Ahmed al-Sharaa, commonly known as Jolani, has been designated as a terrorist by the United States since 2013, whilst his organisation, HTS, was proscribed by the Trump administration in 2018 when a $10m bounty was placed on his head.
For years, HTS lobbied to be delisted, but its pleas largely fell on deaf years with the group relegated to governing just a sliver of northwest Syria.
But the lightning blitz by the rebels, which saw Assad’s iron-grip rule end in spectaular fashion on Sunday, has since forced Washington to rethink how it engages with the former al-Qaeda affiliate.
The senior Arab official, who requested anonymity due to sensitivities surrounding the talks, told MEE that the discussions had divided officials in the Biden administration. Meantime, when asked about the discussions, one Trump transition official disparaged the Biden administration.
Jolani, 42, gave a rousing victory speech in Damascus’ iconic Umayyad Mosque on Sunday and is widely expected to play a key role in Syria’s transition after 54 years of Assad family rule.
“Today, Syria is being purified,” Jolani told a crowd of supporters in Damascus, adding that “this victory is born from the people who have languished in prison, and the mujahideen (fighters) broke their chains”.
He said that under Assad, Syria had become a place for “Iranian ambitions, where sectarianism was rife”, in reference to Assad’s allies Tehran and Hezbollah.
Speaking several hours after the fall of Damascus, US President Joe Biden called the rebel takeover a “fundamental act of justice,” but cautioned it was “a moment of risk and uncertainty” for the Middle East.
“We will remain vigilant,” Biden said, adding, “Make no mistake, some of the rebel groups that took down Assad have their own grim record of terrorism and human rights abuses,” adding that the groups are “saying the right things now.”
“But as they take on greater responsibility, we will assess not just their words, but their actions.”
Later, a senior Biden administration official, when asked about contact with HTS leaders, said Washington was in contact with Syrian groups of all kinds.
The official, who was not authorised to publicly discuss the situation and spoke on condition of anonymity, also said the US was focused on ensuring chemical weapons in Assad’s military arsenal were secured.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that US intelligence agencies were in the process of evaluating Jolani, who it said had launched a “charm offensive” aimed at allaying concerns over his past affiliations.
Jolani was born to a family originally from the occupied Golan Heights and fought in the Iraq insurgency and served five years in an American-run prison in Iraq, before returning to Syria as the emissary of Islamic State founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
“A charm offensive might mean that people are turning over a new leaf and they think differently than they used to so you should hear them out. On the other hand, you should be cautious because charm offensives can sometimes be misleading,” the US official said.
“We have to think about it. We have to watch their behavior and we need to do some indirect messaging and see what comes of that,” the official added.
But, US President-elect Donald Trump, who will be entering office in just five weeks, has left few doubts where he stood on the conflict, saying Washington “should have nothing to do with it [Syria]”.
In a social media post on Saturday, Trump wrote that Assad “lost” because “Russia and Iran are in a weakened state right now, one because of Ukraine and a bad economy, the other because of Israel and its fighting success”.
