Click here to read a transcript.

The nationwide Iranian protests throughout January were historic, with millions of people risking their lives—and 36,000 protesters losing them, according to exclusive Iran International reporting—to protest the odious Iranian regime. The protests also set in motion a major U.S.-Iran showdown. After dispatching a carrier strike group to the region, President Donald Trump threatened Iran with “violence, if necessary” on January 28, adding that “time is running out” for the regime to cut a deal.

JINSA hosted a webinar breaking down the extraordinary heroism on display in the protests, the potential for more demonstrations, and escalating U.S.-Iran tensions. The webinar featured Mehdi Parpanchi, executive editor of Iran International, and JINSA’s Randi & Charles Wax Senior Fellow John Hannah, former National Security Advisor to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney.

JINSA Vice President for Policy Blaise Misztal moderated the discussion.

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Mehdi Parpanchi Mehdi Parpanchi is the executive editor of Iran International, a 24-hour broadcast network that sheds light on the Iranian regime’s brutality. He is the former Lead Presenter for BBC Persia and former Iran Service Director for Radio Farda. Click here to read full bio

John Hannah John Hannah is Randi & Charles Wax Senior Fellow at JINSA. John served in senior foreign policy positions for both Democratic and Republican administrations, including as former Vice President Dick Cheney’s National Security Advisor from 2005-2009 and as Vice President Cheney’s Deputy National Security Advisor for the Middle East from 2001-2005. Click here to read full bio

Blaise Misztal Blaise Misztal is the Vice President for Policy at JINSA. His research interests include Iran and its nuclear program, U.S.-Turkey relations, countering extremism, and strategic competition. Most recently, Blaise was a Fellow at the Hudson Institute. Click here to read full bio

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One of the most striking features of post-Assad Syria is the speed with which the interim government has been able to claim international legitimacy. Regional and Western governments that once saw no future for Damascus are now tentatively re-engaging, hopeful that the post-Assad moment can be shaped into something stable and constructive. Trump has focused on promoting normalization and economic integration as the foundations of long-term stability.

A critical step to achieving that vision and meeting Trump’s objectives is reaching an agreement between Syria’s interim government and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which defended large portions of northern and eastern Syria throughout the conflict and built one of the most effective governance structures of the post-2011 era: the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). On March 10, 2025 SDF General Mazloum Abdi and Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, agreed on a framework for talks which requires a detailed integration roadmap to be finalized by the end of December.

Among the main points the negotiations have to resolve centers on the future of the SDF. Roughly 100,000 fighters – men and women who have undergone years of US-backed training as part of the coalition’s campaign against the Islamic State – must somehow be integrated into a national army that itself is far from a coherent force. Equally contentious is the debate over Syria’s future political system. Negotiators from the AANES maintain that only a decentralized form of governance can reflect the country’s complex mosaic of ethnic and religious communities. By contrast, Damascus is insisting that this is a discussion that needs to be had further down the road, if at all.

For Syria’s interim president, incorporating the northeast through negotiation is a matter of survival. The institutions Al-Sharaa oversees remain brittle, and the forces under his command are a motley crew–an amalgam of militias whose record toward minority communities is deeply troubling. The state lacks the manpower, financial capacity, and political standing to capture and administer Kurdish-held areas through coercion. While a renewed civil war could theoretically dismantle the Autonomous Administration as a territorial entity, it would come at an enormous cost: investors would retreat; the government’s recently gained international credibility would evaporate; and external actors would find an opportunity to entrench themselves on Syrian soil. The result would be a level of fragmentation far worse than what any negotiated decentralized arrangement would produce.

That is why Ambassador Tom Barrack has positioned the United States as a facilitator between Damascus and the Autonomous Administration and urged the sides to engage in earnest. He is doing his best to convey no bias on the part of the Administration but mixed messages on decentralization in Syria have been confusing. Barrack is right not to seek to dictate the outcome of these negotiations but he should also not limit the scope and the vision of the peoples of Syria. Anything from a monarchy to federalism should be on the table–so long as the peoples of Syria reach their decision through peaceful and political dialogue.

