Just before the collapse of Syria took over the Middle East news cycle, the big question was the prudence, viability, and results of the cease-fire agreement that ended the war between Israel and Hizballah. Eran Lerman outlines Jerusalem’s strategic challenge going forward:

The IDF has already begun to implement a strict policy of enforcing the letter and spirit of the cease-fire terms, backed by the American position as conveyed in a crucial side letter. Swift reaction and retaliation are being used to restore deterrence, and reverse the patterns of past years, during which Israel often shrugged off Hizballah provocations, including the presence of Hizballah tents on sovereign Israel territory.

This is largely the belated lesson of October 7. . . . Only the IDF can be fully relied upon to deliver such necessary swift and decisive reactions.

Yet, Lerman emphasizes, the IDF’s campaign against Hizballah must be understood as “the beginning, not the end” of a war to break the Iranian attempt to encircle Israel with hostile forces. Responding to the fall of Bashar al-Assad, he adds:

Hizballah has not collapsed altogether, but it does face a multidimensional threat to its long-term survival as its routes of supply have been disconnected. Syrian rebels may resume direct pressure on Lebanon (as Islamic State did a decade ago—when Hizballah was the main force preventing the group’s entry into the country). Anti-Assad forces in Lebanon, hostile and vengeful toward Hizballah, may well gain the upper hand in Lebanon itself. These developments could significantly diminish Hizballah’s ability to resume its attacks on Israel or even re-establish its presence in south Lebanon, provided Israel maintains a policy of zero tolerance toward any violation of the November 2024 understandings.

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.