What U.S. Diplomats Thought After Meeting Syria’s Jihadist-Turned-Statesman Ahmad al-Sharaa
Less than two weeks after rebel forces led by Ahmad al-Sharaa ousted Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, a U.S. State Department delegation arrived in Damascus to talk with the country’s new leader.
It was a meeting few could have predicted. Roughly a decade earlier, the U.S. had declared al-Sharaa — a onetime Al Qaeda commander who went by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Jolani — a designated global terrorist with a $10 million bounty on his head.