Alas, the pace of the US-facilitated talks aimed at integrating the Kurdish-led administration in northeast Syria with the country’s transitional government has slowed. The last high-level meeting took place in Damascus on Oct. 7, bringing together Mazloum Abdi, Ahmed al-Sharaa, US Syria envoy Tom Barrack, and CENTCOM commander Brad Cooper. The prospects for meeting the end-of-year deadline set for the talks are dim.

The problem is not with the substance of the negotiations. Syria’s interim government is not outright rejecting the idea of integrating the SDF or establishing a decentralized political structure that reflects the realities of the new Syria – an idea that President Trump’s Syria Envoy Tom Barrack has also endorsed. On the contrary, there is strong appetite for a deal that ends territorial fragmentation and brings key armed and administrative actors under a unified national framework.

Instead, the obstacle comes from outside of Syria. The SDF has long warned that Turkey is imposing a veto on any deal that would integrate the northeast into a new Syrian political framework. Indeed, Turkish infiltration of Damascus has shaped decision-making across multiple ministries and agencies. Anyone attempting to steer Syria toward a more inclusive political future finds themselves navigating a labyrinth of Turkish influence.

Ankara’s policies since 2011 have played a decisive and often destructive role in shaping the Syrian conflict. What began as political support for opposition activists to topple Assad quickly morphed into the systematic backing of jihadist armed factions fighting to prevent the emergence of any sort of Kurdish governed area in Syria. These groups (many linked to al-Qaeda or sharing its ideological foundations) benefited from Turkey’s permissive border policy, logistical support networks, and, at times, direct military patronage. The current Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa and virtually all government officials in Damascus come from one such group–Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, formerly the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria.

With Assad’s downfall, one might have expected Ankara to support a new political arrangement that empowers the very Syrians who suffered under the old regime and fled the violence Turkey helped fuel. Instead, it is actively blocking the Syrian transitional government from reaching a deal with persecuted communities – particularly Kurds, Yazidis, Christians, and Arabs who live under the Autonomous Administration. Turkey appears unwilling to accept any new order in Damascus that does not adhere to its own narrow parameters, especially one that might embolden the Kurds of Turkey.

In Turkey, the Turkish government has taken a courageous step by engaging with the PKK and its leader Abdullah Öcalan as part of the peace process to resolve their own decades-old conflict, but it is yet to articulate how it intends to address its root cause: the Turkish republic’s constitutional eradication of Kurdish identity. Thus, three million Kurds enjoying broad constitutionally guaranteed rights in Syria just south of the Turkish border – at a time when 20 million Kurds in Turkey still cannot legally use the letter X (a letter absent from Turkish but present in the Kurdish alphabet) – is seen as a dangerous precedent before the anticipated drafting of a new constitution in Turkey.

As part of the process, the PKK announced a ceasefire in March, then dissolved in May, and later declared that it had initiated the withdrawal of its forces from within Turkey’s borders. Not satisfied with these historically significant steps, the Turkish government has moved the goalposts and is now slow-walking its own process with the PKK while preventing Damascus from moving forward with its negotiations with the SDF – essentially trying to turn the entire situation into a cross-border four-way trade. Ankara wants Öcalan to use his influence over the SDF to scale down their autonomy demands and disarm and disband along with the PKK. Ocalan is not relenting to this pressure, leading Ankara to essentially deadlock both processes in Turkey and Syria.

As of now, the front lines between the SDF and forces loyal to Syria’s interim government are still tense and have erupted multiple times over the last few months. The longer this deal takes, the more chances there are that the next flare up could result in Syria descending into civil war again. Recent Turkish military movements along the Turkey-Syria border and public threats made by government mouthpieces cannot be disregarded as mere bargaining tactics.

