Geostrategic Media Political Commentary, Analysis, Security, Defense
On May 13, 2025, President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. will cease sanctions against Syria “to give them a chance at greatness.” As part of that statement, Trump chortled to Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman: “Oh, what I do for the crown prince.” But will any such cheerful banter have policy consequences for Israel? And if so, will they prove gainful or injurious?
It’s not really a hard question. In Jerusalem, nothing could seem less welcome than fostering a Syrian “chance at greatness.” Even if the US president is correct that sanctions relief will strengthen the new Damascus regime and accelerate Saudi support for potential cooperation against Iran, such benefits would be a double-edged sword.
There are abundant clarifications. In Syria, longtime ally of Iran, assorted jihadi groups will configure and reconfigure under the seeming oversight of interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, and multiple jihadi terror groups (not just al-Sharaa’s Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham/HTS militia) will strive to expand their power. As for Sunni Saudi Arabia, accumulating fears of a still-nuclearizing Shiite Iran could present Israel not with an improbable ally, but with an historic adversary now determined to “go nuclear.”
Whatever the particular nuances of jihadi reconfiguration in Syria, triumphant terror groups will focus more determinedly on transcendent goals than tactical advantages. In the final analysis, like all authentic jihadi institutions, the ultimate goal of these groups will be “power over death.” It follows that any Israeli acceptance of security benefits based on Syrian sanctions relief would elevate contrived hopes over dispassionate analyses. If Sigmund Freud were here to assess such realistic misjudgments, he would describe the American president’s expectations for Syria as “wish fulfillment.”
What next? How should Israeli military planners tangibly acknowledge that the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024 could never birth a gainful era of “Syrian greatness?” Unlike Israel’s systematic orientation to counter-terrorism – a coherent posture that centers on logic, science and engineering – jihadi orientations to violencewill continue to revolve around manipulation, mystification and cruelty.Accordingly, the following core question should now be assigned a prioritized place in Jerusalem:How should unchanging jihadi beliefs in personal immortality (beliefs based on the mandated “sacrifice” of “unbelievers”) be combatted?
By definition, in every isolable domain of religion-based mystifications, there must eventually arise urgings of anti-reason. Facing seductive jihadi ideologies that promise eternality to “the faithful,” Israel will need to remain wary of projecting ordinary political and economic preferences onto its jihadi foes. This is not meant to suggest uniform enemy irrationality, but rather to underscore that all usual secular preferences (e.g., “Palestinian self-determination”) would be secondary or “reflective.”
“Normally,” projections of decision-making rationality make good sense in world politics. Nonetheless, there are enough significant exceptions to temper any hope-dependent generalities. If Israel’s national decision-makers were to appraise current reconfigurations of global jihadist terrorist organizations (Sunni and Shiite) from a suitably augmented analytic standpoint – one that acknowledges the faith-based impact of “power over death” – the nexus between “martyrdom operations” and “life-everlasting” could become understandable. At that welcome point, Jerusalem’s national security planners could begin to place themselves in an improved position to deter Islamist murderers, hostage-takers and suicide-bombers. Such egregious outlaws are known under international law as hostes humani generis or “common enemies of mankind,” and include individual terror-criminals and state terror-patrons.
There are variously corresponding elements of justice. Jihadi insurgents seeking to justify unrestrained attacks on Israeli noncombatants act in contravention of authoritative international law: Ex injuria jus non oritur. In law, all law, “rights can never stem from wrongs.”
In world politics, indiscriminate violence is never acceptable. Whatever the cause, violence becomes terrorism when insurgents intentionally kill or maim noncombatants. In law, it is irrelevant whether the expressed cause of political-violence is determinably just or unjust. The intentional use of political violence against noncombatants is terrorism.
In law, unjust means, even if used on behalf of allegedly just ends. are impermissible prima facie. An oft-favored jihadi mantra (“by any means necessary”) is never anything more than a flagrant rejection of legal authority. Always, it is an empty witticism. Recalling Hague Convention No. IV, which codifies longstanding customary international law,“The right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited.”
