For decades, the U.S. military has divided the world into various regions, with one of them—Central Command (CENTCOM)—including everything from Egypt to Pakistan. A glaring anomaly in this system has been Israel, which until two weeks ago remained under the umbrella of the European Command. Shaul Chorev, Douglas J. Feith, Gary Roughead, Seth Cropsey, and Jack Dorsett praise the U.S. decision to include the Jewish state in CENTCOM’s ambit:

Arab officials from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain. and elsewhere now openly talk of Israel as a strategic partner in opposing Iranian aggression, Islamic State, and other Islamist extremist groups. Whether or not it ever made sense, the idea that Israel must remain out of Central Command was now clearly outdated.

Central Command planners should take full advantage of America’s military and intelligence relationships with Israel. It was neither necessary, advantageous, nor historically justified to exclude Israel from efforts by the Central Command to bolster its military plans through regional cooperation.

Israel’s inclusion in the Central Command’s area of responsibility adds to the ability of both states to respond effectively in a crisis. Moreover, this change now . . . enables direct coordination on the sea lanes and at strategic choke points of the Red Sea that are vital to Israeli security and prosperity.

Moving Israel into Central Command’s area of responsibility will facilitate military cooperation with Israel. And it might promote more contact and cooperation between Israel and the Arab states.

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.