On Wednesday night, two separate Israeli airstrikes eliminated several Hizballah operatives in Lebanon. But the Iran-backed terrorist group, for its part, has thus far refrained from attacking Israel since the fighting renewed in Gaza. Yossi Mansharof examines Hizballah’s calculations, and what can be done to keep it out of the fight:

First, [Jerusalem should] convey a sharp threat to the Lebanese state that Israel will not tolerate Hizballah’s joining the war and therefore it will have to notify the residents of southern Lebanon, up to the Litani area, to evacuate in order not to endanger their lives. This will burden the Lebanese government, which will have to deal with the suffering of this population, even though it is mostly Shiite. In addition, as Israel aims to concentrate its efforts on the war in Gaza, it must make it clear to the Lebanese government that it will be unable to avoid damaging Lebanese infrastructure to impede Hizballah’s military actions.

Secondly, Israel must threaten Hizballah in advance that if it joins, all of its remaining command echelon will be destroyed, along with massive attacks on the rest of its assets and infrastructure. The IDF has demonstrated its intelligence capabilities and extensive target bank, enabling Israel to carry out this threat if war resumes in Lebanon.

Third, Israel must use the Trump administration as an effective lever of pressure against Hizballah and Lebanon.

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.