On October 13, 2023, Mosaic published an article by Aaron MacLean, a veteran of America’s war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, and one of America’s smartest military analysts, on strategic options facing the Jewish state in one of its darkest moments. He recently returned from a visit to Israel, where he embedded with the IDF in Gaza and observed fighting on the northern front. In the podcast below, you can hear his reflections on what he saw—ranging from tactical analysis to grand strategy—and hear parts of his on-location conversations with Israeli commanders. He concludes by considering what America can learn from the war being fought by one of its closest allies. (Audio, 78 minutes.)

And in this brief video, you can see MacLean speaking with the Israeli security analyst Sarit Zehavi when a rocket barrage interrupts their conversation:

I recently embedded with the IDF and saw firsthand Israel’s war with Hezbollah and Hamas. What lessons can Americans learn from Israel’s year of fighting for its survival? Out today on @schoolofwarpod.https://t.co/8s01TybKaG pic.twitter.com/QRR7h6zuIt

— Aaron MacLean (@AaronBMacLean) December 10, 2024

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.