This is John Batchel, a conversation with colleague Jonathan Shanzer of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy

about the report that the U.S. is cutting back its bases in eastern Syria from five to three, eventually to one.

At the same time, there's reason to believe that the U.S. State Department is in conversation with Al-S.

the head of the self-named president of the country,

ahead of what remains of an al-Qaeda operation, HTS, and Damascus.

The State Department is talking to him about lifting sanctions, about normalizing in some fashion relations between the U.S. and Damascus, despite the fact that Damascus is about

all the reach that Alshara has at this moment, the country remains in chaos and anarchy,

with millions having fled the country and now camped in Europe, in Lebanon, in Turkey, Jordan. So what is to be done? Jonathan

speaks to grown bored with the Syrian internecine warfare. Let's get to it and pretend that

Al-Shars in trouble. What about a penalty he pays for being an al-Qaeda cutthroat question mark?

Here's Jonathan. More of this.

No, I think that's right, John. What we have right now is a situation where the world has just grown

tired and perhaps even bored of the Syrian internecine conflict that it broke out in 2011, 2012.

It was a brutal war that obviously brought in factions like ISIS and Al-Qaeda and all manner of other foreign actors. And so when Abu

Muhammad al-Jolani or Ahmed al-Shara, as he's now calling himself, when he emerged victorious,

I think there was a sense of, hey, well, maybe we'll just end this thing now.

And I do believe that that's what the Arabs want. It's what the Turks want. It's, I think, what the Trump administration wants. It's what the Europeans want. They want stability. And I think they are willing to prioritize that stability over the concerns that this man was indeed an al-Qaeda operative. And we now have reports this morning

that Al-Jolani or Al-Shara, depending on how you want to describe him, he will be speaking at the United Nations in September at the General Assembly.

We have sanctions relief that is already underway.

We have normalization taking place, banks, operating, businesses preparing to go into Syria.

I don't believe that this is all going to happen at once.

I believe that this will be slow

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