Turkey's government has previously floated the idea of setting up a "buffer zone" inside Syrian territory if fighting prompted refugees to flee toward Turkish territory, compromising national security.
So the latest reversal by a prominent member of Islamic Jihad is a dramatic event even if it prompted Mr Zawahiri to ask caustically whether Egyptian jail cells now had fax machines, and whether they ran on the same electricity source as the instruments of torture.
But we know that once a new presidential term begins, if not earlier as prompted by a military crisis, diplomacy in all of its manifestations is going to matter very much.