United States envoy Tom Barrack told the Antalya Diplomacy Forum on April 17, 2026, that the Middle East only functions under powerful leadership regimes — benevolent monarchies or monarchial republics. Everything else, he said, faded away after the Arab Spring.
This is not realism. It is a recycled failure. Barrack’s strongman doctrine has been tested with Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The results are identical: corruption, mass repression, terrorism, and broken American partnerships.
In Syria today, his preference for Ahmed al-Sharaa repeats the same error with predictable consequences.
Sweida province in southern Syria provides the clearest counter-evidence. It contains 500,000 people, more than 85 percent of whom are Druze and nearly 10 percent of whom are Christian. Since the Assad regime fell, Druze forces have held de facto control. The province remains the only area consistently safe for Christians in post-Assad Syria. Its mountainous terrain has protected the Druze for centuries.
Emerging in the 10th century as a distinct faith, the Druze people faced persecution and withdrew to the highlands of Lebanon, Syria, and Israel. Ottoman rulers granted them autonomy behind natural defenses. French attempts to absorb them into an Arab framework failed. Their enduring rule of survival is straightforward: align with the strongest power, because a minority this size cannot survive backing losers. That calculation now directs them toward Israel.
In May 2025, when al-Sharaa-linked forces harassed and massacred Druze communities in southern Syria, Israel launched precision strikes near the presidential palace in Damascus. The message was unmistakable.
In Israel, Israeli-Druze citizens blocked major roads and lit bonfires demanding protection for their Syrian brethren. In Sweida, protesters displayed handmade Israeli flags — blue stripes on white with the Star of David — because commercial versions do not exist in hostile territory. These actions reflect cold strategic convergence, not sentiment.
The payoff is purely geostrategic. Sweida sits as a natural mountain barrier between Israel’s Golan Heights and Damascus. The Golan covers 1,200 square kilometers. Israel annexed it in 1981 after decades of Syrian aggression.
From 1948 to 1967, Damascus stationed 265 artillery pieces, bunkers, trenches, minefields, and snipers on the heights. On April 7, 1967, more than 300 Syrian shells hammered Kibbutz Gadot in 40 minutes. The 1973 Yom Kippur War saw Syrian forces overrun portions of the plateau before their reversal. Israeli control ended that threat.
The Golan now faces outward. No Syrian villages endure shelling in return. Retention of the Golan is a non-negotiable security reality.
Indeed, a formal Druze national autonomous entity in Sweida — independent or modeled on the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq alongside a special arrangement with the State of Israel — creates an avant-garde buffer zone to protect our northeastern flank for generations. It blocks any Iranian or proxy land corridor through southern Syria and allows the Druze people to achieve a dream that dates back to the Israeli Mossad ‘Periphery Doctrine’ era. It enables the realistic path forward: Israel retains the Golan while a post-Assad Syria normalizes relations under the Abraham Accords.
Trade integration follows the proven pattern. Israel-United Arab Emirates bilateral trade already surpassed $3 billion per year by 2024 and expanded by more than 15 percent in 2025. Extending this model northward anchors Damascus in a moderate regional bloc and contains Tehran without exposing Israel’s northern border to Islamist volatility.
Barrack’s approach has already forced America’s most effective partners against the Islamic State — the Kurds — into a desperate accommodation to avoid slaughter. The same dynamic now threatens the Druze. Thus, granting Sweida formal autonomy or federal status is not Balkanization. It is the only durable stabilizer available in a fractured Levant.
The Druze flag — five horizontal stripes of green, red, yellow, blue, and white — already flies over a functioning safe zone. Formal recognition, energy-sharing agreements, and Israeli security guarantees turn geography into a lasting strategy.
The Middle East does not need another centralized dictator in Damascus. It needs defensible terrain held by reliable partners whose interests align with stability. Sweida supplies exactly that.
Barrack’s strongman fixation blinds him to the obvious. The terrain, the demographics, the alliances already forming on the ground all point to one conclusion: the Druze buffer is not optional. It is essential for the future of the region.
Jose Lev is an American-Israeli scholar focused on Middle Eastern security doctrine.
A multilingual veteran of both the Israel Defense Forces’ special forces and the U.S. Army, he holds a B.S. in Neuroscience with a minor in Israel Studies from American University in Washington, D.C., three master’s degrees in international geopolitics, applied economics, and security and intelligence studies, as well as a medical degree. He is currently completing a Ph.D. in Intelligence and Global Security in the Washington, D.C. area.
Alongside blogging for The Times of Israel, he is a writing fellow at the U.S.-based think tank, the Middle East Forum; regularly appears on Latin American television networks to provide geopolitical and security analysis; and is a member of the Association for Israel Studies.