First published in Russian in 1903, and purporting to be a record of a secret meeting of a Jewish cabal gathered to plot world domination, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion has been translated into many languages and inspired Jew haters of every stripe. Its Middle Eastern admirers have included Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal, and it was just recently photographed on display in the lobby of the Central Council of Palestinians in Germany. Yigal Carmon surveys the book’s continued influence:

Like it did for the Nazis, the Protocols justifies the goal of annihilating the Jews. For the Arabs, it would also justify annihilating the state of Israel. It resolves two cognitive dissonances afflicting Arab and Muslim societies. First, it explains why the Arabs have failed in their struggle against Israel: were it not for the global Jewish-Zionist conspiracy, Israel would have been wiped out long ago. Second, it explains why Muslim societies are unable to compete with the West—the Jewish conspiracy employs various means to leave them in the dust.

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, this conspiratorial worldview is at the foundation of the Islamic Revolution’s ideology, according to which the Jew has been transformed from an impure and miserable entity to an all-powerful satanic figure that opposes the Islamic world and is at the root of all of the Islamic world’s predicaments. According to the Iranian regime’s ideology, it is necessary to fight the Jews the same way that one fights cancer, and to wipe them and their satanic influence off the face of the earth.

The Protocols have been referred to in schoolbooks, such as the History of the Modern and Contemporary World, Grade 10, which was issued by the Palestinian Authority. The Protocols are also commonly referred to by Islamic clerics and scholars, they appear in media reports, and they have been dramatized in recent years in family-oriented Ramadan TV shows such as al-Shatat and Knight Without a Horse.

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.