In my view, Turkey’s threats and obstructionism runs counter to the vision articulated by Trump for a more stable and secure Middle East. The United States should leave no doubt that renewed fighting in Syria is off the table. The bloody massacres in Suwayda and Latakia have already shown us how quickly armed groups loyal to the interim government in Damascus can revert to old habits. As Trump champions peace over new wars, the Turkish government should recognize that any move toward reopening the conflict would invite a strong White House response.

For the first time in years, Syria has a chance to rebuild. Turkey must not hold that hope hostage.

Giran Ozcan is Fellow for Kurdish Affairs at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA). He previously served as the Founding Director of the Kurdish Peace Institute.

Originally published in the Jerusalem Strategic Tribune.

The post Will Turkey Allow Syria to Rebuild? appeared first on JINSA.

Click here to read a transcript.

On January 18, after days of clashes, Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced that they had reached a ceasefire deal. Just a day later, the agreement appeared to fall through, possibly auguring a return to fighting. The reported agreement’s terms were far less favorable to the SDF than what it had sought to achieve in negotiations. It would have brought SDF forces and SDF-controlled territory under Damascus’s control, seemingly ending the autonomy Syria’s Kurds had enjoyed for more than a decade. While U.S. Special Envoy to Syria Tom Barrack claimed the new developments would facilitate “our long-time Kurdish partners’ full onboarding into a united, inclusive Syria,” the trend appears to be moving in the opposite direction.

To evaluate the latest developments in Syria’s ongoing unrest, JINSA hosted a discussion with three leading experts on the issue: JINSA Distinguished Scholar and former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Eric Edelman, JINSA’s Randi & Charles Wax Senior Fellow John Hannah, and JINSA Fellow for Kurdish Affairs Giran Ozcan.

JINSA Vice President for Policy Blaise Misztal moderated the discussion.

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Amb. Eric Edelman Amb. Eric Edelman is a JINSA Distinguished Scholar and the Co-Chair of JINSA’s Iran Policy Project and JINSA’s Eastern Mediterranean Policy Project. Amb. Edelman is the former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and the former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, and held a range of other senior positions in government. Click here to read full bio

John Hannah John Hannah is JINSA’s Randi & Charles Wax Senior Fellow. He served as former Vice President Dick Cheney’s National Security Advisor from 2005-2009 and as Vice President Cheney’s Deputy National Security Advisor for the Middle East from 2001-2005. Click here to read full bio

Giran Ozcan Giran Ozcan is Fellow for Kurdish Affairs at JINSA. Prior to JINSA, Giran served as Executive Director of the Kurdish Peace Institute. He previously worked with the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in its overseas representative offices and served as the HDP Representative to the United States of America. Click here to read full bio

Blaise Misztal Blaise Misztal is the Vice President for Policy at JINSA. His research interests include Iran and its nuclear program, U.S.-Turkey relations, countering extremism, and strategic competition. Most recently, Blaise was a Fellow at the Hudson Institute. Click here to read full bio

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The horrific death of three Americans – the first combat deaths in President Trump’s second term – was not an isolated act of terrorism carried out by an external enemy slipping across porous borders or hiding in the desert. It was an attack from within the very institutions that the international community has begun to treat as legitimate partners.

The Syrian interior ministry confirmed that the attacker was a member of the security services under investigation for extremism. Framing the incident solely as an “ISIS attack” obscures the institutional nature of the threat and misleads policymakers and the American public.

Originally published in Washington Times.

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Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa shot hoops with U.S. military commanders during his recent Washington visit, but where he really scored big was with Congress. It now looks certain that in the next few days, the House will follow the Senate and pass a version of the National Defense Authorization Act that repeals the Caesar Act, a 2019 law barring international business with Syria, and the most powerful remaining sanctions on the country. Proponents seek to stoke Syria’s economy and stabilize its politics.

