Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) returned from an official visit to Syria this month with more cautious optimism about the country’s new government than Washington and Jerusalem have mustered.
“I don’t blame the Israeli government or the United States government. We should all be very skeptical and cautious. I myself am the same,” Stutzman told JNS.
Finding the “perfect replacement” for deposed Syrian dictator Bashar Assad is “not an easy thing to do,” the congressman told JNS.
Stutzman visited Syria this month with Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) to meet with Ahmed al-Sharaa, the new Syrian president and leader of the Islamist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, a U.S. and United Nations-designated terror group.
Al-Sharaa has engaged the West, indicating openness to joining the Abraham Accords, and Stuztman and the Syrian leader discussed commerce and Syria’s potential to become a central trade and tourism hub, according to the U.S. envoy.
“What’s happened over the past 54 years has been very, very sad. So I think we have to approach al-Shaara as the leader in control,” Stutzman told JNS. “I’m extending an open hand and reaching out to him and saying, ‘Look, we are happy to work with you in the West, but we’re going to also take precautions to be sure that you’re not fooling us as well.’”
Al-Sharaa was born in Riyadh to a Syrian Sunni Muslim family from the Golan Heights and has long been known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, the last name of which is a tribute to his Golani roots.
As Assad’s regime fell, Israeli forces entered the buffer zone between the two countries and into the Syrian side of the Golan, carrying out an aerial campaign targeting Syria’s military capabilities.
Since that time, Israel has launched deep incursions, including airstrikes, and Israeli officials have said that they will not retreat until the Jewish state’s security is guaranteed.
Al-Sharaa brought up the topic of the Golan Heights with Stutzman, the U.S. envoy told JNS.
Stutzman told al-Sharaa that “the importance of the relationship between America and Israel is very, very strong, but at the same time, we would love to have a strong relationship with the people of Syria and the government of Syria.”
“Obviously, the relationship has to go both ways,” Stutzman said that he told al-Sharaa.
Syria has long stated that the entire Golan Heights belongs to it, following Israel’s capture of a portion of the heights, where Syrian forces had launched attacks, during the Six-Day War of 1967.
“He did not take the Golan Heights off the table with me, but what seemed to be the most important thing to him is that Syria not be divided up, and that it remains a unified country,” Stutzman told JNS.
“I think that’s good for Israel. I think it’s good for the region,” the U.S. envoy said.
U.S. President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “and others will all be part of these conversations that will ultimately decide,” Stutzman said.
The new Syrian government pushing Iran-backed Hezbollah out of Syrian territory has encouraged the U.S. envoy. (Tehran long smuggled weapons—with Assad’s consent—through Syria into Lebanon.)
‘Once in a generation’
Stutzman told JNS that he has a “pretty good-sized” constituency of Syrian Americans in his Fort Wayne, Ind., area district.
“I’ve been talking with them for quite some time. I’ve always been interested in that region and with the atrocities that have occurred over the decades by Assad and his father and the fact that we weren’t seeing this going in a positive direction until just recently,” he said.
With Syria in transition, there is a “once in a generation” opportunity, he thinks.
“With al-Sharaa’s dubious background, I wanted to not only see what was happening inside the country but was also hoping to have the opportunity to meet with the new president of Syria,” he said.
Stutzman told JNS that “there was very little hesitation” going to Syria, despite Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s designation as a terror group and al-Sharaa’s former membership in al-Qaeda. (Until recently, there was a $10 million U.S. government bounty on his head.)
“I just believe that the Syrian people are an incredible people. There’s obviously so many different backgrounds and such a history there that I wanted to be able to see it for myself,” Stutzman told JNS.
“Meeting with al-Sharaa gave me the opportunity to look him in the eye and to hear from him what his vision was for Syria, because we don’t want to go from one dictator to another dictator,” he said.
The meeting, which was conducted with the assistance of a translator, lasted approximately 75 minutes.
Stutzman was comfortable with “a lot” of the answers he received to his questions, but al-Sharaa will have to meet “certain metrics” and requests from Trump if crippling U.S. sanctions are to be lifted, according to Stutzman.
“I believe that if he makes those choices wisely, there’s an opportunity for him, and especially an opportunity for the Syrian people,” he said. Those choices include prioritizing women’s and religious rights, he added.
‘A conversation with America’
In Syria, Stutzman toured the infamous Saydnaya prison, the site of atrocities that he told JNS “remind us of Holocaust prisons, where people were beaten and brutally tortured and killed.”
He also told JNS of the community of Jobar, near Damascus, which was largely destroyed in a 2017 offensive and which, for centuries, was a site of Jewish pilgrimage due to a 2,000-year-old synagogue.
“There are billions and billions of dollars of destruction there, because of Assad,” Stutzman said. “These are all things that we want to put in the past and keep in the past.”
“We don’t want to see another dictator in Syria,” he said.
Al-Sharaa told the U.S. envoy that he is open to joining the Abraham Accords—the U.S.-brokered diplomatic normalization agreements between Israel and its Arab nations.
“He truly seems to want to have a conversation with the West, with America, and mentioned too that the Chinese have been reaching out, the Russians have been reaching out,” Stutzman said.
“He does want to have a conversation with America, and I think that’s something that we should seriously consider as we move forward,” he said. “With the sanctions that we currently have in place, President Trump has a strong hand to be sure that President al-Sharaa does make the right choices for the people and for the region.”
Amid transition in Syria, the United Nations should maintain communication with al-Sharaa “and not just push him back into the arms of the Iranians or the Russians or the Chinese,” according to Stutzman.
“I actually felt that America was the first choice. The fact that he took the time to meet with us, I think, is a positive sign,” he said. “The fact that he mentioned the name ‘Israel’ a couple of times, to me, was also a positive sign.”
Al-Sharaa told the congressman that there must be a process of both justice and forgiveness after Syria’s long, brutal civil war. A massacre of Alawite civilians in Syria’s coastal regions in March by government-aligned forces called into question the Syrian president’s stated intentions. A government investigation into the murders is ongoing.
“He’s trying to balance all those pieces. If he does what he says he’s going to do, I think it’s a very positive sign for the Middle East and for the Syrian people,” Stutzman told JNS.
“We have to take baby steps, walk slowly and actually let him make decisions that he believes are right for the Syrian people,” he said.