Ryan Crocker in Lebanon, Syria; MBN across the region

Colleagues,

MBN keeps chipping away, most recently hard at work on: “Disarming Hamas” (Yehia), “Hezbollah’s Schools of Hate (Asrar), “When Sufism Confronts Extremism” (Randa) — on why the IAEA doesn’t trust Iran (Andres) and how Houthi cells operate inside government-held areas in Yemen (Ezat).

Let’s keep spreading the word and building the MBN network.

Aya speaks to Boston College students in early November (thanks to Professor Martha Bayles).

I’ll be with Bard College students and faculty that same week in New York (thanks to the Alexander Hamilton Society).

On November 6, Amira Maaty hosts members of the MBN young professionals program at the National Endowment for Democracy.

On November 5-6, Jerusalem-based representatives from CAMERA — the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis — joins us in Springfield.

MBN This Week

I’m commending a good deal of material, including:

• Joe’s interview with Middle East Institute (MEI) Vice President Ken Pollack. Ken spoke with Joe about the Gaza peace deal, Gulf politics, and Chinese and Russia influence in our region (Ken kindly hosts me for a discussion with his research staff at MEI on November 18).
• Rami’s video on Syrian President Ahmad Sharra’s visit to Moscow. The “reunion” trip, notes Rami, omits Moscow’s role in mass murder and destruction of modern day Syria.
• Rasha’s work, together with Rami, digging into the prospects for meaningful Palestinian Authority reform.
• Ghassan’s story on President Trump’s envoy to Iraq. Mark Savaya is a Chaldean Christian of Iraqi descent from Detroit.
• Ibrahim Essa’s (with support from Khalid) program challenging the myth of consensus in Islam. Ibrahim explores how this “great myth” has been used to suppress independent thought and intellectual diversity.
• Sukaina El Musheikhess’s report on Qatar’s recent approval of its railway connection with Saudi Arabia — and the momentum around the long-awaited Gulf Railway Project designed to link all six states of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

That’s rich material, dear colleagues; tech and innovation, family and faith, Syria, Gaza, Gulf — and the American story and U.S. perspective.

You are essential. MBN is America’s only Arabic language voice in the Middle East and North Africa. Let’s keep developing MBN’s distinctive role.

Savings, Efficiency, Accountability — And an Editorial Offensive

It was just over a year ago that we started with reform and restructure. Transformation never stopped. We’ve reduced payroll by more than 90 percent, saving the American taxpayer tens of millions of dollars. We’ve been passionate about efficiency and accountability all along the way.

Under exceptionally demanding circumstances — there’s been war in the Middle East, too — MBN has developed a new editorial strategy. In recent weeks, we’ve held offsite worships with managers and editors and have by now a new product road map in hand. Thanks Leila, Abed, Matt, Christian, Alina, and the entire crew.

Your work shows beautifully. Have a look at Andres’s first Iran newsletter. It’s terrific. Stay tuned for Min’s China Influence Tracker.

The Iran Briefing is the latest addition to MBN’s offerings of premier journalism on the Middle East, including Alhurra.com in Arabic and an English-language site, the just launched MBN Magazine, and the Friday Briefing, which has the best of our work from the week.

If you have hot Iran tips, suggestions, or questions for Andres, please feel free to email him at ailves@mbn-news.com.

Tell friends: Sign up to receive the MBN Iran Briefing. They can read the Arabic language edition of the newsletter here.

Ryan Crocker in Lebanon and Syria

Our board chair Ryan Crocker is just back from Lebanon and Syria. The six-time ambassador and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom discussed his trip with me by phone earlier this week. I asked him for impressions to share in this letter. What he’s provided is remarkable. Ryan’s notes as follows:

I had the opportunity to visit Lebanon and Syria October 12-17 at the invitation of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The trip brought home to me the magnitude of the refugee crisis in both countries, the level of human misery, and the impact of dramatically reduced funding to cope with this crisis, especially from the U.S. 

The numbers are stunning. Lebanon absorbed close to a million Syrian refugees during the Syrian civil war, 2011-2024. Some 350,000 have now returned, but many of those may seek to go back to Lebanon given the dire conditions they find at home. In addition, some 100,000 new refugees, Alawi and Shia, have arrived in northern Lebanon and the Biqa Valley in 2025, fleeing retribution from the Sunni majority. They are living in subhuman conditions in abandoned buildings, without heat or running water.

