President Donald Trump is a man in a hurry. Whether it’s tariffs, international trade negotiations, or immigration raids in the workplace, he can be sporadic and shifty to the point where you might think he was diagnosed with multiple-personality disorder. One day, he will post about imminent universal tariffs on a specific date, only to delay the timeline the next. 

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Foreign policy analysts aren’t immune to the wild swings experienced by traders at the New York Stock Exchange. Trump talks a lot about ripping up the so-called rules-based international order that has dominated global affairs for the last seven decades and is more than happy to stick his thumb in the eyes of the closest allies for any number of sins. Yet his actual policies often lag behind his razor-sharp rhetoric. Trump, for example, rightly blasts the Europeans for taking too much comfort under America’s security umbrella but maintains tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Europe. Relatedly, he rightly lambastes his predecessors for unending, stupid wars in the Middle East but then experiences a Donald Rumsfeld-like conversion, authorizing a monthslong U.S. bombing campaign against the Houthis and a short air campaign against Iran’s nuclear program.

However, there is one niche area of U.S. foreign policy in which Trump is matching action with words: Syria. This medium-sized, war-wracked country in the heart of the Arab world has often been synonymous with death, destruction, and despair. But for Trump, Syria under its new leadership is not only an opportunity for U.S. grand strategy in the Middle East but a perfect wedge to distinguish himself from what he views as a litany of failed men who held the job before him. 

During Trump’s first term, Syria was in the midst of a civil war divided along sectarian lines. The dictator in Damascus, Bashar Assad, was bombarding opposition-held areas of Syria on a daily basis, burning the nation to keep his family-run gang of corrupt and brutal misfits afloat and telling Syria’s minority communities that he, and he alone, was the only thing standing in the way between survival and a Sunni-perpetrated genocide. Syria still technically had borders but ceased to be a functional state. Turkey, Iran, Russia, the United States, Israel, Jordan, and the Gulf states were either pumping their favorite proxies with arms and cash or intervening with their own bombs and troops. Trump, meanwhile, flirted with withdrawing the roughly 900 U.S. troops stationed in eastern Syria countless times, only to back away after his more hawkish advisers convinced him they were needed to defend the oil fields and obstruct Iranian influence. 

The Syria of 2025 isn’t the Syria of Trump’s first term. Assad, who ruled the country for nearly a quarter-century, is now sulking in Moscow. The Syrian army is less an army than a collection of militias, some more well-disciplined than others. The feared Assad intelligence apparatus is gone, having melted away as fast as Assad’s troops in the dead of night. Ahmed al Sharaa, a former al Qaeda jihadist who was once detained by the U.S. military in Iraq, has ditched his fatigues for well-crafted suits and replaced his old sectarian diatribes with preaches about inclusion. Iran and Russia, which backed Assad for so long (until they saw him as a lost cause as the rebels were making a beeline toward the Syrian capital), are now on the outside looking in and desperately trying to preserve whatever influence they have with the new government in Damascus. 

Trump isn’t a stupid man: He knows circumstances in Syria have changed, which means the old policy of isolation needs to change with it. Trump is also more than capable of hearing what his partners in the Gulf, such as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and United Arab Emirates President Mohammed Bin Zayed, are telling him: With Assad out and al Sharaa in, Syria under new leadership is primed for great things, up to and including signing a peace deal with Israel and joining the Abraham Accords. Whether this is an accurate reflection of reality or a concerted campaign by Gulf Arab leaders to push Trump into adopting policies they want him to adopt is difficult to say. 

Either way, Trump is eagerly buying what the Gulfies are selling. The last three months have seen a sea change in Washington’s policy toward Syria, which was treated as an adversary for many decades — first as an ally of the Soviet Union during the Cold War and then as a terrorist-sponsoring Iranian lackey after 9/11 (Syria has been on the list of U.S. state sponsors of terrorism since 1979). During a May trip to the Middle East, Trump threw caution to the wind and agreed to a quick meet and greet with al Sharaa, allowing photographers to document the occasion. The president came away from the meeting impressed, so much so that he sang al Sharaa’s praises shortly thereafter. “Young, attractive guy,” Trump told reporters. “Tough guy. Strong past. Very strong past. Fighter.”   

