For the better part of half a century, Syria has been an open wound in the heart of the Middle East, provoking instability, fueling conflict, and brutally suppressing its own people. Throughout Syria’s nearly fourteen-year civil crisis, a long list of destabilizing knock-on effects spilled over into neighboring countries and the world at large. The long-standing moniker of “what happens in Syria never stays in Syria” perfectly encapsulated what for most of the past decade looked to be a truly intractable crisis.

All of that changed on December 8, 2024, when Bashar al-Assad fled his palace in Damascus en route to a hurried and unexpected asylum in Russia. After a sudden and lightning-fast offensive, a coalition of armed opposition groups toppled Assad’s regime like a house of cards—in the space of ten days. All of a sudden, the international community has been presented with a historic and strategic opportunity to reshape the heart of the Middle East into a more stable, more integrated, and more constructive part of the region.

Syria’s ongoing transition is profoundly fragile. It faces enormous challenges, but it also presents the international community with a dilemma. Since day one, the transition has been led and dominated at the top by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former affiliate of al-Qaeda that was originally born out of the Islamic State group’s predecessor movement, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). That historical baggage provides reason for pause when it comes to engaging Syria’s interim authorities.