Easily lost amidst Jerusalem’s high-profile normalization agreements with Arab states is its recent establishment of diplomatic ties with Bhutan, a tiny Buddhist nation wedged between India and China. The news has not been ignored in India, however, where it was greeted with much enthusiasm. And while Bhutan may not be a country with great strategic, economic, or even symbolic importance, Avi Kumar argues that the development is nonetheless significant:

Israel’s previous lack of ties with Bhutan was not linked to the Arab-Israeli conflict, but was rather due to Bhutan’s strict isolationist policies. The kingdom has a population of little more than 770,000 citizens and only began allowing tourists in 1970. TV and Internet were permitted only in 1999. [It] has full diplomatic ties with only 53 nations. The new agreement with Israel comes after several years of secret communication between the two countries.

In 2017, the country saw its highest number of tourists, at more than 250,000—up from 2,850 in 1992. . . . Also, [the agreement] opens up new avenues for bilateral cooperation in other sectors such as agriculture, water management, and defense, which will benefit both parties significantly and boost both economies.

Israel’s new ties with this relatively isolated kingdom reflect the fact that the new Middle East landscape President-elect Joe Biden will inherit from President Trump is one where Israel’s role in the world at large is bigger and more significant than it has ever been in its 72-year history.

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.