Syria’s New Rulers Want a Deal. Make Them Lock Iran Out

The U.S.-Iran memorandum signed last month left the Middle East’s core conflicts unsettled. That pact opened a fragile 60-day diplomatic window while Iran’s nuclear program and Lebanon’s future remained unresolved. Washington should use this opportunity to secure one concrete gain for Israeli security and Iranian containment: stop Syria from serving once more as Tehran’s weapons highway to Hezbollah.

Talks and agreements with Damascus make sense. Washington must not, however, repeat its old mistake of confusing dialogue with regime transformation. President Ahmed al Sharaa’s government wants investment, legitimacy, and an end to isolation. Leaders of that government emerged from jihadist organizations, and Syria remains a highly vulnerable, fractured state. Pledges to keep Iran out are welcome. Yet they still prove nothing.
Critics will say Washington cannot trust a government formed by former insurgents, and that is correct. But trust is not the point. The point is leverage. Therefore, the United States should turn this opening gap into enforceable conditions instead of handing out a blank check dressed up as diplomacy. This approach separates real diplomacy from costly strategic self-deception.

In 10 years, Iran spent around $50 billion supporting Bashar Assad’s regime. Before the bloodthirsty regime’s collapse in December 2024, Tehran and its regional thugs controlled 131 military posts across Syria. Those positions kept open the land corridor through Iraq and Syria for weapons, missile components, drugs (especially Captagon), and Iranian personnel in Lebanon. Hezbollah’s own leader admitted that Assad’s fall cost the group its supply route. Now, Washington should ensure that disruption lasts forever.

Clearly, economic leverage only works when tied to real performance. In July 2025, after Washington lifted sanctions on Syria, more than $35 billion in investment deals followed. Syria’s economy grew 5% that year, and 3 million Syrians returned home. Those numbers do not prove that sanctions relief brought stability or that they now excuse Damascus from meeting security obligations and respecting the Kurdish and Druze peoples. However, they show that Syria’s leaders have something to lose and that Washington can use that to its advantage.

Within this uncertain context, Moscow is key. Russia keeps a significant military presence in the Tartus naval facility and Khmeimim air base, has resumed resupplying its troops in Syria, and continues pushing for a renewed, bigger role with Damascus. Consequently, Tartus gives Russia a key Mediterranean foothold, while Khmeimim supports air operations that extend well beyond Syria. Any deal that removes Iranian networks but lets Russia lock in a permanent military sanctuary would trade one strategic liability for another.

As a result, Washington should set up a U.S.-Syria security working group with explicit deadlines for extracting Iranian operatives, remaining foreign terrorist infrastructure, weapons depots, and transit routes. Compliance needs testing through satellite imagery, intelligence sharing with partners, site inspections where possible, and regular public assessments. U.S. technical assistance and additional economic openings should be phased in, released only after benchmarks are met.

Secondly, Washington should facilitate technical security talks between Syrian and Israeli officers to update deconfliction arrangements under the 1974 Disengagement Agreement. Those talks must cover southern Syria, the eradication of foreign terrorists, missile production, and ways to prevent accidental escalation while opening the door to normalization. These measures should also limit Russia’s ability to expand its military presence in the Mediterranean.

America does not need another open-ended mission in Syria. Washington needs a transactional bargain: reconstruction access, investment, and legitimacy only for verified denial of Iran’s return and limits on Russian entrenchment.

Washington must demand results before rewards — and make Iran’s return cost Damascus more than it can bear.

Published originally on July 1, 2026.