There is more. On occasion, martyrdom-seeking jihadi foes advance a supposedly-legal argument known as Tu quoque. To clarify further, this discredited argument stipulates that because the “other side” is guilty of similar, equivalent or greater criminality, “our” side is innocent ipso facto. Jurisprudentially, such an argument is always wrong and is always invalid. This should be especially apparent following post-war legal judgments of the Nuremberg and Tokyo international tribunals.
In Israel’s no-choice war against Hamas and allied jihadists, the death and injury of Palestinian noncombatants remain the legal responsibility of “perfidious” Islamist enemies. Because these adversaries place terror-fighters in protected places (e.g., schools, hospitals, mosques), such locations are no longer off-limits to defensive military actions by Israel. For the Jewish State, enemy use of “human shields” is always exculpatory for the unintended consequences of Israeli defensive operations. A closely related and reinforcing legal principle is called “military necessity.”[1]
Though Israel’s bombardments of Gaza produce numerous Palestinian casualties, legal responsibility for these harms lies solely with the Jewish State’s “perfidious” foes. While Israel-inflicted Palestinian casualties are unwanted, inadvertent and unintentional, Israel-suffered civilian deaths and injuries are the result of intentionally indiscriminate Palestinian terror. In legal terms, only the Palestinian side displays “criminal intent” or mens rea.
To wit, there is a consequential difference between raping and murdering celebrants at a public music festival and the lethal consequences of a beleaguered state’s self-defense operations. In this connection, it is worth remembering that the entire State of Israel is less than half the size of America’s Lake Michigan.
Insurgent movements that fail to meet the test of “just means” can never be protected as lawful. Even if relevant law could somehow accept the argument that designated terror groups had fulfilled all valid criteria of “national liberation,” (e.g., Iran-supported Hamas), these groups would not satisfy the equally important expectations of distinction, proportionality, and military necessity. Historically, these critical standards of humanitarian international law were applied to insurgent or armed sub-state organizations by the common Article 3 of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and by the two 1977 Protocols to these Conventions. Moreover, “proportionality” does not mean an equivalent or symmetrical level of armed force, but only a level consistent with indispensable military outcomes.
Standards of “humanity” remain binding on all combatants by virtue of customary and conventional international law, including Article 1 of the Preamble to the Fourth Hague Convention of 1907. This rule, commonly called the “Martens Clause,” makes “all persons” responsible for the “laws of humanity” and associated “dictates of public conscience.” There can be no allowable exceptions to this universal responsibility, except in cases where enemy perfidy endangers a state’s unchallengeable right to self-preservation.
Terrorist crimes mandate universal cooperation in both apprehension and punishment. As punishers of “grave breaches” under international law, all states are required to “extradite or prosecute” individual terrorists. Under no circumstances are states or sub-state actors permitted to treat terrorist “martyrs” as law-backed “freedom fighters.”
Though this imperative is currently most relevant to Israeli operations in Gaza/Judea/Samaria, it could also become relevant in post-Assad Syria. Plausibly, al-Sharaa’s HTS militia will not be able to disarm all competing jihadi forces, absorb former insurgent fighters into a manageable national army or impose viable central authority on a still-fractured country. In this connection, previously persecuted groups in dictator Bashar al-Assad’s Syria (Druze, Alawite, Kurds, Christians) will have ample reason for deep and legitimate hesitations. As regards US-sanctions relief for Syria, it will more likely hasten the next generation of jihadi terrorists seeking “power over death” than support American plans for Syrian “greatness.”
[1] The principle of “military necessity” is defined as follows: “Only that degree and kind of force, not otherwise prohibited by the law of armed conflict, required for the partial or complete submission of the enemy with a minimum expenditure of time, life, and physical resources may be applied.” See: United States, Department of the Navy, jointly with Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps; and Department of Transportation, U.S. Coast Guard, The Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations, NWP 1-14M, Norfolk, Virginia, October 1995, p. 5-1
