US special envoy for Syria Tom Barrack speaks during a press conference with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani and Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, in Damascus, Syria, Sept. 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

A US envoy called for a truce between the Syrian government and Kurdish-led forces to be upheld, urging steps to build trust after Damascus captured swathes of the northeast in a push to reassert central authority.

Tensions between President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) spilled into conflict this month as the SDF resisted government demands for its fighters and enclaves to be integrated into the state.

Under a ceasefire announced on Tuesday, the government gave the SDF four days to come up with a plan for its remaining enclaves to merge, and said government troops would not enter two remaining SDF-held cities if an agreement could be reached.

US envoy Tom Barrack said he met SDF commander Mazloum Abdi and leading Syrian Kurdish politician Ilham Ahmed on Thursday, and reaffirmed US support for an integration process set out in a Jan. 18 agreement.

“All parties agreed that the essential first step is the full upholding of the current ceasefire, as we collectively identify and implement confidence-building measures on all sides to foster trust and lasting stability,” he wrote on X.

The SDF, dominated by the Kurdish YPG militia, and the government have accused each other of violating the ceasefire since Tuesday.

The SDF was once Washington’s closest ally in Syria but its position has been weakened as President Donald Trump has deepened ties with Sharaa. Barrack said on Tuesday the original purpose of the SDF had largely expired.

The SDF has now fallen back to Kurdish-majority areas.

ABDI MEETS IRAQI KURDISH LEADER

Abdi also met Nechirvan Barzani, president of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region, on Thursday. Iraqi Kurdish politician Wafa Mohammed of Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) said the meeting had been convened at the request of the Iraqi Kurdish leadership to discuss the SDF’s deal with Sharaa.

“There is strong US and international pressure on the Syrian Democratic Forces to end the disputes and implement the agreement, but that does not necessarily mean the US pressure will lead to a positive outcome. The problem is that the SDF does not trust the promises made by (Sharaa),” Wafa Mohammed told Reuters.

A second Iraqi Kurdish source close to the meeting said talks would also focus on a proposal for both sides to withdraw forces by around 10 km (6 miles) from the outskirts of Hasakah city, which is ethnically mixed and still in SDF hands.

The territories seized by the Syrian government from SDF control in recent days have included Syria‘s biggest oil fields, agricultural land, and jails holding Islamic State prisoners.

The SDF, which once held a quarter or more of Syria, has sought to preserve a high degree of autonomy for areas under its control, expressing concern that the Islamist-led government in Damascus aims to dominate the country, despite Sharaa’s promises to protect the rights of all Syrians.

A Syrian foreign ministry official said the government had preferred a political solution from the outset, and continued to, adding the rights of Kurds were guaranteed and they would not be marginalized as they had been under the ousted President Bashar al-Assad.

All “options were on the table,” the official told Reuters, speaking on the condition of anonymity, urging the YPG to “heed the voice of reason and come to the negotiating table.”

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during a meeting in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 17, 2026. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS

In October 2025, an opinion piece published in Iran International cited a telling remark by British broadcaster Jon Snow about his reporting from Tehran. When asked how his network, Channel 4, managed to secure access to Iranian officials, he said simply, “They whistle, and we go.”

That seemingly innocuous line was jumped on by journalists and critics because it revealed something about the way Western media covers authoritarian states like Iran. It was a rare moment of honesty but also representative of a deeper issue in Western journalism and a reminder that when dealing with tyrants, access is not the same thing as truth.

Access as Control: How Authoritarian Power Shapes Reporting

Snow’s comment should make anyone who cares about reporting from conflict zones or closed societies sit up and take note. The problem is not just that some correspondents end up parroting the messaging of the regimes they cover. The bigger problem is that the structure of modern foreign reporting rewards access above all else. If you have a visa, if you have a fixer approved by the intelligence services, if the state can decide where you go and who you interview, then you are in. If you challenge the narrative you are shown, you risk losing that access. The idea is simple: stay onside with power and you stay in the country; challenge power and you are out. This is a kind of press freedom in name only.

This dynamic is not unique to Iran, though the Iranian case makes the point with shocking clarity. To report from Iran, Western journalists must operate under state supervision. Their fixers are often regime-approved minders who decide which families they can meet, which streets they can visit, and what stories they can tell. The price of defiance is expulsion. Most choose to stay, and so they comply. The result is journalism that reports through the regime’s lens. In this case, the coverage mirrors Tehran’s narrative while ignoring its contradictions or its crimes.

