[News] The price of reintegrating Syria? Become Israel and America’s slave.

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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The price of reintegrating Syria? Become Israel and America’s slave. By Rania
Hammad <https://mondoweiss.net/author/rania-hammad/> and Tawfiq Al-Ghussein
<https://mondoweiss.net/author/tawfiq-al-ghussein/> November 25, 2025
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President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House earlier this month is
being framed as Syria’s return to international legitimacy. In reality, it
means something profoundly different: the reshaping of a shattered state
into a system of managed dependency — and the process is being overseen by
the very powers that helped destroy it.

What Washington calls “rehabilitation” uses humanitarian language to mask
external control. The key sector where that control is exercised is the
energy sector.

The limits of Syria’s permitted recovery are already clear in the language
of Western policy institutes, donor coordination platforms, and
Gulf-Western investment forums: low-risk sectors such as logistics,
agriculture, and labor-intensive manufacturing are allowed to revive, while
strategic sectors — energy, major infrastructure, telecommunications, and
defense — remain locked behind political conditions tied to sanctions
relief and regional alignment.

Energy is the decisive lever in this system: by regulating Syria’s access
to its own oil and gas fields, refining capacity, electricity generation,
and pipeline routes, external actors are setting the parameters for Syrian
sovereignty.

This means that Syria’s diplomatic “normalization,” presented as a step
towards stability, is actually designed to entrench dependency rather than
overcome it. This is evidenced in Syria’s emerging postwar architecture.

These dynamics are not speculative. Since 2022, the Brussels Syria
Conferences, IMF technical workshops, and analyses from the Atlantic
Council, Carnegie, and the European Institute of Peace have openly stated
that sanctions relief affecting the energy sector will depend on Syrian
compliance with Western regional priorities. Under these conditions, aid
ceases to serve reconstruction, instead becoming a technology of political
supervision. In this sense, western consultancies, Gulf sovereign wealth
vehicles, and donor agencies function less as partners than as custodians
of Syrian recovery. And most importantly, “normalization” is, in practice,
the monetization of sovereignty, because access to energy revenues is now
contingent upon political obedience.

Al-Sharaa’s political posture mirrors this regional recalibration. As early
as 2020, during the acceleration of Arab normalization under the Abraham
Accords, Syrian and Lebanese outlets quoted him telling his cadres that
“the world is changing.” He went on to say:

“Arab states are normalizing relations with Israel. We must read these
realities carefully.”

His refusal to criticize the Accords and his silence during Israel’s
genocidal assault on Gaza in 2023–2025 — and during Israel’s consolidation
of its control over the Syrian Golan Heights — indicate acceptance of a
regional structure built around Israeli military primacy and Gulf-Israeli
energy integration.

His attempt to recast himself as a statesman in a 2021 PBS Frontline
interview — declaring that “we are not a threat to the West…we want to
build a balanced relationship with all countries that respect our identity”
— fits neatly within this trajectory. The language of “balance” signals an
understanding that Syrian political legitimacy now depends on adopting
frameworks designed outside Syria, particularly those governing the energy
sector. Sovereignty is performed, but increasingly displaced to foreign
centers of power.
*Sidestepping Palestine*

This alignment extends to his policies towards Palestinian movements in
Syria. In a 2022 internal address, he insisted that “we will not allow
external groups to drag Syria into wars that serve other agendas.” While
couched in the language of sovereignty, the formulation conforms to Western
and Gulf expectations that Palestinian factions in Damascus be restricted,
especially those linked to Iran or Hezbollah, and thus capable of
influencing regional energy and security arrangements.

Yet this is not a break from Syrian history. Under Hafez al-Assad,
rhetorical solidarity with Palestine existed alongside interventions that
weakened the Palestinian movement, from Tal al-Zaatar to the War of the
Camps. As Rashid Khalidi and Patrick Seale both observed, Palestinian
factions were treated as both assets and liabilities, to be shaped
according to Syrian state strategy. Al-Sharaa’s stance reproduces this
pattern within a landscape now dominated by external powers.

