I'm John Batscher with Bill Rajio, my colleague and co-host of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

He keeps the Long War Journal.

And a filing on the Long War Journal right now is Ahmed Shahrawi of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy.

Speak to the what we know about the conflict

launched by the attacks on the Druze of Syria.

But there are other players in Syria that don't make a lot of sense all lined up.

One of them is the United States in conversation with a known al-Qaeda veteran, Al-Shara himself.

But at the same time, we have contractors attached to the American military to the east.

We have Russians either at the air base or the naval base to the west.

We have Aloitites who are well-armed along the coast and are loyal to Assad, and we have the

Turkish army stretched along the border in the north looking to take control of airfields.

At least they were the last time we talked to Ahmed.

And then, of course, the very significant presence of the IDF along the Golan Heights, Mount Hermon,

and looking into the interior towards Damascus to maintain security.

Occam, the concern here, and Bill and I talked about this over the years,

is that we're watching Washington approach what appears to be another Taliban deal.

You will all recall that the negotiation was between

the first Trump administration and the so-called Taliban in Doha, leading to a document that had to

be implemented only when the Taliban moved significant ways to comport to being peaceful, coming in

from the cold. However, the Biden administration then decided that

the document was everything. They didn't need to do anything and left with a catastrophe behind.

Is there any talk that that is possibly what's going on right now, an agreement between Washington and Damascus that would

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