According to reports from the Syrian media, the IDF launched missiles at Iranian-linked military sites on Sunday, killing four Syrian airmen. If the information is accurate, the attack constitutes yet another Israeli mission in the “war between the wars,” as Jerusalem calls its yearslong attempt to degrade and destroy the military assets that Tehran and its allies have been building up in war-torn Syria. Israel has so far sought to conduct this campaign without antagonizing Russia, which is fighting alongside Iran to keep Bashar al-Assad in power. The Alma Research and Education Center examines how the war in Ukraine might affect both the Islamic Republic’s efforts and the Jewish state’s plans to counter them:

Russia will not abandon the Syrian [theater], which it considers a strategic arena, leaving it in the hands of the Iranians. . . . It is clear that Russian forces have been transferred from Syria to Ukraine, but the extent of the forces redeployed is not clear to us.

If Russia should become “unsatisfied” with the Israeli campaign-between-the-wars activity in Syria in particular, and with Israeli policy in general (also in the context of the war in Ukraine), its response poses a challenge for Israel. The Russian responses can be conveyed . . . in the passing on of: preliminary intelligence regarding Israeli attack intentions to the Syrians and/or Iranians, after-the-fact publicity regarding the details of an Israeli attack, the transfer of advanced conventional weapons to the Syrians (S-300 air-defense batteries for example), and “turning a blind eye” when conventional Russian advanced weapons are transferred from Syria to elements of the radical Shiite axis led by Iran.

Until now, the IDF has maintained contacts with Russian commanders in Syria to ensure that none of its airstrikes harm Russian troops or materiel. What would happen if the Kremlin were to cut off the channels of communication?

Israel will know how to conduct itself militarily in Syria, even without coordination with the Russians. This would require more intelligence efforts to rule out a Russian presence.

A scenario in which Russian air-force planes stationed in Syria will take action against Israeli air-force planes in our assessment is a scenario with a . . . very low probability. However, should such a scenario occur, the Russian pilots would have to deal with technology and pilots of a different standard than they have come up against to date. In such a case, this would not be the first time Russian pilots would fight directly against the IDF in general and against the Israeli Air Force. About 50 years ago (the late 1960s and early 1970s), Russian soldiers pilots acted directly, within the framework of the Egyptian army, against Israel.

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.