In the last weeks of the Biden administration, Assistant Secretary of State Barbara Leaf traveled to Syria to meet Ahmad al-Sharaa, the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham leader whose December 2024 march on Damascus ended the Assad family’s half-century reign of terror. At the time of their meeting, Sharaa was still a wanted terrorist in the United States with a $10 million bounty for information leading to his arrest because of his previous embrace of al Qaeda. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, meanwhile, remains a designated terrorist group even as the U.S. and international community treat its members as the de facto leaders of Syria.

On its face, al-Sharaa’s claim to leadership is farcical. His coalition, on paper, controls at most half of Syria. He has no direct sway over either the Kurdish-governed northeastern region or the Druze region in southern Syria; his control in the Alawi regions along the Mediterranean Coast is shaky at best.