Days later, Trump took Washington’s old Syria playbook and threw it into the shredder. Addressing a business conference in Saudi Arabia, Trump told attendees he was suspending some U.S. sanctions over the Syrian economy and waiving others in a bid to get the country moving again. The announcement was greeted with loud applause in the room and surprise back in Washington, where midlevel policy officials across the U.S. national security bureaucracy were suddenly given the task of unwinding a sanctions regime that Congress beefed up after Assad deployed chemical weapons against his own people. And although Trump packaged this dramatic decision in humanitarian terms, there were also strategic considerations at play, first and foremost, creating a new U.S.-Syria partnership that could accelerate the regional peacemaking efforts that past U.S. officials often talked about but failed to deliver. 

How committed is Trump to his new Syria policy? This isn’t a theoretical question. The man often gets bored, distracted, or disinterested, particularly when the payoff from a policy choice isn’t immediate. But at the time of writing, Trump is holding firm against opposition, even when that opposition comes from Israel or some Republicans in Congress who don’t believe U.S. sanctions should be rescinded entirely. Before Trump’s Middle East tour in May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his top advisers lobbied the White House to keep U.S. sanctions in place, lest al Sharaa turn out to be even worse than Assad was. Trump plowed ahead anyway. When asked whether he consulted Israel on his policy shift, Trump practically scoffed at the question. “I didn’t ask them about that. I thought it was the right thing to do,” he said. “I’ve been given a lot of credit for doing it. Look, we want Syria to succeed.” A month later, a White House executive order codified the sanctions relief.

This may sound like the end of the story, but the president isn’t in the clear. Whether or not his Syria policy succeeds will be determined in large part by two major factors.

First, how will the new Syrian government behave in the next weeks and months? Its record over the first seven months is spotty. When al Sharaa gives speeches, he frequently zeroes in on the theme of national inclusion, cross-sectarian harmony, and Syria’s intent to join the peace-loving nations of the world. The doomsday scenario many analysts feared after the dissolution of Assad’s police state — a total meltdown of the economy, an insurgency led by Assad’s former officers, a renewed civil war, or the emergence of a jihadist state on the eastern Mediterranean — hasn’t come to fruition. Al Sharaa’s administration has tried to let bygones be bygones, reaching out to various minority communities to assure them of their instrumental role in the new Syria. 

Yet while Syria is no longer technically in a state of civil war, it’s not in a state of peace either. A lot of vengeance was built up over nearly 14 years of fighting, and al Sharaa’s government is still too weak to vanquish it. In March, in retaliation for an attack by Assad-linked security officers, Sunni fighters tied to the new authorities in Damascus rampaged through Alawite towns and villages in Latakia and Tartous, massacring approximately 1,500 people, including women and children. In July, another 1,000 were killed in the southern province of Sweida, as Bedouin fighters clashed with Druze militias after a local dispute snowballed into an international news story. In Washington, there are significant doubts about al Sharaa’s capacity, let alone commitment, to respond to these mass-casualty events.

The second factor is Israel. While there was no love lost between Israel and Assad, the Israeli security establishment regarded him as a known commodity who largely kept the Golan Heights quiet. Al Sharaa, though, sparks feelings of nervousness and dread in Israel. Netanyahu sees Hayat Tahrir al Sham, al Sharaa’s former rebel outfit, as no better than the brutes of the Islamic State. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has called al Sharaa a terrorist in a fancy suit. Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Gideon Sa’ar labeled him as the head of a state where minorities such as Kurds, Druze, Alawites, and Christians are under constant threat. As if to prove the point, the Israel Defense Forces have not only launched hundreds of airstrikes in Syria since al Sharaa came onto the scene, including bombing the Syrian Defense Ministry and areas close to the presidential palace, but also intervened on behalf of the Druze during the fighting in July.

WHAT’S BEHIND TRUMP’S UKRAINE WEAPONS U-TURN?

In short, Israel’s policy objectives in Syria undermine what the Trump administration is trying to accomplish. Trump is betting on al Sharaa to unify Syria and prove its mettle as a U.S. counterterrorism partner. For Israel, the last thing it wants to see is a unified, strong Arab neighbor whose leadership is not only chirping in Trump’s ear but holds a monopoly of violence on Syrian territory. The White House has already registered its objections to Israel’s hawkish position, and further trouble is almost guaranteed if Washington, Jerusalem, and Damascus don’t reach some kind of workable modus operandi everybody could live with. 

Syria could be one of those areas where U.S. and Israeli security interests increasingly diverge. For Trump, that’s a small price to pay if it lands him some concrete policy wins.

Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities.