I'm John Batchel with Bill Rajio, my colleague and friend. We are co-hosting his colleague,

Ahmad Shirawai, who's been watching very carefully Syria for some time and helped us to understand

a completely non-transparent state that is broken, failed state, if not just from the revolt that began more than a decade

and a half ago, but also from decades of abuse by the Assad regime.

Now we come to the territory of Syria.

Ahmed, I know the map well.

Turkey to the north, Russia to the west, Israel to the south, the U.S.

and Iran to the west.

Those powers do not at this point come forward and say, well, everything's good.

They've got a president.

We're going home.

What is your expectation about any or all of them as they watch Al-Shara?

So let me start with Israel.

Since December 8th, since the fall of the Assad regime, Israel has taken parts of southern Syria

as part of a demilitarized zone and they're currently engaging in

negotiations with the Syrian government to sign a security agreement that will, first

of all, guarantee Israel's security concerns, potentially demilitarized southern Syria and also

protect the Druze community in Sweden,

in southwest Syria.

There were reports that the agreement will be signed last week as part of the UN General

Assembly high-level meetings, but seems like there's been some hurdles during the negotiations,

primarily humanitarian corridor that the Israelis want to build or want to create through going

...