Following Israel’s attack this week on Beirut’s southern suburbs that sparked a new round of conflict between Israel and Iran, President Donald Trump suggested that Syria could get involved in taking action against Hezbollah.
“I’d like to see a more surgical attack on Hezbollah,” Trump told Meet the Press when asked whether he had reservations concerning recent Israeli actions in Lebanon. “We can help them with that, or we can recommend Syria. Syria is doing a very good job of cleaning up their act. They have a very good leader… and he would love to help.”
This is not the first time that this issue has come up. After Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s visit to Washington last November, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and Special Envoy to Syria and Iraq Tom Barrack announced that Damascus would become a partner against rival entities including Hezbollah.
“Damascus will now actively assist us in confronting and dismantling the remnants of ISIS, the IRGC, Hamas, Hizballah, and other terrorist networks,” Barrack wrote on X.
According to a Reuters report published in March, Washington had even urged Damascus to conduct a military operation in Lebanon to help disarm Hezbollah. Addressing the report—the contents of which were denied by Barrack—the Syrian government said it was reluctant to take such action, expressing concern about fueling sectarian tensions.
Trump’s recent statements mark the first time the president himself has publicly entertained the idea of recruiting Damascus against Hezbollah. This suggests that that course of action may now be under more serious consideration in Washington.
Trump’s remarks also seem to reflect a belief that recruiting Syria against Hezbollah may help him prevent the complete collapse of diplomatic talks with Iran, while remaining committed to the objective of Hezbollah’s disarmament. Iran has effectively established a new equation under which an Israeli attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs—commonly referred to as Hezbollah’s stronghold—will be met with Iranian attacks on Israel. This means that Israeli attacks on southern Beirut raise the risk of the regional war spinning further out of Trump’s control.
Viewed against this backdrop, Trump’s suggestion to recruit Damascus against Hezbollah appears designed to address the dilemma between maintaining control of tensions with Iran to sustain the possibility of a diplomatic agreement, and remaining committed to degrading Hezbollah. But it also represents yet another example of catering to Israeli interests with little to no benefit to American interests.
While Hezbollah is indeed a problem for Israel, it poses little to no threat to the United States. By continuing to insist on Hezbollah’s disarmament by any means possible—including by seeking the help of Damascus—it appears as if Trump finds himself forced to placate Israel in exchange for restraining its actions in Lebanon. In other words, Trump appears to be scrambling to find ways to reassure Israel that taking out Hezbollah remains a top priority for Washington.
This is somewhat reminiscent of what happened during the Obama administration. It is widely believed that in order to placate Saudi Arabia, which was staunchly opposed to a nuclear deal with Iran at the time, President Barack Obama actively supported Riyadh’s military campaign against Yemen after the Houthis took control of Sanaa.
For Trump, such a strategy could prove even more perilous than it did for Obama. Aside from the fact that an ongoing commitment to disarming Hezbollah would likely inflame tensions with Iran as opposed to facilitating an understanding, choosing to lean on Syria to assist in such efforts could be detrimental for American security interests. One of the repercussions of the Saudi war on Yemen was the empowerment of the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which is responsible for the most recent Al Qaeda–directed attack on American soil, when a Saudi soldier killed three U.S. servicemen at a military base in Pensacola Florida in late 2019.
In the case of Syria, having al-Sharaa become actively involved against Hezbollah would likely end up empowering an even more nefarious group. One of the likely reasons Damascus has resisted waging such a campaign is that it would distract from the more pressing challenge of dealing with the threat posed by ISIS. Unlike Hezbollah, ISIS has effectively declared war on al-Sharaa and recently ramped up its attacks in Syria, while also calling on members of Syria’s state security services to defect. (While Hezbollah has been accused by Damascus of plotting attacks in the country, the Lebanese Shiite group has denied involvement in such plots.)
Syria taking up an active role against Hezbollah could also empower ISIS in other ways, namely, through the sectarian hostilities that would likely result. Confrontations between Syrian state security forces and Hezbollah would essentially pit Sunnis against Shiites, boosting the ISIS narrative in which Shiites are cast as the greater enemy and thus aiding the group’s recruiting efforts.
Empowering ISIS in Syria and the wider region would be detrimental to U.S. interests in a manner that far outweighs any supposed benefits gained by taking out Hezbollah, which has never openly threatened to attack the American homeland. By contrast, ISIS has openly called for attacks on the United States and has even inspired deadly attacks in the American homeland. The Defense Intelligence Agency has reportedly assessed that ISIS in Syria was one of the most likely ISIS affiliates to plot such attacks.
Israel’s military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon has complicated President Trump’s approach to the U.S. war with Iran. But recruiting Damascus to try to disarm Hezbollah could cause him an even bigger headache.
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