GOP lawmaker cautions Israel against ‘dividing’ Syria, after meeting with Sharaa

Fresh off a visit to Syria where he became one of the first US lawmakers to meet the country’s new Islamist president, a Republican lawmaker cautioned against Israeli efforts to divide the country, which is in its initial months of recovery since the collapse of the Assad regime.

Rep. Marlin Stutzman said in a Friday interview with The Times of Israel that Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa expressed “openness” to joining the Abraham Accords normalization agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors, but had several concerns that needed to be addressed beforehand.

“The first [concern] — which I felt was most important to him — was that Israel may have a plan to divide up the nation of Syria into… multiple parts. That was something that he was very opposed to,” Stutzman recalled.

The plan appeared to be a reference to the lobbying Israel has reportedly been doing in Washington for the US to buck Sharaa’s fledgling government in favor of establishing a decentralized series of autonomous ethnic regions, with the southern one bordering Israel being demilitarized.

The congressman said he understood the Syrian president’s opposition to this idea. “I would agree with Sharaa that keeping Syria unified would be important for the country to heal, grow and move forward.”

“Sharaa’s idea is to have more of a nationalist government under the Syrian banner, and that’s critical because Syria has such unique and diverse groups of people, whether it’s religiously or culturally or through their different sects that are in the country.

Israel has publicly declared its mistrust of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Sharaa’s Islamist faction that led the campaign that toppled former president Bashar al-Assad and which emerged from a group that was affiliated with al-Qaeda until it cut ties in 2016.

Sharaa’s biggest foreign backer is Turkey, whose ties with Israel have plunged since the outbreak of the Gaza war, and Jerusalem has sought to prevent Ankara from gaining too large a foothold in Syria, particularly along the Israel-Syria border.

Following Assad’s ouster in December, Israel has carried out extensive airstrikes on military bases that belonged to the previous regime and moved forces into a UN-monitored demilitarized zone on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights. The IDF describes its presence in southern Syria’s buffer zone as a temporary and defensive measure, though Defense Minister Israel Katz said that troops will remain deployed in the area “indefinitely.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who leads the Islamist-rooted AK Party, has said that Islamic countries should form an alliance against what he called “the growing threat of expansionism” from Israel.

While seeking to undermine the new Syrian government, Jerusalem has made overtures to the Druze population in southern Syria and to Kurdish communities in the northern part of the country. And to try and contain Turkey, Israeli officials have reportedly sought to persuade the United States that Russia should keep its Mediterranean naval base in Syria’s Tartus province and its Hmeimim air base in Latakia province.

While Stutzman recognized Israel’s security concerns and said Sharaa would have to be judged based on his actions, the US lawmaker said the new president “seemed like he was really focused on keeping Syria unified as Syrians and [on not] allow[ing] the country to be divided, whether along physical lines or along cultural or religious lines.”

Stutzman and Rep. Cory Mills were the first two congressmen to visit Syria since Sharaa’s installation as president. Stutzman said he was compelled to make the trip by close friends and constituents from the Syrian American community in Indiana who want the US to remove the crippling sanctions it has kept in place since the the Assad regime.

“I said I don’t know enough to be able to take that position. So they offered me the chance to go visit the country, and I took it,” Stutzman said.

He was non-committal regarding whether the visit and meeting with Sharaa had convinced him to back his constituents’ call to remove US sanctions, and deferred to US President Donald Trump’s administration to make that decision. However, the congressman indicated that he was at least partially convinced.

“I went with an open mind and also one that was very skeptical of the new president, given his past. But after leaving, I feel like… we should seriously have a dialogue… to see what President Sharaa is really hoping to do as the leader of the country.”

“He’s reaching out to the West and wants to build a relationship. I hope that’s his true intention. If not, obviously there will be further consequences,” Stutzman warned.

In a sign that Sharaa is moving beyond talk, his government arrested a pair of operatives from the Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group last week.

The US lawmaker received over an hour of one-on-one face time with Sharaa at the presidential palace in Damascus.

Stutzman said he was the one to raise potential relations with Israel and that while Sharaa raised a number of conditions, the president didn’t rule out the possibility outright.

In addition to concerns over Israel’s apparent effort to divide the country, Stuzman said Sharaa also took issue with the IDF’s bombing of Syrian military sites. “I understand both sides, because this is an opportunity for Israel to make sure that we secure their northern border,” the US lawmaker reflected.

As for the IDF’s military bases throughout southern Syria, Stutzman said that too was an issue Sharaa raised, but that it didn’t appear to be a “dealbreaker” for the Syrian president.

Notably, Sharaa did not explicitly condition normalization with Israel on progress toward the establishment of a Palestinian state, as other countries in the region have, the US lawmaker said.

Some final photos from my trip to Syria.

The will of the Syrian people will never be broken, they want to see changes by their new government which will make all Syrians more secure, more prosperous, and an ally with America.

I hope to see these changes on my next trip! pic.twitter.com/JrUvYh5OFC

— Rep. Marlin Stutzman (@RepStutzman) April 24, 2025

What Sharaa himself has said when asked whether Syria could ink a peace deal with Israel is that his country “want[s] peace with all parties, but there is great sensitivity regarding the Israeli matter in the region.”

“We entered Damascus only two months ago, and there are many priorities in front of us, so it is too early to discuss such a matter because it requires a wide public opinion. It also requires a lot of procedures and laws in order to discuss it, and to be honest, we have not considered it yet,” Sharaa said earlier this year.

Asked whether Syria normalizing ties with Israel should be a condition for the US to lift sanctions, Stuzman responded, “I think it’s an important component.”

“For Syria to be most successful and prosperous, normalizing relationships with Israel would help do that,” he said. “I could see a day where Christians from around the world travel to Jerusalem and then travel to Damascus on tourism trips. That would be a huge economic boom for both countries.”