Syrian troops were in Lebanon for 29 years, until 2005, and for most of that time the question of who carried a gun there was answered partly in Damascus. On Sunday the Syrian president answered it differently.

Weapons, and the decision to make war or peace, belong to the Lebanese state alone, Ahmad al-Sharaa told Al Jazeera's Al-Muqabala program. "The continued presence of weapons outside the authority of the Lebanese state will have major negative consequences for the region," he said. Syria is not considering military intervention there, he added, answering rumors that it might, though it has "several cards that it can offer the Lebanese state to use as it sees fit."

He did not say what the cards are.

The interview ran long and covered four unfinished negotiations: with Israel, with Lebanon, with Russia, and with the armed group holding Syria's northeast. In each one he described the same posture. Avoid the confrontation, keep the channel open, wait.

One caution belongs at the top. He was the only person in the room. Israel has not confirmed a security track with Damascus. Moscow has not described the state of the base talks. The YPG/SDF has not answered what he said about the delay. Beirut has not responded to the offer. What follows is one head of state's account of four relationships, given to a broadcaster, and no counterparty has corroborated any of it.

Israel

Syria is working toward a security agreement with Israel, al-Sharaa said, with several countries taking part. He hopes it becomes a gateway to something wider. "If the security agreement with Israel succeeds, it will pave the way for comprehensive peace without relinquishing Syria's right to the occupied Golan Heights."

Syria is avoiding clashes with Israel, he said.

That is one way to describe the situation. On the same Sunday he was speaking, Israeli forces shelled the area around Tarnaca village in the northern Kuneytra countryside and advanced toward Mariye and Arıda in the western Dera countryside, clearing a road with an earthmover and setting up a checkpoint, according to Syrian state media. Israel seized the UN-controlled buffer zone after Bashar al-Assad fell, declared the 1974 disengagement agreement collapsed, and, on Anadolu Ajansı's count, has built 10 bases and military positions across the two provinces. Israeli officials say they intend to stay in what they call a security zone.

António Guterres, in Damascus the same day, called the violations of Syrian sovereignty unacceptable and said the UN will give the Security Council a full report on them at the end of this month.

Lebanon

Israeli attacks have killed 4,330 people in Lebanon and injured 12,236 since 2 March 2026, according to official Lebanese figures. A framework agreement mediated by the United States and signed on 26 June 2026 provides for a phased Israeli withdrawal from occupied Lebanese territory, with no timetable attached. It ties completion to the Lebanese army taking over the vacated areas and to the disarmament of non-state groups, Hezbollah among them.

The Lebanese army says Israeli attacks are getting in the way of its deployment in the south, which is the part of the bargain it is supposed to deliver.

Al-Sharaa said solving Lebanon takes more than security arrangements, and that chaos there would reach Syria directly and immediately. He warned that an expansion of the US-Israel war on Iran would carry severe consequences across the region.

Iran's supreme leader spent the same Sunday restating his support for Hezbollah and demanding an unconditional end to Israeli attacks on Lebanon.

Russia

The talks with Moscow over its military presence have not concluded, al-Sharaa said. He described substantial shared interests and said Russia had moved quickly to open a new chapter with Damascus.

He gave no detail beyond that, and TurkishPress could not establish the current status of the Russian facilities.

The northeast

He acknowledged that the agreement with the YPG/SDF, the PKK's Syrian affiliate that controls the northeast, is behind schedule. The government remains committed to it, he said, and he is betting on its success.

He and the group's commander, Mazloum Abdi, signed that agreement on 10 March 2025. It covers folding military and civilian structures into the Syrian state, a ceasefire, and constitutional guarantees. Sixteen months later the folding has not happened.

The missing

Al-Sharaa announced a committee for the people who disappeared between 2011 and 2024, working to international standards alongside countries with expertise in the field.

The scale it faces was described in New York three days earlier by Karla Quintana, who runs the UN's Independent Institution on Missing Persons in Syria. The country has one of the highest totals in the world, she said, absolutely and per head of population. Her institution processed more than 75,000 documents in the past year, nine times the year before.

She has names for a little more than 600 cases.