Ever since former dictator Bashar al-Assad was rushed out of Damascus as his hollowed-out dynastic regime collapsed in December 2024, Syria has existed somewhere between hope and anguish. On the one hand, the new Syrian government under the stewardship of Ahmed al-Sharaa, an Al-Qaeda commander in his past life, has done a fairly remarkable job reaching out to the West—first and foremost the United States—in the hope of attracting the foreign investment his country so desperately needs. Yet on