Conditions are not much better in Syria. We visited the eastern suburbs of Damascus where the devastation is apocalyptic. Bombed out buildings look good compared to vast swaths that are nothing but rubble. This is 15 minutes from downtown Damascus. We met with a group of recently returned refugee women at a UNHCR-run community center. A substantial number said had they known how bad conditions were in Syria, they would not have left Lebanon. And what they left was pretty awful. Many had lived for years in what UNHCR calls informal tented settlements. 

The U.S.

What is the U.S. doing? We have cut our assistance to UNHCR from $2 billion in 2024 to $800 million in 2025. The impact on UNHCR operations has been devastating. UNHCR’s dedicated and talented personnel are coping by centralizing some services and consolidating operations with other agencies, primarily WHO and UNICEF. But a reduction of funding of this magnitude has a direct impact on refugees themselves, primarily in health and education. Less than a third of secondary school age refugees in Lebanon are actually in school.

 There are solid national security arguments for a restoration of U.S. funding. Unchecked refugee flows are destabilizing, as we saw with the wave of Syrian refugees into Europe in 2015. Of course, Europeans and others must do their part.

Long term refugee populations can also be a source of regional instability; it is clearly in the interest of security in this volatile region to facilitate the safe and orderly return of Syrians to their country in a manner that allows them to contribute to the rebuilding of Syria, not serve as a source of further unrest.

 But it is more than that. We are America. We have the means to alleviate human misery. We are still Ronald Reagan’s shining city on a hill. We need to remember that. 

Returning to Syria

This was my first visit to Syria since I was the American ambassador to Damascus, 1998-2001. Damascus itself is more dilapidated, but largely unscathed. The only visible war damage in the city itself is at the Ministry of Defense in the city center, bombed by the Israelis in July. The largely Sunni suburbs are devastated, as are the Sunni cities of Aleppo, Homs and Hama. The restoration of basic services such as water, power and communications will be an immense challenge, as will employment and education. Full scale reconstruction is estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars, well beyond the capabilities of the new government now or in the future.

Expectations are high for substantial assistance from the Gulf. The biggest ask of the United States from the interim government is the repeal of the Caesar Act, imposing stiff sanctions on the Assad regime, and which still remains in effect.

Damascus exudes an atmosphere of hope and concern. Traffic is chaotic at all hours, there is no curfew and shops and cafes are bustling. The Old City is more subdued, reflecting the economic impact of more than a decade of war. The concerns on the street are largely over economic conditions, with exhilaration over the fall of the Assad regime giving way to the harsh realities of the legacy of the war. 

The Kurds

The political challenges facing the interim government are at least as immense as the economic. Internally, the biggest issue is the future relationship between the Kurds who control much of northeastern Syria and the interim government. An agreement reached between the two sides in March on integration of Kurdish civilian and military structures into the Syrian state. Implementation has been halting, largely over the issue of the terms of integration for the Syrian Defense Forces (SDF). The Kurdish position has been that they must be allowed to join as units; the government has insisted that incorporation be as individual soldiers. During my visit, SDF commander Mazloum announced that the Damascus government had accepted the SDF demand. We will see.

Other Groups

There are tensions with other groups. Revenge violence against Alawi and Shia in minorities in the north and coastal areas of Syria have sparked substantial refugee flows into Lebanon. More recently, clashes between the Syrian Druze community and Arab Bedouins in the south have sparked concern — and triggered the Israeli bombing of the defense ministry.

There are also concerns about a lingering Islamic State (ISIS) presence. Although acts of violence attributed to ISIS have been few, the interim government considers the organization to be a threat, and the UN has reports of ISIS fighters infiltrating communities in and around Damascus with returning internally displaced persons.

The agreement by UNHCR to take over management in January of the al-Hul camp near the Iraqi border (another reason to increase U.S. support for the agency) promises a more orderly and systematic system of releases/repatriations from the camp and better coordination with the Damascus government.

