# Syria’s New President Tests Regional Order With Bid for Multinational Security Pact With Israel

*Sunday, July 26, 2026 at 8:08 PM UTC — Hamer Intelligence Services Desk*

**Published**: 2026-07-26T20:08:44.202Z (2h ago)
**Category**: geopolitics | **Region**: Middle East
**Importance**: 9/10
**Sources**: OSINT
**Permalink**: https://hamerintel.com/data/articles/12592.md
**Source**: https://hamerintel.com/summaries

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**Deck**: Syria’s President Ahmad al‑Sharaa says Damascus is pursuing a security agreement with Israel, backed by multiple countries, that he argues could open the door to ‘comprehensive peace’ without giving up the Golan Heights. The bid puts Lebanon, Iran, Russia and U.S. sanctions policy in play — and leaves Syrian civilians weighing promises of prosperity against decades of unresolved conflict.

Syria’s new leadership is trying to turn one of the region’s most entrenched fault lines into a diplomatic lever. In an interview aired on 26 July, President Ahmad al‑Sharaa said Damascus is seeking a security pact with Israel that would involve “a large group of countries,” a move he suggested could eventually pave the way to comprehensive peace while preserving Syria’s claim to the occupied Golan Heights.

Al‑Sharaa, speaking to Al Jazeera according to the broadcast excerpts, framed the initiative as an alternative to what he called “futile conflicts” with Israel that have drained regional economies and locked populations into cycles of insecurity. He said Syria aims to “pressure Israel into adopting a balanced policy towards Syria” by anchoring any deal in broader regional and international guarantees, without specifying which states are at the table or how far talks have advanced. There is no independent confirmation from Israel or third parties that formal negotiations on such a pact are underway.

For Syrians, the promise is not abstract. After more than a decade of war, sanctions and economic collapse, the president repeatedly tied his foreign‑policy vision to domestic survival: lifting sanctions, drawing investment and reconnecting marginalized regions like the oil‑rich east and the long‑neglected Deir ez‑Zor corridor to national growth. He acknowledged that deteriorating living conditions have already triggered protests in areas such as Deir ez‑Zor, where anger at the “so‑called Syrian government” erupted into demonstrations on 26 July over shortages and neglect.

Regionally, the proposal touches almost every active fault line. Al‑Sharaa warned that Lebanon “is always faced with two options: either an Israeli occupation or a civil war,” and said Damascus is in talks with Beirut on “a set of solutions” to steer it away from another collapse and to link Lebanon to what he called a Syrian “renaissance.” He insisted, however, that confronting Hezbollah is not part of any bargain over lifting sanctions on Syria, pushing back on speculation that Western or Arab normalization would be conditioned on curbing the Iran‑backed group.

The president also underlined that Syrian‑Russian military ties remain in flux. He described a “historical relationship” with Moscow and said discussions over the future of Russian bases in Syria are ongoing, without disclosing details. At the same time, he pointed to mediation efforts by Saudi Arabia and Türkiye to convince former U.S. President Donald Trump to ease sanctions, claiming those efforts led to some measures being lifted. He argued that relief is limited as long as Syria remains on Washington’s State Sponsors of Terrorism list, where it has been designated since 1979.

If pursued seriously, a security pact with Israel that preserves the Golan dispute would challenge long‑standing Arab diplomatic formulas that tied normalization to full territorial withdrawal. It would also complicate calculations for Iran and Hezbollah, whose deterrence strategies are built around armed pressure on Israel from Syrian and Lebanese territory, and for Russia, which uses its Syrian foothold as a projection platform into the Eastern Mediterranean.

For now, the initiative exists mostly as presidential intent and televised messaging. But it signals that Damascus is trying to reposition itself not just as a survivor of war, but as a broker in a regional security architecture that is being renegotiated from the Red Sea to the Caucasus. The memorable line in al‑Sharaa’s pitch is less about Israel than about his own population: he says Syria must offer its people “growth and prosperity” instead of an “extension of a historical legacy” of confrontation.

The next indicators to watch are whether Israel or key Arab capitals acknowledge structured talks; whether any easing of U.S. or European sanctions begins to move beyond rhetoric; and how non‑state actors from Hezbollah to Palestinian factions respond to the prospect of a Syrian‑backed security framework that seeks to constrain, rather than arm, the regional battlefield.