TEHRAN — The lifting of U.S. sanctions on Syria and its removal from America's terrorist designation list coincide with Damascus’s concessions to Israel and the U.S. to reshape Syria's landscape.

A day after Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani held a meeting with Mossad chief Roman Gofman in Amman, Jordan, with America's Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack also in attendance, the U.S. Treasury removed Syria from its list of state sponsors of terrorism and lifted sanctions imposed on it. 

This is while the U.S. State Department removed Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly known as al-Nusra Front, from its list of foreign terrorist organizations. HTS previously served as al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria.

Washington had placed Syria on its state sponsors of terrorism list in 1979, which had no connection to Iran's Islamic Revolution. Rather, the Zionist-American animosity toward Syria since that time stemmed from Damascus's support for all Palestinian resistance forces, Lebanon's Hezbollah, and other global liberation movements.  

The timing of the U.S. decision added further significance, coming on the heels of reports that Damascus had made fresh concessions to Tel Aviv during Foreign Minister al-Shaibani's talks with Mossad chief Roman Gofman in Amman.

According to reports following the Amman meeting, Damascus is expected to capitulate to all Israeli demands and conditions regarding military and security matters. Most notably, the new government will continue to prevent and crack down on any Palestinian activity within Syria, coordinate intelligence with the Israelis against Hezbollah and anyone deemed a threat to the regime's security, and avoid any serious military cooperation with Turkey that might pose a risk to the Zionist regime.

Reports also indicate that al-Shaibani was warned against any resistance in southern Syria, where the Israeli regime's military has already been operating freely without any intervention from Syrian forces stationed there. Damascus likewise limited its measures to a statement of condemnation following the regime's defense minister, Israel Katz's, tour of Syrian territory, something Netanyahu had also done previously.

The concessions offered by al-Shaibani, in the presence of representatives from security and intelligence agencies, clearly reflect Syria’s submission to Israeli dictates imposed by former Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer during his earlier meetings with al-Shaibani in Paris.

That was enough to secure al-Shaibani's agreement to meet with Mossad chief Gofman rather than Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar, signifying that Tel Aviv deals with Syria solely on security terms, without recognizing it as a sovereign state.

Perhaps for this reason, Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, a senior Druze religious authority in Syria, came out a day after the Amman meeting to declare: “The Druze are an integral part of Israel.”

Regardless of how Damascus's new rulers interpret the Israeli model, which dismantled Syria's entire military, security, and political infrastructure in exchange for removal from America's state sponsors of terrorism list and sanctions relief, the Amman meeting proved that Damascus possesses no independent will to determine the fate of the new Syria. It has clearly become subject to the regional and international winds blowing from the Turkish north, the distant American west, and the volatile Israeli neighborhood.

Everyone seems to have forgotten that the new rulers in Damascus were once on American, European, and international terrorism lists, and that President Trump in April 2018 placed a $10 million bounty on Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. 

They also seem to have forgotten that everyone who stood with al-Jolani, including al-Shaibani, Saudi national Abdullah al-Muhaysini, whose name was also removed from U.S. sanctions lists, and the current military and intelligence leaders in Damascus, were once hunted down and wanted worldwide on charges of terrorism, murder, and criminality. Their actions were rooted in sectarianism from the very start.

All this while, some intelligence agencies were backing these individuals and their armed terrorist groups, with direct Zionist support, as evidenced when thousands of al-Nusra and other terrorists were treated in Israeli hospitals for wounds sustained in clashes with the former Syrian army.

Israeli occupation forces' helicopters also smuggled hundreds of White Helmets members and their families from southern Syria into Israel and then Jordan, after they had been trapped by the former Syrian army.

Finally, no one paid attention to the court decision last week sentencing former Syrian Grand Mufti Ahmad Hassoun to life imprisonment on charges of sectarian incitement. Though Hassoun was very moderate in his statements about terrorist groups, the court and those who set it up seem to have forgotten that these groups started their revolt with religious and sectarian talk against "infidel Christians, Alawites, and apostate Shias." 

This rhetoric enjoyed support from several countries and their clerics, who issued religious decrees that allowed killing, slavery, and pillage against the Syrian and Iraqi peoples.

It is precisely what Daesh, the Nusra Front, and other terrorists, by American and international classification, did and acted on, having come from every corner of the planet "to fight in defense of religion and sect." 

It is abundantly clear that this terror was and remains at the service of its masters in Washington, Tel Aviv, and other places, who want the new Syria to serve them with or without terrorism.