Monday marked the 100th anniversary of the abolition of the Ottoman caliphate—the formal successor to the prophet Mohammad and the nominal leader of Islam—by the secular Turkish government. Martin Kramer reproduces some firsthand accounts of the event itself, and analyzes its consequences:

The last century has witnessed the occasional attempt to revive the caliphate. Indeed, it began as soon as Turkey abolished it. There was a pop-up caliphate in Arabia in 1924 (it didn’t last long), and a caliphate congress in Cairo in 1926 (it ended in an impasse). . . . So far, the fringe attempt to revive the caliphate has sputtered, and it seems doubtful that a caliphate could gain momentum in modern conditions. But its absence remains a cruel reminder to some Muslims of just how far they’ve fallen away from the unity and power they enjoyed in their golden age.

The late Bernard Lewis called the caliphate “a potent symbol of Muslim unity, even identity,” adding that since its abolition, “many Muslims are still painfully conscious of this void.” Just how many remains an open question.

Yet perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the end of the Ottomans, given their own history, was this: their passing didn’t exact even one drop of blood.

Yesterday, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Israeli representatives have been involved in secret talks, brokered by the United Arab Emirates, with their Syrian counterparts about the potential establishment of diplomatic relations between their countries. Even more surprisingly, on Wednesday an Israeli reporter spoke with a senior official from Syria’s information ministry, Ali al-Rifai. The prospect of a member of the Syrian government, or even a private citizen, giving an on-the-record interview to an Israeli journalist was simply unthinkable under the old regime. What’s more, his message was that Damascus seeks peace with other countries in the region, Israel included.

These developments alone should make Israelis sanguine about Donald Trump’s overtures to Syria’s new rulers. Yet the interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa’s jihadist resumé, his connections with Turkey and Qatar, and brutal attacks on minorities by forces aligned with, or part of, his regime remain reasons for skepticism. While recognizing these concerns, Noah Rothman nonetheless makes the case for optimism:

The old Syrian regime was an incubator and exporter of terrorism, as well as an Iranian vassal state. The Assad regime trained, funded, and introduced terrorists into Iraq intent on killing American soldiers. It hosted Iranian terrorist proxies as well as the Russian military and its mercenary cutouts. It was contemptuous of U.S.-backed proscriptions on the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield, necessitating American military intervention—an unavoidable outcome, clearly, given Barack Obama’s desperate efforts to avoid it. It incubated Islamic State as a counterweight against the Western-oriented rebel groups vying to tear that regime down, going so far as to purchase its own oil from the nascent Islamist group.

The Assad regime was an enemy of the United States. The Sharaa regime could yet be a friend to America. . . . Insofar as geopolitics is a zero-sum game, taking Syria off the board for Russia and Iran and adding it to the collection of Western assets would be a triumph. At the very least, it’s worth a shot. Trump deserves credit for taking it.