Syria should stay within its borders ...and limits

Yet Bashar entered the palace in 2000 and led his regime from one mistake to the next, from one retreat to another. He was forced to withdraw Syrian forces from Lebanon after Hariri's assassination. He completed what his father had begun by handing over the leaders of the Kurdistan Workers' Party to Ankara. He also surrendered Iranian Arab dissidents to Tehran. The balance his father had tried to manage for decades slipped from his grasp.

As protests erupted, followed by revolution and armed struggle, Syria gradually became an open theatre for regional and international actors. It ceased to be the actor and became the stage. Damascus lost control over its airspace, borders, and crossings with all neighbouring states. Over more than a decade of war, the regime shrank into scattered pockets. Bashar al-Assad had already fled Syrian geography politically and militarily before he fled Syrian territory altogether for Moscow at the end of 2024.

Inward shift

Among the first messages President Ahmed al-Sharaa sent after arriving in Damascus was that the new Syria had no intention of exporting revolution beyond its borders, and that its priority would be rebuilding the state, reconstruction, the return of refugees and displaced people, and the restoration of sovereignty and control over the borders. The wounds Iran and its militias left in Syrian soil run deep. Damascus's problem with those militias ended when they left Syrian territory. The same applies to Lebanon's Hezbollah. Syria's focus has shifted to unifying arms, controlling borders, crossings, and airports, and restoring state institutions.

Iraq is no extension of the old Baathist project or of the dream of "Syraqia." Lebanon does not belong to the imagined map of "Natural Syria." The declared objective is full Syrian sovereignty over Syrian territory, and state-to-state relations with all neighbours.

It is against this background that the recent debate over the possibility of Syria taking up the question of Hezbollah's weapons in Lebanon should be understood. US envoy Tom Barrack did raise the idea. President Donald Trump did speak of it publicly before the cameras. Yet no formal talks have taken place over a direct Syrian role in disarming Hezbollah inside Lebanon.

Different case, different order

Here, some American officials would be mistaken to project the experience of the new Syrian army in dealing with the SDF, or with remnants of the Assad regime, onto the Lebanese case. Each case belongs to a different order. There are Lebanese wounds left by the era of "Syrian tutelage," just as Syrians carry deep wounds from Hezbollah's intrusion into their tragedy. So far, the clearest Syrian priority, backed by Arab and Western support, is the protection of its borders with all neighbouring states.

In practical terms, this means preventing the smuggling of weapons and narcotics, blocking the infiltration of terrorist groups and the return of the Islamic State (IS), and cutting off unlawful supply routes. It also means preventing Iranian weapons from reaching Hezbollah, and preventing Syrian territory from being used as a corridor for regional projects that bypass the Syrian state. This will require an additional effort by Washington to press Israel to withdraw to the lines of 8 December 2024, and to reach stable security arrangements in southern Syria.

For half a century, Assad's Syria crossed borders in pursuit of an influence that exhausted both itself and its neighbours. Today, the equation appears reversed. The success of the new Syria may depend less on its ability to overstep borders than on its ability to remain within them and focus on its own priorities. After decades of exporting crises and importing them, Syria's new wager appears simpler and more difficult at once: a state that guards its borders instead of living beyond them.

Some American officials would be mistaken to project the experience of the new Syrian army in dealing with the SDF, or with remnants of the Assad regime, onto the Lebanese case. After decades of exporting crises and importing them, Syria's new wager appears both simpler and more difficult at once: a state that guards its borders rather than living beyond them.