Last week, the attention of much of the Arab world was on the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime head of Hizballah who was killed by an Israeli airstrike just after witnessing the decimation of his military. Present at his funeral were three Americans. The best known is Jackson Hinkle, a pro-Russian online influencer who describes himself as a “MAGA Communist” and who since October 7 has devoted most of his attention to producing the vilest anti-Israel and anti-Semitic lies, presented in rightwing packaging. Kathleen Hayes notes that the three seem confident that the chants of “Death to America” do not apply to them, and proudly advertised their presence on social media:

“American Communist Party [ACP] executives Haz-Al-Din, Chris Helali, and Jackson Hinkle attended the funeral of the martyred Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah as a show of solidarity to the people of the region from America,” the ACP’s tweet reads. The accompanying photo shows the three men in the stadium, a mural of Nasrallah and his ill-fated successor, Hashem Safieddine, in the background. The American emissaries are solemn in dark suits, though Hinkle wears a bright-yellow scarf, the color of the Hizballah flag, over his coat. You can taste their pride, their sense of being stiff-necked rebels of U.S. imperialism in the heart of the Resistance. Although more likely, they’re wondering how many more followers they’ll get.

Helali, the ACP’s international secretary, . . .  soared to fame last year, when he ran in Orange County, Vermont as a write-in candidate for bailiff (essentially a stand-in for sheriff: a curious choice for an avowed Communist). Helali won with a stunning 446 votes, 2.5 percent of the electorate. His other vocation is as a high-school social-studies teacher. His personal experience with Hamas and Hizballah will certainly be beneficial for his job educating Vermont’s children.

The good news is that the three could face legal ramifications for associating with a terrorist organization that has killed hundreds of Americans.

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.