Ahmad al-Sharaa has been fine-tuning his plan for Syria's transition period and working on his stature as a head of state, keen to present himself as a moderating force in the Middle East. It's therefore no coincidence that he chose the television channel Al Arabiya, which is linked to the Saudi crown, to disclose his vision for Syria's future in his first televised interview with an Arab media outlet, on Sunday, December 29

In the interview, al-Sharaa laid out a timetable for a democratic transition. He once again called for a revision of UN Resolution 2254, adopted in 2015, which was intended to serve as a basis for talks on a democratic transition in Syria, to be held between the Assad regime and the opposition. He said that the context that led to the resolution had changed, and that the transition he proposed respected its "essence."

Elections in Syria could, he said, only be held in four years' time, citing the need to perform a complete census of the population, which includes 13 million people who have been displaced, both within and outside of the country, by 13 years of civil war. He said he wanted to take time to organize national dialogue and write a new constitution, after five decades of the al-Assad clan's dictatorship. This process to set up a framework that would guarantee long-term stability could take "two to three years," he said.

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