it’s nevertheless been a process with specific demands and time in order to make sure that this is not just a temporary change of heart.”
Some foreign policy experts have pointed out that Trump may have been too early to extend an olive branch to Syria without first securing guarantees that the new government would not facilitate terrorism. Syria has long been a breeding ground for jihadists; HTS, al-Sharaa’s group, is still a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, while ISIS maintains a small but long-standing presence in the area.
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“The mistake is giving away America’s leverage before going to the negotiating table,” David Adesnik, director of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), told the DCNF. “I am totally open to the idea that we tell the Syrians: ‘Look, there is a path to having all sanctions lifted, but you have to show us that you’re equally committed to doing the things that we need and deal with the reasons that sanctions exist, like the terrorists that are in Syria.’”
Al-Sharaa has attempted to distance himself from his jihadist past, but HTS still retains the salafist jihadist interpretation of Islam that al-Qaeda espouses, with the latter viewing HTS as traitorous.
Prior to becoming the newest leader of Syria, al-Sharaa was an American prisoner for years during the Iraq War, where he picked up English and met with major terrorist players, including former ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, according to The Economist. For a time, he was imprisoned in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, which was the site of serious and illegal abuses against detainees by U.S. forces.
“He’s not really condemning people who would do that outside of their own borders. But he is saying: My job, my Jihad, is in Syria,” Adesnik told the DCNF about Al-Sharaa’s views.
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“As the President said, we hope this new Syrian government will succeed in stabilizing the country and keeping peace,” a State Department spokesperson told the DCNF. “We will deliver on the President’s directive to deliver sanctions relief to the Syrian people as quickly as possible. We are committed to supporting a stable and peaceful Syria and giving Syria a chance to become great.”
As of December 2024, up to 620,000 people were thought to have died throughout the Syrian civil war, according to The New York Times.
Some Syria observers familiar with al-Sharaa’s history remain skeptical of his so-called “moderate” image, as it remains unclear how Syria’s various religious and ethnic minorities will be treated under the new government in the longer-term after 15 years of brutal civil war. The government, as of May 16, controls the vast majority of the populated Western half of Syria, but remains challenged for the north by the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army in the north and the Syrian Defense Force (SDF) in the East, the main military arm for the nation’s Kurdish minority.
To complicate matters further, the SDF holds over 9,000 ISIS soldiers and 50,000 others in detention centers, which counterterrorism officials have characterized as a massive security risk due to substandard security at the prison facilities. Currently, the government appears to have cordial relations with the SDF, signing a deal in March to integrate them into the government next year.
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Under al-Sharaa’s short tenure, the Alawite minority in northern Syria already reportedly suffered a brutal massacre, with 300 civilians and more fighters believed to have been killed by sectarian militants on March 8, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Al-Sharaa condemned the attack, and launched an investigation into the incident.
The Alawites were largely protected under Assad, who was a member of the minority group. It has been hypothesized that the killings were triggered by the Alawites’ staunch support of the deposed president. Syria hosts a slew of other minority groups, including the Druze in the south, the Kurds in the north and a small minority of Christians spread throughout the nation.
However, the Kurds’ past wishes for autonomy could become a flashpoint in the future, as the SDF continues to serve as a key ally to the U.S. in containing ISIS. Currently, around 2,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Syria, regularly fighting alongside SDF forces.
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“The Syrian government so far has been quite successful in terms of trying to bring in a lot of different elements and make a deal with the Kurds,” Parsi told the DCNF. “I think to a certain extent it reduces the idea that if you make a deal with the Syrian government, you are throwing the Kurds under the bus.”
Syria could prove a key ally in the region amid rumors of a deteriorating relationship between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump reportedly shrugged off Netanyahu’s input on the deal with Syria, as the Israeli leader urged Trump to not ease the Syrian sanctions.
“No matter the rhetoric, if Syrians don’t begin to experience improvements in their daily lives, the honeymoon will come to an end,” Wa’el Alzayat, a Middle East expert who served at the Department of State for a decade, said in a column published with The Hill on Monday.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
