In recent months, Jonathan Spyer reports, Israeli operations on Iranian soil have moved beyond targeted attacks on nuclear personnel and facilities. This shift is not merely tactical in nature, he argues. Rather it reflects Prime Minister Naftali Bennet’s perception, shared by many in the security establishment, that Tehran’s nuclear program cannot be viewed in isolation from its broader plan for regional domination.

While serving as defense minister in February 2020, Mr. Bennett told Israeli reporters: “When the octopus tentacles hit you, you must fight back not just against the tentacles, but also make sure to suffocate the head. . . . For years on end, we have fought against the Iranian tentacles in Lebanon, Syria, and the Gaza Strip, but we have not focused enough on weakening Iran itself. Now we are changing the paradigm.”

Israel sees Iran as engaged in a comprehensive, strategic drive intended to result in Tehran’s emergence as the dominant or hegemonic power in the Middle East. The destruction of Israel is a key element in this strategy. This project focuses on political and proxy military activity, investment in Iran’s ballistic-missile program, and the development of a nuclear capacity intended as a kind of insurance policy for the other two elements.

The Jewish state, in turn, is in the process of formulating and implementing a comprehensive response. A counter-envelopment of Iran through deepening ties with states surrounding it—including Azerbaijan to the north and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia to the southwest—forms part of this approach. Israel’s 2021 transfer to the U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility offers potential for making these growing links operational in key areas, such as missile defense.

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.