Abu Mohammed al-Jolani has replaced his jihadist camo attire for Western-style outfits as he attempts to transform himself into a moderate revolutionary leader.
Abu Mohammed al-Jolani has replaced his jihadist camo attire for Western-style outfits as he attempts to transform himself into a moderate revolutionary leader
 

The fall of Bashar Assad in Syria has prompted understandable elation at the departure of a tyrant responsible for the killing of some 600,000 of his citizens.

The revelations of his gruesome prison and torture chambers, and the evidence emerging of the hideous way that so many were treated, can only arouse horror, revulsion and pity.

The Assad regime was also a menace to Israel. The Syrian route was essential for transporting Iranian weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon, while Tehran set up weapons production centers on Syrian soil.

Assad’s flight, however, does not mean that Syria has now emerged from darkness into light. Assad was deposed by Islamists. All are engaged in a jihadi holy war against Jews and the “infidel” West.

The main such grouping, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), developed from Al-Qaeda and is designated by the United States as a foreign terrorist organization. It is led by Ahmed al-Shara, who also goes by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Julani.

He has been posing as a moderate—trimming his beard, wearing Westernized fatigues and declaring tolerance for all of Syria’s different faiths. He has also said: “Syria will not wage a new war with Israel.”

This should fool no one. Jihadi warriors who believe that they must purge the world of unbelievers don’t suddenly abandon this supposedly sacred task.

Al-Shara is a fanatical Islamist. He served five years in various U.S. detention facilities in Iraq, and Washington still has a $10 million bounty on his head.

He previously governed the northern province of Idlib as a Sharia enclave where he repressed dissidents, banned music in public places and instituted a “morality police.”

His close confidant, the group’s mufti Abdel Rahim Atoun, expressed solidarity with the Palestinian Arabs, saying “the regional enemy of the Palestinians is Zionism.” Moreover, his group aims to liberate “al-Sham” which consists not just of Syria but also of Jordan, Lebanon and Israel. And Al-Shara is reportedly smart and plays a long game.

He is also backed by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s Islamist president. Erdoğan’s strategy is to take over the territory of the former Ottoman empire, which includes Syria, as a precursor to taking over the entire Muslim world, and then to take over the rest of the world.

In other words, it’s a bad error to assume that my enemy’s enemy is my friend; sometimes, he might also be my enemy. A number of people, however, have been falling for Al-Shara’s moderate claims, enthusing over his “technocratic” approach.

It’s particularly unnerving to find that among the credulous is Sir John Sawers, the former head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service, MI6.

He said on TV that Al-Shara “has made great efforts over the last 10 years to distance himself from those terrorist groups. And certainly, the actions we’ve seen of [Hayat] Tahrir al-Sham over the last two weeks have been those of a liberation movement, not a terrorist organization.” Asked if the British government should engage with the new regime, he said: “Absolutely. You know, there’s a new reality in Syria now.”

This seems remarkably naive. In 1979, the Iranian people hailed Ayatollah Khomeini for liberating them from the repression of the Shah, only to discover that the Islamic revolutionary regime inflicted infinitely worse repression and tyranny upon them. And distancing himself from terrorist groups was obviously a tactical move by Al-Shara designed to quell international suspicions.

In America, the instinctive response of the Biden administration has been once again to appease the bad guys. The State Department refused to rule out the possibility that the United States would remove HTS from its list of designated terrorist organizations. 

Israel’s achievement, meanwhile, is becoming increasingly astonishing. Even though Hamas and Hezbollah aren’t defeated, and still have the capacity to attack Israel and kill civilians, the Israel Defense Forces have destroyed them as strategic threats. This, in turn, allowed for the fall of Assad.

Not prepared to take the risk that Syria will now become an ISIS or Al-Qaeda-style caliphate, Israel has been using detailed intelligence to destroy Syria’s air force, navy, missile arsenals, air defenses and suspected chemical-weapons stores.

This is a profound service to humanity for which, of course, the world isn’t thanking it. Instead, it’s grotesquely accusing Israel of “making a land grab.” The United Nations, which has been silent over Syria’s appalling human-rights abuses, has actually condemned Israel for “violating Syria’s territorial integrity.”

And the Biden administration also scolded Israel with the U.S. State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, telling Al Arabiya: “It is the responsibility of those who are taking the reins of power inside Syria first and foremost to secure and destroy any chemical weapons that they find in areas that they control.”

It is beyond astounding that the United States can seriously suggest that it would have been better to leave such chemical weapons to the discretion of Al-Qaeda-style Islamists whose aim is to destroy the non-Islamic world.

Credulous or bigoted eagerness to believe the worst about Israel, based on demonstrable falsehoods and distortions, usually goes hand in hand with an equally credulous eagerness to believe the best about the Islamic world, based on demonstrable falsehoods and distortions.

The eagerness to assume that Islamists have reformed themselves accompanies the West’s suicidal refusal to see what is so plainly the case—that whether it involves Shia or Sunni Muslims, Hezbollah or the Houthis, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham or the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamists are waging world war against unbelievers wherever they are.

The Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, set in train a series of events that have shaken the geopolitical kaleidoscope. Tiny Israel is now well on the way to smashing the Shia axis and—in the words of a member of the Iranian regime—becoming the foremost power in the region.

This also represents a shattering defeat for the strategy of former President Barack Obama, which has been continued by the Biden administration. This strategy was—remarkably—to empower the Islamic Republic of Iran.

To this end, the Obama and Biden administrations spared no effort to appease and protect the Tehran regime. In the war that followed the Oct. 7 pogrom, Washington refused to respond appropriately to repeated Iranian attacks while putting Israel under enormous pressure also not to do so.

And, after Donald Trump won the presidential election last month, the United States renewed a controversial sanctions waiver that will allow Iran access to some $10 billion in payments from Iraq.

The stupendous developments in the Middle East are a cause for unprecedented optimism. With the likely destruction of the Shia axis, the way will be set for Saudi Arabia finally to make its peace with Israel and thus end, once and for all, the Arab war against the Jewish state. The cause of the Palestinian Arabs, who never were the issue until the West chose to make them so, would simply evaporate.

To envisage this is not to fall into the trap of wishful thinking. The dangers for Israel and the free world remain acute and unresolved. Iran is poised to get the nuclear bomb, and there are fears that with its back to the wall, it will now do just that.

But Iran now has no military defenses or proxy shields. This is therefore the moment to destroy totally its nuclear program and maybe finish off this evil regime altogether.

To do this, however, Israel needs America to be involved. Will Trump be willing to do this? Or will he believe that he alone can make a deal that will tame the Iranian regime?

Any such deal would be illusory. Iran has lied about its activities for more than four decades and won’t stop now.

The old order has been shattered. Bad actors have been weakened; others are now empowered. It will take wise heads indeed to turn this extraordinarily complex set of developments into a real leap for peace in the world. It can be done. Are there the leaders to do it?