Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which rules Syria from Damascus under Jolani, is still a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization under US law. The only change which happened at the end of the Biden administration was that the US $10 million bounty on Jolani’s head was removed, at a moment Western officials have engaged the new regime in Damascus on a diplomatic level.
But The Washington Post has just revealed that American intelligence officials met with HTS representatives and passed them classified intelligence information. This happened during the tail-end of the Biden White House.
The Washington Post report begins, “In the chaotic days after the fall of [Bashar] al-Assad, the Biden administration began to engage cautiously with HTS and its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Julani.”
“The intelligence exchange with HTS has occurred in direct encounters between US intelligence officials and representatives of HTS, rather than via third parties.” The Post continues.
The report adds that this “has involved exchanges between the two sides, in Syria and a third country. It began roughly two weeks after HTS came to power on Dec. 8.”
This is being presented by US officials as to combat threats being presented by a resurgent ISIS. For example, there have been recent reported plots against a key Shia religious pilgrimage site on the outskirts of Damascus, the Sayyidah Zaynab Mosque.
“In at least one case, the U.S. intelligence helped thwart an ISIS plot to attack a religious shrine outside Damascus earlier this month, according to the officials,” the WaPo report says.