His rise unfolded as Israel intensified its dismantling of Syria’s military
and industrial infrastructure in late 2024. As Gaza endured genocidal
destruction, Israel expanded operations across Syria, striking air-defense
systems, command centers, power stations, fuel depots, and the fragile
national electricity grid. These strikes prevented any reconstitution of
deterrence and reinforced Israeli control over Jabal al-Sheikh and the
wider Golan Heights. Al-Sharaa’s silence signalled acceptance of a regional
alignment in which Syrian strategic and energy sovereignty is effectively
suspended under the pretext of “security.”

For Washington, al-Sharaa offers an anti-Iran axis without direct American
intervention. Sanctions relief — especially those governing oil-export
waivers and regional electricity transfers — is granted selectively.

Israel’s actions reveal the scale of external interference. Beyond
occupying Jabal al-Sheikh and the sustained air campaign targeting Syrian
energy and transportation infrastructure, Israel’s intelligence networks
have exploited grievances in Suwayda, amplifying Druze separatism to weaken
the state. These operations are part of a coherent strategy of keeping
Syria militarily incapacitated and economically vulnerable. The objective
is to limit Syria’s ability to challenge Israeli dominance.
*Israel is the master of the house*

This strategy is guided by Israel’s doctrine of “calibrated containment,”
which treats permanent Syrian fragmentation as a security objective.
Israeli operations across Syria and Lebanon, including restrictions on
Hezbollah’s mobility, help preserve a system of managed instability in the
country. The suppression of Palestinian political forces in Damascus fits
the same logic, preventing any alternative political pole from emerging
that could disrupt the regional energy architecture now being built.

Arab regimes reopening their embassies in Damascus present their engagement
as a sign of solidarity, yet their calculations are fundamentally
transactional. Reintegration under U.S. oversight stabilizes their own
regimes and embeds Syria within a regional system governed by Western
control over energy flows, transit routes, and infrastructure investment.

As Israel launches periodic strikes across the region with total impunity,
it is sending a message to the people of the region: we are the masters of
the house.

Turkey has entrenched a parallel form of dependency. Its shift from direct
intervention to structural integration has transformed northern Syria into
an extension of its border economy, where Turkish currency, contractors,
and energy distributors dominate. This is framed as “stabilization,” but it
institutionalizes long-term dependence on Ankara.

The Gulf monarchies have become Syria’s principal financiers. Saudi Arabia,
the UAE, and Qatar deploy reconstruction capital through corporate vehicles
tied to their national energy strategies. Their funding is not aid but
leverage, conditioning liquidity on political conformity. These
arrangements fold Syria into a Gulf-Israeli energy framework that
privileges external interests over national renewal.

Russia and Iran, though critical to preventing state collapse, now find
their influence shrinking. Moscow remains militarily present but
strategically diminished; Tehran’s networks have been disrupted by
al-Sharaa’s restructuring. Their foothold is tolerated only insofar as it
does not challenge the architecture shaped by Western, Gulf, and Israeli
priorities.

And amid all of this, Israel remains the uncontested regional hegemon. As
Israel launches periodic strikes across the region with total impunity, it
is sending a message to the people of the region: we are the masters of the
house.

For Syrians, the implications are profound. A state that once claimed
centrality in the Arab liberation project risks becoming the conduit
through which the Palestinian presence is erased on its own soil. If
pressure on the remaining Palestinian factions continues, al-Sharaa faces a
historic choice: revive a meaningful liberation project or preside over
Syria’s absorption into a regional order built on foreign control and
energy dependency.

This is not rehabilitation: it is annexation through consent.

As Gaza burns and Lebanon falters, the same powers that invoke security to
justify genocide invoke stability to legitimize Syria’s subordination. The
vocabulary shifts, but the logic doesn’t.

Yet Syria’s predicament is not solely the result of foreign manipulation.
Dependency took root in decades of authoritarian governance, economic
mismanagement, and the suppression of dissent. External powers merely
exploited vulnerabilities already embedded.

True independence begins with self-critique as much as it does with
resistance. It demands institutions capable of withstanding external
pressure, particularly in the energy sector, where sovereignty is most
easily compromised.

Sovereignty cannot be reclaimed by aligning with stronger states or through
orchestrated defiance. It begins with knocking down the political
foundations that allow dependency to take hold. Tell me who your friends
are, and I will tell you who you are.
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