We hope the effort succeeds, but the rush to repeal Caesar is ignoring a more dangerous threat to stability: Mr. al-Sharaa’s centralizing governance approach, which has dangerously alienated Syria’s most significant minorities.

A permanent repeal of Caesar has been Mr. al-Sharaa’s highest priority since he conquered Damascus last December. It’s why he has proved so responsive to U.S. demands to push Iran out of Syria, negotiate security arrangements with Israel and fight Islamic State group terrorism.

The question is whether it makes sense to surrender Washington’s most powerful lever to shape Mr. al-Sharaa’s behavior when his approach to Syria’s ethnic and religious communities (at least a quarter of the population) remains deeply problematic. Mr. al-Sharaa has concentrated near-dictatorial powers in his hands, imposed an interim constitution that ignored meaningful minority protections, and incorporated foreign jihadis into his military.

Most alarming, Mr. al-Sharaa’s forces were implicated earlier this year in two massacres against Syria’s Alawite and Druze religious sects, leaving more than 2,000 dead. Today, his regime remains in a standoff with the Kurds of northeastern Syria, America’s essential allies in fighting the Islamic State group for the past decade. Mr. al-Sharaa has demanded that the Kurds largely dismantle the political and security structures established during Syria’s civil war to protect their historically beleaguered community.

The risks of a full-scale war that would mark the death knell of a unified Syria are considerable.

With the stakes so high, we have argued that the United States should keep Caesar in place and wield the possibility of repeal to incentivize Mr. al-Sharaa to compromise his hard-line vision and accommodate the legitimate needs of Syria’s minorities.

We agree with the advocates of repeal that economic growth is urgent to Syria’s recovery. That’s why we supported the major sanctions relief that President Trump has already granted Syria through an executive order and regular six-month waivers of Caesar’s penalties.

Certainly, the risk that Caesar sanctions might return dampens enthusiasm for long-term investments, but we disagree that it poses an insurmountable obstacle to meaningful improvement in the lives of average Syrians — especially when juxtaposed against the misery and deprivation of 14 years of civil war.

Even without repeal, electricity production — a key indicator of quality of life — has dramatically increased since liberation. Local crowdfunding campaigns across Syria made history by raising an estimated $500 million for reconstruction. Gulf states have pledged billions more, with hundreds of millions already spent to pay government salaries, import natural gas and modernize ports. The World Bank has provided Syria with an initial $146 million grant for infrastructure projects. More than 1 million Syrian refugees have returned over the past year, injecting their savings into the economy.

The Trump administration could do even more to greenlight large-scale international investment. It could aggressively use its substantial authorities — both in terms of the Treasury Department’s licensing power and government-to-government agreements — to insulate from future sanctions reconstruction efforts undertaken by trusted partner nations and companies. If Mr. Trump wants Saudi Arabia and U.S. energy companies to invest billions of dollars into Syria’s economy, those transactions can be de-risked without Caesar repeal.

That said, lifting Caesar now seems inevitable. A handful of House Republicans who sought to hold the line pending further Syrian performance on key concerns, including minority protections, have all relented under sustained pressure from the administration. In the NDAA vote this week, the House is nearly certain to join the Senate and repeal Caesar.

It’s a risky bet that preemptively ceding bargaining power will better advance U.S. interests than purposefully wielding it, especially when dealing with onetime jihadis whose reign has already been marred by mass slaughter. Economic stagnation is no doubt dangerous to Syria’s future, but the surest route to Syria’s demise remains Mr. al-Sharaa’s failure to convince major parts of his own population that his regime doesn’t pose a mortal threat to their existence.

John Hannah, a national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, is the Randi & Charles Wax Senior Fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, where Rena Gabber is a research associate. They are co-authors of “Course Correction: Getting America’s Syria Strategy Right.”

Originally published in the Washington Times.

