Syria's new government is run by men the US once called terrorists, and Washington has decided not to care — bad news for Syria's minorities and for any American who expects a passport to mean protection.

• Syria's top diplomat to Washington is a former al-Nusra member who helped hold an American journalist captive in 2016, and he got the job largely through family ties to the president's wife.
• Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former al-Qaeda commander now running Syria, has been welcomed in New York after Trump lifted sanctions — a move Netanyahu pushed for, since the new regime leaves Israel alone and tolerates its expanding hold on Syrian land.
• Massacres of Alawites and Druze have killed thousands with almost no Western attention, while attacks on Christians draw outrage — a sign of which victims are politically useful.
• The "moderate rebels" story was always spin: US-supplied weapons and trucks routinely ended up with al-Qaeda fighters, who wanted an Islamic state and said so openly.
• Hardliners who believed in that project never disappeared, and ISIS sleeper cells are rebuilding in areas that were supposedly cleared.

Outlook: Expect more terrorist attacks inside Syria against the new government, deeper Turkish and Israeli control of occupied areas, and no real independence for Syrians any time soon.