The Realist Case for Working with al-Sharaa’s Syria

s we approach one year since the overthrow of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, the possibility of a US-aligned Syria seems ever more likely. Former militant and now-President of Syria, Ahmad al-Sharaa, has positioned himself as a non-ideological pragmatist seeking to rebuild Syria by partnering with the West and the Gulf Arab monarchies, a sharp contrast with Assad’s close ties to Russia and Iran. Even so, many have been critical over the Trump administration’s rehabilitation of al-Sharaa given his past membership in al-Qaeda. While these concerns are completely understandable, they also miss al-Sharaa’s recent record, his incentives, and the substantial opening for American foreign policy in the Middle East. A realist foreign policy would acknowledge that, while al-Sharaa’s past crimes are detestable, the possibility of adding Syria to a Western-aligned coalition of Middle Eastern states is too strategically significant to discount.

Beginning with the elephant in the room, the current President of Syria, Ahmad al-Sharaa, was a wanted terrorist who fought for al-Qaeda in Iraq and later served as the al-Nusra Front’s Emir in Syria. In 2017, he parted ways with al-Nusra and helped to create Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a Sunni Islamist group that governed the Idlib region of Syria from 2017 to 2025. Al-Sharaa’s choices in ruling Idlib during that time betray his ideological departure from al-Qaeda and al-Nusra. Instead of prioritizing the implementation of a strict Salafi-Jihadist interpretation of Islam, his rule focused on institution-building, economic development, and expanding educational opportunities. That his Idlib-based government was engaged in intense fighting against al-Qaeda and ISIS attests to the fact that, at the very least, those groups long ago ceased to perceive him as an ideologically committed Salafi-Jihadi militant.

To the surprise of many Western analysts, instead of ruling as an authoritarian, al-Sharaa began his rule as a moderate. He explicitly instructed his forces to respect minority places of worship, especially churches. He met with delegations of different religious groups, including Christians, Druze, and Shia. Beginning in January of this year, his government began cracking down on Islamic State, thwarting an attack on the Shia Sayyida Zainab Shrine in Damascus and retaliating against the terror group after the Mar Elias Church attack in June. Following al-Sharaa’s November 10th meeting with President Trump in Washington, DC, it was announced that Syria would officially join the United States’ anti-ISIS coalition.