Chris Seiple, an American Christian scholar of international relations, has proposed that Middle Eastern Christians’ best chance of survival lies in creating an independent, or at least autonomous, territory in Iraq. Robert Nicholson explains:

[A]t the centerpiece of [Seiple’s] strategy is . . . the establishment of a safe haven for religious and ethnic minorities on the Nineveh Plain. Seiple lists several arguments for such a safe haven—it is achievable, it would signal resolve to allies and defiance toward Islamic State, it would erect a buffer between Kurds and Arabs—but he mostly sees it as an interim solution to save lives while the U.S. and its allies tackle larger problems in the region. . . .

The nation-state . . . has gotten a bad rap in Christian circles of late. Young believers eager to challenge old hegemonies and hoary-headed privilege, not to mention entrenched cultures of prejudice and violence, have identified the state as the bilious fount from which all bad things flow. Indeed, they find redemptive value in every institution but the state: civil society, intentional communities, local peacemaking councils, and so on. The state and its sword are more than bad; they’re mean. . .

[However, the] reality is that some situations—and the Middle East provides a disproportionate share of them—can only be solved by a sword-bearing state. . . . Middle Eastern Christians and other minorities need justice. But there is no justice without law and no law without the power to enforce it.

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.