The Iran International article highlighted how this kind of reporting perpetuates the illusion that “moderates” or “reformists” within the clerical regime are always on the brink of pursuing a more friendly policy toward the West, if only Washington and its partners would be more conciliatory.

But they are the only ones able to meet with foreign press, for a reason.

It must be acknowledged how easy it is, due to simple language barriers, for a regime like Iran to tell the West one thing, through these hyper-managed interviews, and to tell their allies or their own people something entirely different. In Iran, a younger, connected, defiant secular generation is fighting for their lives against a religious dictatorship.

Stories about women walking unveiled in defiance of the compulsory hijab law are rarely told with the depth and persistence they deserve, even though they represent one of the most sustained grassroots challenges to the Islamic Republic.

When Gatekeepers Become Storytellers

This tension between access and truth is not a quirk of reporting on Iran. It applies across many of the most important conflict zones of our time.

Look at how journalists cover the Palestinian territories. To report from the West Bank or Gaza, you need permission from the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, or the relevant security forces. If you want to talk to armed groups such as Hamas or Islamic Jihad, you must do so through intermediaries, and translators, and with the blessing of those groups.

The consequence is that journalists become dependent on these authorities to open doors for them. That dependency shapes the story. The authorities are the gatekeepers and the journalists end up telling the story they want told rather than the story that needs to be heard.

The same dynamic is evident in southern Lebanon.

In 2006, Nic Robertson of CNN spoke about his experience covering the conflict in Lebanon and how Hezbollah “had control of the situation.” That level of control creates an environment where reporters must negotiate and constantly accommodate the group’s conditions for reporting, if they want to stay in the country and file their stories. That negotiation inevitably affects the substance of the reporting. Some stories that might make those groups uncomfortable never get told. The result is a version of events curated by those terrorists themselves.

When a regime-backed organization can quietly move money, people, and logistics through cartel routes, the southern border stops being a political debate and becomes a national security vulnerability.

The Iranian regime’s threat to the U.S. doesn’t just rely on missiles. It… pic.twitter.com/kHU8OwX76Q

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) January 16, 2026

The Cost of Choosing Access Over Truth

And that brings us to the central problem. Journalists who operate under these conditions face a stark choice: they can stay close to power and preserve access, or they can push harder for truth and risk being shut out. Many choose to stay. That choice is understandable on a personal level. Journalists want to be where the action is. They want to file video and cables from the front lines. They want their editors to see them as intrepid and essential. But when access is the primary measure of success, it distorts what journalism is supposed to do. Journalism is supposed to challenge power, not accommodate it. It is supposed to expose abuses and amplify voices that might otherwise go unheard. But when access is controlled by those in power, journalism can become an unintentional arm of propaganda.

This dynamic matters beyond public opinion, but also politically, as leaders in Western capitals still rely on the press to gauge what is happening inside these societies. When the media misreads a country, so do the governments that read the media. Western policy on Iran for decades has been shaped by reporting that overemphasized factionalism and the potential for internal reform, even as the reality on the ground showed a population oppressed by the clerical establishment. That disconnect between media portrayal and lived reality has consequences for diplomacy and strategy.

Some journalists have tried to break free from this dynamic. But journalists who take that approach often find it difficult to return. They may be denied visas or locked out of future assignments. That is part of the price of choosing truth over access.

This issue does not mean that journalists should never go to places like Iran, Gaza, the West Bank, or southern Lebanon. On the contrary, those places deserve reporting. But it does mean rethinking how that reporting is done and how it is viewed and understood. Journalists must be willing to acknowledge the limitations of access, to report on what they are not shown, and to seek out voices beyond those sanctioned by power. We need journalism that recognizes the structural pressures that shape reporting and ultimately pushes back against them.

If and when journalists do eventually get deeper access to places like Gaza, they will face the same issues. Access will be contingent. Permission will be dependent on staying within certain lines. Journalists will need to think clearly about the ethical and professional implications of those conditions. Should they accept them in order to be able to say that they were there? Or should they insist on the freedom to report what they see and hear without being steered by those who have an interest in shaping the narrative? That is a question every correspondent must answer for themselves.

Ultimately, the lesson of Jon Snow’s offhand comment about reporting in Iran should not be boiled down to a joke or a sound bite. It should be a warning. Journalism that prioritizes access over truth fails its audience. It confuses permission for credibility. It allows power to define the terms of reporting instead of letting reality speak for itself. If we want journalism that truly informs and challenges the powerful, then we need to demand more of the reporters in the field and more of the editors who send them there. We need journalism that listens to the streets and not just to those pulling the strings.

