SAEDNEWS: In a dramatic realignment, Hayʾat Tahrir al‑Sham leader Abu Muhammad al‑Julani has quietly courted Israel—raising fresh questions over a covert strategy to undermine Iran’s sway in Syria.
According to Saed News, the erstwhile opposition kingpin Abu Muhammad al‑Julani has embarked on a perilous political gambit: normalizing ties with Israel in the hope of consolidating his fractured rebel fiefdom in northwestern Syria. Having survived repeated Turkish and Gulf power plays, Julani now seeks an external patron in Tel Aviv—an alliance that could recalibrate the region’s geopolitical chessboard and weaken Tehran’s entrenched proxies.
Julani’s overture follows months of discreet dialogue in Baku, where Israeli interlocutors demanded recognition of a twenty‑kilometer security buffer around Damascus and conditional acknowledgment of his “sovereignty” over rebel‑held enclaves. When Tel Aviv rebuffed his bid for formal status, Julani shifted tactics—applying pressure on the Druze‑majority Suwayda region under Turkish advisement, while Israeli air strikes on T4 airbase and intelligence centers deliberately punished rival militias loyal to Iran.
Analysts caution that Julani’s bid for legitimacy is as audacious as it is fragile. Despite commanding some twenty armed factions, his authority remains contested; intelligence reports depict him as “overmatched, yet relentlessly ambitious,” incapable of executing the grand designs he espouses. Meanwhile, hard‑line jihadist elements, notably Hurras al‑Din, are poised to break away, further fragmenting the opposition.
For Iran, Julani’s maneuver signals a novel front in its Syria policy: a former jihadist ally turned foil to Jerusalem. Yet the venture’s risks are profound—for Julani, a miscalculation could spell his group’s undoing; for Syria’s mosaic of foreign actors, it represents another volatile variable in an already combustible theatre.
