The die is cast in Syria. The rebels supported by Turkey peacefully conquer the country, Russia demobilizes men and equipment to reposition itself in Libya, Israel secures control of the Golan Heights, Iran silently suffers yet another blow to its imperial dream. The so-called “axis of resistance”, i.e. the informal coalition made up of militias and political groups allied or supported by Tehran And Flyit no longer exists.
The march on Damascus by Syria’s de facto leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa (which we knew by the nom de guerre Al Joulani), has in fact put the tombstone on the Shiite corridor project that the ayatollahs and the pasdaran had imagined to extend their power over a new Middle East, and which should have extended from Persia to Lebanon. Now everything has changed and reality tells us, if anything, of a near future with Sunni traction (the majority vocation of world Islam) with summit agreements between Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and with a geographical map which, after the latest positions in the risk Middle Eastern, is almost already defined.
The head of Syria – who is already moving, and well, in the world of the media and diplomatic offices – declared that “the country is exhausted by the war and does not represent a threat to its neighbors or to the West”. And we have to believe him, seeing and considering that weapons and means of fighting were preventively destroyed by Jerusalem to ensure that a jihadist threat never arises again in the region.
Al Joulani speaking in an interview with the BBC in Damascus (he gave up his revolutionary clothes to wear reassuring civilian clothes), he asked for the lifting of sanctions on Syria. A reasonable request today, which constitutes the first inevitable step to start the reconstruction of the new Syria: «Now, after everything that has happened, the sanctions must be lifted because they were aimed at the old regime. The victim and the oppressor should not be treated the same,” he said. He, who led with extraordinary results the lightning offensive thanks to which the bloody regime of Bashar al-Assad in less than two weeks, he is the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the dominant group in the rebel alliance, previously known as Jabhat Al Nusra. And it is true that HTS was born as an offshoot of Al Qaedawith the addition of men from the defunct Islamic Caliphate (ISIS). But the Sharaitic and obscurantist Caliphate that imagined the Caliph Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi and which terrorized the world between 2014 and 2018 has been consigned to history, and a new generation “cleansed” of the most reactionary dogmas of political Islam is ready to hand Syria over to the future and the contemporary.
There are many signs in this sense: such as the respect for the Christian churches by the conquerors, so also the opening of the holy places for the Shiites, indicating that there will be no persecution of the Syrian Shiite minority. Furthermore, during the march on Damascus the men of Al Joulani they did not decapitate heads, burn villages or target civilians. This is because they consider themselves victims of the regime’s crimes Assadand they have seen too many horrors.
The new government denies wanting to transform Syria into a version of Afghanistan: «Two very different countries, with different traditions. Afghanistan was a tribal society. In Syria there is a different mentality.” And the first sign in this sense is the fact that he believes in education for women: “We have had universities in Idlib for more than eight years, I believe that the percentage of women in universities is more than 60%” he said Sharaareferring to the north-western province of Syria, in rebel hands since 2011, and from which the Syrian revolt against the Alawite dictator began.
Only on the consumption of alcohol, Sharaa niche for now: «There are many things that I don’t have the right to talk about because they are legal issues» he reported, and it is even understandable (certainly, this is not a decisive parameter for judging a country’s path towards democracy and /or stability).
But Al Joulani He promised that he would establish a “Syrian committee of legal experts to write a constitution. They will decide. And every ruler or president will have to follow the law.” Many Syrians still don’t believe him: they fear that his group has not broken with its extremist past and that, as soon as the spotlight goes off on Syria, legal crackdowns will arrive and Sharia will return along with Islamist terrorism. We will see. The actions of Syria’s new rulers in the coming months will make it clear to the international community what kind of country they want Syria to become, and how they want to govern it.
In the meantime, however, today the country is free: from state violence and torture; by the mafia elite in power; from drugs smuggled directly from the top of the institutions; by foreign militias of Hezbollah and their brutal modus operandi (and their weapons); from the leash of the Russian Federation and from the failed Iranian plots. The Syrian reset can therefore begin and can even be seen as a Great Reset of the entire Middle East, with Israel which – having cleaned up terrorism and Islamist militias – can reasonably sit at a negotiating table: to recognize the new government of Syria ; to establish together with Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar new rules and boundaries; to obtain recognition of Jerusalem by the Arab States, thus arriving at a constructive and beneficial appeasement for all.
In all of this, it is the Syrian people who have won, who can find themselves within new and safer borders and reunite with their loved ones (and mourn the dead of the regime), helping to drag Damascus and the martyr city of Aleppo into the 21st century. Perhaps all this optimism is excessive and history will prove it wrong Al Joulanibut it is a fact that this is the best opportunity to build a nation on the basis of broad popular consensus.
Which sounds like an alarm bell for Iraq but, above all, for the Iran of the ayatollahs, who not only have definitively lost all grip and dissipated their influence on the Western Middle East, but who rightly fear doing the same end as Assadevaporated in a weekend after a power that had lasted for sixty years (little more than the Khomeinist Revolution which transfigured the face of Persia starting in 1979). If it is not prudent to speak of a “Syrian Spring” or an “Arab renaissance”, it is certain that the post-October 7 world has significantly changed, perhaps forever, the destiny of the Middle East. A fate that Tehran still does not accept and strenuously opposes, but which appears inevitable and will have serious repercussions on the Islamic Republic of Iran.