These immense internal challenges are exacerbated in some cases by the actions of other countries. There is speculation in Damascus that following the Suwayda clashes of summer, the ultimate Israeli aim is a fragmented Syria with a Druze dominated rump state in the south supported by Israel (Israeli flags were much in evidence among the Druze in Suwayda during the July fighting).

Turkey, Russia, and Iran

In the north, Turkish policy is driven by animosity toward the SDF which it equates with the PKK. This animosity has led it to support anti-Kurdish proxy forces that are still active, and raises the question of whether will permit the integration of Kurdish forces into the Syrian military.

Farther afield are Russia and Iran. Shara was in Moscow during my visit to Syria, gaining from Putin a “no strings attached” commitment of Russian assistance to the interim government. Of course, there are strings — the continued operation of Russia’s two military bases in Syria. The principle was established in the final days of the Assad regime in which Russia withheld military support for Assad in Aleppo and Homs in return for HTS acceptance of the bases. Shara the pragmatist will also require Moscow’s support for his Russian equipped military. Russia will retain a toehold in the new Syria, but it is unlikely to gain considerable influence. Even if Shara were so inclined, the extent of Russian and Russia-abetted atrocities against his core Sunni constituency during the war would serve as a check. 

Iran was also a loser with the fall of the Assad regime. Tehran had vigorously supported the country — father and son — as its only Arab ally virtually the entire time since the 1979 revolution. The hostility toward Iran and its proxies is now palpable on the part of the new regime.

That said, Iran is down but not out in both Syria and Lebanon. It will continue to seek ways to support Hizballah in Lebanon including attempts at arms supplies through now hostile but disorganized Syrian territory. There is also the possibility of stoking sectarian violence through support of Alawi militias in the coastal areas.

The U.S. Special Envoy and the American Diplomatic Presence in Damascus

So what is the U.S. role in this new Syria? Potentially decisive. President Trump took the bold and potentially transformative step in the spring of meeting with Shara, recognizing his interim government and lifting executive sanctions. Since then, the U.S. has been active in trying to shape events in and around Syria, largely through the efforts of Special Envoy for Syria (and ambassador to Türkiye) Tom Barrack. Barrack appears to be well regarded in Damascus, including for his tough language calling for a halt to Israeli escalatory actions during the Suwayda fighting.

What we don’t have in Syria is a functioning U.S. Embassy. This is largely because of security concerns. I get it about risk; I have taken a few during my long career. But risk has to be managed. It cannot be eliminated. Zero risk means zero action. Unfortunately that is the diplomatic posture we have been in since Benghazi. Empowered special envoys can do a lot, as Ambassador Barrack has demonstrated. But we badly need a permanent diplomatic presence on the ground to coordinate, assess, influence and shape conditions conducive to the emergence of a stable and secure Syria, at peace at home and with its neighbors. Retail diplomacy is essential to the execution of high policy. 

Soft Power

In this regard, I am concerned that this Administration has deprived itself of vital tools necessary for policy success. The challenges in Syria call out for a robust USAID presence to channel humanitarian assistance and to foster urgent redevelopment through capacity building and micro-finance programs, low cost, high impact initiatives at which USAID excelled.

Similarly, the Administration’s apparent intention to eliminate USAGM and its grantees — including Middle East Broadcasting Networks — constitutes unilateral disarmament in the information wars in which our adversaries such as RT and Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting are increasing their disinformation efforts to our detriment. In this sense, the Administration is at war with itself, choosing to eliminate sources of executive power rather than refocusing them.

Austin Tice

Policy becomes personal. One element of unfinished business in Syria is the fate of Austin Tice, the journalist who disappeared in Syria in 2012, at the hands of the Assad regime. I was involved in early efforts to secure his release. Sadly, more than thirteen years after his abduction and almost a year since the fall of the Assad regime, there are still no answers. The interim government does seem seized of the issue, and the Administration deserves credit for keeping it on the high level agenda.

******

I’ve asked Ryan for a discussion with our staff. He’s kindly agreed. I’ll schedule a time. The MBN board is strong. Our board chair is a privilege.

It’s been another full week for MBN. Legal, HR, finance, and operations all have full plates and work tirelessly.

Thank you, dear colleagues.

Deep yoga breath.

We’ll get there.

 

Sincerely, Jeff