Founder of the modern Jewish Pride movement, Ben M. Freeman is the author of Jewish Pride: Rebuilding a People (2021), Reclaiming our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride (2022), and The Jews: An Indigenous People (2025). Educating, inspiring and empowering, his work focuses on Jewish identity and historical and contemporary Jew-hatred. A Holocaust scholar for over 15 years, Ben came to prominence during the Corbyn Labour Jew-hate crisis in the UK and quickly became one of his generation’s leading Jewish thinkers and voices against Jew-hate.

This article was originally published by HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

President Donald Trump takes part in a charter announcement for his Board of Peace initiative aimed at resolving global conflicts, alongside the 56th annual World Economic Forum (WEF), in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 22, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

US President Donald Trump on Thursday launched his Board of Peace, initially designed to cement Gaza’s rocky ceasefire but which he foresees taking a wider role worrying to other global powers, although he said it would work with the United Nations.

“Once this board is completely formed, we can do pretty much whatever we want to do. And we’ll do it in conjunction with the United Nations,” Trump said, adding that the UN had great potential that had not been fully utilized.

Trump, who will chair the board, invited dozens of other world leaders to join, saying he wants it to address challenges beyond the stuttering Gaza ceasefire, stirring misgivings that it could undermine the UN’s role as the main platform for global diplomacy and conflict resolution.

While regional Middle East powers including Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, as well as major emerging nations such as Indonesia, have joined the board, global powers and traditional Western US allies have been more cautious.

Trump says permanent members must help fund with a payment of $1 billion each, and Reuters could not immediately spot any representatives from governments of top global powers or from Israel or the Palestinian Authority at the signing ceremony.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the board‘s focus would be on making sure the plan for peace in Gaza was fulfilled but that it could also “serve as an example of what’s possible in other parts of the world.”

GLOBAL ROLE

Apart from the US, no other permanent member of the UN Security Council – the five nations with the most say over international law and diplomacy since the end of World War II – has yet committed to join.

Russia said late on Wednesday it was studying the proposal after Trump said it would join. President Vladimir Putin said Moscow was willing to pay $1 billion from frozen US assets in the US “to support the Palestinian people,” state media said.

France declined to join. Britain said on Thursday it was not joining at present. China has not yet said whether it will do so.

The board‘s creation was endorsed by a United Nations Security Council resolution as part of Trump‘s Gaza peace plan, and UN spokesperson Rolando Gomez said on Thursday that UN engagement with the board would only be in that context.

Few of the countries that have signed up for the board are democracies, although Israel, Argentina, and Hungary, whose leaders are close allies of Trump and supporters of his approach to politics and diplomacy, have said they will join.

“There’s tremendous potential with the United Nations, and I think the combination of the Board of Peace with the kind of people we have here … could be something very, very unique for the world,” said Trump, who has long disparaged the UN and other institutions of multilateral cooperation.

Board members also include Rubio, the US Gaza negotiators Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

BRITTLE GAZA CEASEFIRE

Kushner, who is Trump‘s son-in-law, said the next phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal would address funding for reconstruction in the territory, which lies mostly in ruins, as well as disarmament by Gaza’s dominant Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, one of the most intractable unresolved issues.

“If Hamas doesn’t demilitarize, that would be what holds this plan back,” Kushner said.

“The next 100 days we’re going to continue to just be heads down and focused on making sure this is implemented. We continue to be focused on humanitarian aid, humanitarian shelter, but then creating the conditions to move forward.”

In a sign of progress on unresolved elements of the first phase of the truce, the Palestinian technocratic committee leader Ali Shaath said the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, Gaza’s main gateway, would reopen next week.

The ceasefire in Gaza, agreed in October, has sputtered for months with Israel and Hamas trading blame for repeated bursts of violence.

Both sides accuse each other of further violations, with Israel saying Hamas has procrastinated on returning a final body of a dead hostage and Hamas saying Israel has continued to restrict aid into Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted an invitation to join the board, the Israeli leader’s office said. Palestinian factions have endorsed Trump‘s plan and given backing to a transitional Palestinian committee meant to administer the Gaza Strip with oversight by the board.

Even as the first phase of the truce falters, its next stage must address much tougher long-term issues that have bedeviled earlier negotiations, including Hamas disarmament, security control in Gaza, and eventual Israeli withdrawal.