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The ISIS challenge is concentrated in northeastern Syria, where detention facilities hold about 9,000 ISIS fighters and family members. Nearly 85 percent of the fighters are held in two prisons near Hasakah and Shaddadi. These facilities are vulnerable targets, as shown by the 2022 Hasakah prison break that took two weeks to contain, even with U.S. air and intelligence support. The SDF, aided by U.S. funding and training, has carried the primary burden of physically securing these sites for more than a decade.

But the threat extends beyond the northeast’s detention sites. In March, an ISIS suicide bomber attacked a church in Damascus, killing 25 and injuring 63. Syrian authorities recently disrupted two ISIS plots targeting President Sharaa and arrested more than 70 ISIS suspects in nationwide raids. And the January, ISIS-inspired attack in New Orleans—along with multiple arrests of ISIS-inspired Americans in recent months—illustrates the group’s continued ability to radicalize individuals far beyond Syria. These developments underscore why maintaining pressure on ISIS and supporting local partners remains essential.

The United States should continue to build on the “by, with, and through” partnership that has made the SDF the most effective counter-ISIS force in Syria. Sustaining this relationship—through training, intelligence sharing, and support to detention operations—is the best way to prevent ISIS from reconstituting. It also signals to regional partners that the United States remains committed to a stable transition in Syria rather than stepping back prematurely.

At the same time, Washington must push for greater international burden-sharing in managing detained ISIS fighters. Only 36 countries have repatriated any nationals from northeast Syria, while 21 have yet to begin. Prolonged detention increases the risk of radicalization and creates a long-term humanitarian and security challenge for the region. Iraq’s repatriation of roughly 25,000 citizens—about 80 percent of Iraqis detained in Syria—demonstrates what committed action can achieve. The United States should apply the same diplomatic urgency it uses in negotiating criminal deportation agreements to secure fiscal contributions and accelerate repatriation efforts, easing pressure on the SDF and reducing the long-term threat posed by these populations.

Broader counterterrorism objectives also depend on preventing Iranian rearmament of Hezbollah, which would destabilize the region. Israeli intelligence reports indicate that the group has begun restoring supply lines through Syrian territory. Although Iran and Hezbollah have suffered setbacks—and Russia’s diminished role has further constrained their operating space—Tehran continues to seek opportunities to rebuild its networks.

This makes it vital for the United States to sustain its partnership with the SDF, which, according to the Lead Inspector General for Operation Iraqi Freedom, currently controls most Iraqi-border crossings in eastern Syria—positioning it as the first line of defense against the flow of Iranian weapons into Lebanon. Beyond the SDF partnership, Washington should work with the Syrian government and Israel to disrupt these flows. Washington’s provision of intelligence, deconfliction, and diplomatic coordination to the Syrians and Israelis can complicate and disrupt Iran’s efforts. Strengthening these channels of cooperation with the new Syrian government is especially important now as Syria seeks to consolidate control and demonstrate its independence from Tehran.

Syria’s shift away from Iran and Russia and toward greater cooperation with Western partners presents a strategic opportunity. The government has a vested interest in limiting extremist groups, restoring security, and preventing Syria from becoming a conduit for Iranian influence. Its decision to join the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS demonstrates a willingness to work with international partners, and the Interior Ministry has already carried out joint counter-ISIS missions with U.S. troops. This alignment of interests remains nascent, but it offers a real chance for the United States to advance both counterterrorism priorities and regional stability.

ISIS prison breaks and Iranian rearmament are preventable, but averting them requires sustaining the SDF partnership, advancing international burden sharing, and countering Iranian weapons flows. Leaving before Syria can stand on its own will not end America’s involvement in the country—it will simply set the stage for a more costly return.

Lt Gen Thomas Bergeson, USAF (ret.) served as deputy commander of U.S. Central Command. He participated in the Jewish Institute for National Security of America’s (JINSA) 2023 Generals and Admirals program.

Jonah Brody is a policy analyst at JINSA.

Originally published in Defense One.

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Originally published in Fox News Digital.

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