From Most-Wanted to Most-Welcomed: The Reinvention of Ahmed al-Sharaa

On November 10, 2025. Ahmed al-Sharaa, once known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, was led into the White House through a side door to avoid all the Pomp and Circumstance. The cameras inside the President’s House clicked with the same reverence that once captured peacemakers and presidents. For Washington, it was a “historic moment”, the first visit by a Syrian head of state since the country’s independence in 1946. But for those who remember al-Sharaa’s past, it was also an act of profound dissonance, the transformation of a man once branded a terrorist into a statesman welcomed under the Stars and Stripes.

Recently, our Chief Editor, Patrick Hennigsen, was invited on Russia Today (RT) to comment on this controversial visit, which he characterises as a “humiliation of the Office of the President of the United States and a humiliation for the US as a country”

I recently weighed-in on @realDonaldTrump @POTUS inviting Al Qaeda/ISIS terrorist Al-Jolani, self-declared ‘president’ of Syria into the White House – truly a historic low-point in US history… pic.twitter.com/8SE6YxiT4t

— Patrick Henningsen (@21WIRE) November 13, 2025

A Long, Violent Road to Power

Born in 1982 to a Syrian family displaced from the Golan Heights, Ahmed al-Sharaa’s early life unfolded in the shadows of occupation and exile. Like many of his generation, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 radicalised him. He crossed the border and joined al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Captured by U.S. forces and imprisoned in Camp Bucca, he shared cells with men who would later become the architects of ISIS.

Released around 2010, al-Sharaa, then using his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, joined Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) and was dispatched to Syria in 2012 to found Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s new Syrian branch. Nusra quickly gained notoriety for suicide bombings, sectarian executions, and its ruthless efficiency in seizing territory from the Assad regime.

When Baghdadi declared ISIS’s caliphate in 2014, Jolani refused to pledge full allegiance, claiming autonomy but maintaining jihadist ideology. His subsequent rebrandings, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham in 2016, then Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), were strategic attempts to shed the al-Qaeda label. Yet for Washington, he remained the same man: on its terrorist list, with a $10 million bounty on his head.

We remain committed to bringing leading AQS figures in HTS to justice. #Syria pic.twitter.com/R8evqffWum

— U.S. Embassy Syria (@USEmbassySyria) May 15, 2017

By 2024, as the Assad regime crumbled after thirteen years of war and sanctions, al-Sharaa re-emerged as Syria’s “transitional president,” buoyed by Western and regional powers eager to stabilise the vacuum they had helped create. His visit to Washington this month sealed that transformation, a jihadist recast as a partner in peace.

Washington’s Convenient Amnesia

For Americans old enough to remember September 11, 2001, this embrace feels like moral whiplash. The United States spent two decades waging its “War on Terror,” toppling governments and killing thousands in the name of defeating al-Qaeda. Now, it courts one of its former commanders.

Administration officials describe al-Sharaa as “a pragmatic reformer” and “a bulwark against ISIS.” Yet the irony is hard to ignore: the man once at the heart of al-Qaeda’s Syrian network now sits across the table from the country whose citizens died in the Twin Towers.

The hypocrisy extends beyond America. European governments that once outlawed support for jihadist groups now quietly applaud al-Sharaa’s rise, citing “stability” and “counter-extremism.” It is a moral sleight of hand: when rebels are enemies, they are terrorists; when they serve geopolitical interests, they become “freedom fighters.”

Operation Timber Sycamore and the Long War on Syria

To understand how the West reached this moment, one must return to 2011, when Syria’s peaceful protests devolved into war. The Obama administration, alongside Israel, Turkey, and Gulf allies, launched Operation Timber Sycamore, a covert CIA program to arm and train anti-Assad rebels. Billions of dollars flowed into Syria; much of it ended up in the hands of Islamist factions, including al-Nusra.

At the same time, Israel pursued a long-term strategy of weakening Damascus. Since Benjamin Netanyahu’s first term in 1996, Israeli policy had sought to ensure Syria would never again pose a military threat. Airstrikes targeted weapons convoys, while intelligence operations fuelled divisions between Syria’s Alawites, Sunnis, Kurds, and Christians.

By the early 2020s, with Assad’s forces depleted and the country fragmented, Israel and Washington intensified their pressure. The culmination came in December 2024, when the Assad regime finally collapsed. The man to fill the void was al-Sharaa, a former enemy turned indispensable ally.

Israel’s “David’s Corridor” and the Redrawing of the Levant

Behind the polite diplomatic language lies a deeper strategic vision, one that analysts call the “David’s Corridor” project. This initiative, long whispered about in regional circles, seeks to secure a contiguous Israeli-influenced trade and security axis stretching from the Mediterranean through Syria and Iraq to the Gulf. The corridor would ensure Israel’s control over critical water resources, open new trade routes, and, crucially, sever Iran’s land connection to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Such a corridor promises enormous geopolitical leverage but threatens the integrity of Syria, Iraq, and Iran. It could also inflame Kurdish ambitions for independence, stoking Turkish fears of separatism and potentially triggering new conflict in the region.

