Lifting all U.S. sanctions from Syria risks bolstering a jihadist regime, Israeli analysts warned after President Donald Trump’s announcement in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.

After announcing the removal of sanctions, Trump met the following day in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former head of Al Qaeda in Syria whose nom de guerre was Ahmed al-Jolani.

Trump also urged al-Sharaa to join the Abraham Accords, and in doing so, recognize and normalize relations with Israel. He also called on the Syrian president to expel foreign terrorists, specifically mentioning Palestinian terrorists, and to cooperate with the U.S. to stop ISIS from growing. 

Al-Sharaa said he was committed to the 1974 disengagement agreement with Israel, according to a White House readout. That agreement includes keeping a demilitarized buffer zone on the Syrian side of the border.

Trump did not, however, specify what kind of government Syria should have, nor that it will protect minorities — an issue that Israel has emphasized, acting to strike against forces affiliated with al-Sharaa who clashed with Druze residents in southern Syria.

Israel has approached al-Sharaa and his new government with skepticism, referring to him as a jihadist in a suit and discouraging countries from lifting sanctions and normalizing relations with the new regime in Damascus. In addition, the IDF has continued its deployment in the buffer zone in response to militias entering the area after ousted Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad was toppled last year, and has struck deeper within Syria to stop Iranian arms transfers and warn against attacks on the Druze community.

According to Maj.-Gen. (res.) Tamir Hayman, director of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, Trump’s move to lift all sanctions “surprised [Israel] fundamentally.”

Hayman told Israel’s Army Radio on Wednesday that Israel had hoped that Washington would move towards “a gradual outline of partial lifting of sanctions while ensuring that the regime does not become Islamist-jihadist,” together with the demilitarization of the Syrian Golan Heights and Damascus recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the rest of the Golan Heights.

Instead, al-Sharaa “gets everything in one day. [This is] simply missing a historic opportunity that could have advanced [Israel] in both the northern and regional arenas,” Hayman added.

Carmit Valensi and Amal Hayek, researchers at INSS, wrote in a paper provided to JI before publication that “from the Israeli angle, the developments raise many concerns. The Syrian case is an additional expression of Trump’s independent moves that do not necessarily take Israeli interests into consideration.”

In addition, Trump’s actions vis-a-vis Syria “show the increased weight given to Turkey and Syria in designing the regional order,” they wrote.

“Israel still has military levers in Syria that should be translated into security arrangements and diplomatic achievements in the framework of channels of discussion with the new regime,” Valensi and Hayek wrote.

Former IDF Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin argued against the Israeli establishment view, which he said “decided not to give [al-Sharaa] a chance.” Yadlin supported Israel’s destruction of the Syrian military, but not its continued presence and strikes on its neighbor to the northeast.

“The fact that [former Syrian President Bashar] Assad is gone is good for Israel, and now we have a new person that we don’t really know whether he is an Al Qaeda terrorist or if he is a new leader for Syria that will take it to a different relationship with its neighbors and a different Syria,” Yadlin said.

Yadlin said that “the Lebanese and the Syrians are now willing to decouple from the Palestinian issue” to support their reconstruction and allow for “some kind of arrangement with Israel” that will make the U.S., Europe and Gulf states more likely to invest in their rebuilding.

Gabby Deutch contributed to this report.