The wishful thinking of a generation of American policymakers, at best, gave hardliners time to consolidate power and, at worst, enabled terrorism.
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.