For Syria, already shattered by war and sanctions, the corridor risks institutionalising its fragmentation, a patchwork of zones serving foreign interests rather than national unity.

A Country Torn Apart

The Syrian war has killed more than 300,000 people, though independent observers warn the toll is likely far higher when accounting for starvation, disease, and displacement. Millions remain refugees.

Throughout the conflict, al-Sharaa’s forces, whether under the banner of al-Nusra or HTS, conducted brutal pogroms against Alawite, Christian, and Shiite communities. Reports by human-rights organisations detail summary executions, forced disappearances, and the destruction of entire villages.

Now, as the new transitional president, al-Sharaa insists those were “acts of war, not ideology.” Yet survivors tell a different story: they remember fighters invoking jihadist slogans as they razed homes and executed prisoners.

His White House visit, then, is not just a diplomatic gesture; it is a rewriting of history. It recasts perpetrators as partners and reduces a decade of suffering to a footnote in the larger game of power politics.

The Spoils of Regime Change

Behind the photo-ops lies the economic heart of the new U.S.–Syria relationship. American and European energy firms have quietly explored joint ventures to exploit Syria’s untapped oil and gas reserves, particularly in the Deir ez-Zor and Palmyra regions. Reconstruction contracts are expected to follow, financed through international loans that will deepen Syria’s dependency on foreign capital.

In Washington, a small circle of policymakers and corporate lobbyists see opportunity where others see tragedy. Their argument is familiar: economic engagement will bring stability. But for ordinary Syrians, impoverished, displaced, and traumatised, it is difficult to see how deals struck in distant boardrooms will rebuild their shattered lives.

Even among Syrians who opposed Assad, al-Sharaa’s rise is met with unease. “We wanted freedom, not another strongman,” said one exiled activist in Istanbul. “Now the world is congratulating a man who helped destroy our revolution.”

The New Realpolitik

For U.S. strategists, al-Sharaa’s utility is clear. He offers a Sunni counterweight to Iran, a potential partner against ISIS remnants, and a channel to limit Russian and Turkish influence. But that pragmatism comes at a moral price.

By embracing al-Sharaa, Washington effectively legitimises a leader whose hands are steeped in the blood of both enemies and civilians. It signals that America’s memory of 9/11, and of the thousands who died fighting al-Qaeda, can be set aside when convenient.

It also sends a dangerous message to other militant actors: power and patience can earn redemption. Today’s terrorist, it seems, can be tomorrow’s ally if he plays the game well enough.

A Warning From History

The Syrian tragedy is not only a story of war; it is a mirror reflecting the cynicism of global politics. From Israel’s corridor ambitions to Washington’s covert operations, Syria became the arena where regional and international powers pursued their rivalries, heedless of the human cost.

Now, as al-Sharaa’s motorcade rolls past the White House gates, it is worth remembering the ghosts of that war, the families buried in Aleppo, the children lost in Idlib, the refugees who will never return. Their suffering built the stage on which this new diplomacy performs.

If the U.S. truly seeks stability in the Middle East, it must reckon with its own role in creating the chaos. And if the world celebrates Ahmed al-Sharaa as the symbol of a “new Syria,” it should at least have the courage to admit what that new order represents: the triumph of expedience over memory, and of power over principle.

On Dec 12, 2024, world-renowned economics professor and bestselling author Jeffrey D. Sachs wrote an article with Sybil Fares, a Government Affairs, Middle East & Africa Region advisor for the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). We are featuring this insightful piece, which, with great agility, encapsulates how American interference, at the behest of Netanyahu’s Israel, has left the Middle East in ruins. 

Jeffrey D. Sachs and Sybil Fares report…

How the US and Israel Destroyed Syria and Called it Peace

American interference, at the behest of Netanyahu’s far-right Israel, has left the Middle East in ruins, with over a million dead and open wars raging in Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, and with Iran on the brink of a nuclear arsenal.

In the famous lines of Tacitus, Roman historian, “To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”

In our age, it is Israel and the U.S. that make a desert and call it peace. 

The story is simple. In stark violation of international law, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers claim the right to rule over seven million Palestinian Arabs. When Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands leads to militant resistance, Israel labels the resistance “terrorism” and calls on the U.S. to overthrow the Middle East governments that back the “terrorists.” The U.S., under the sway of the Israel Lobby, goes to war on Israel’s behalf.

The fall of Syria this week is the culmination of the Israel-U.S. campaign against Syria that goes back to 1996 with Netanyahu’s arrival to office as Prime Minister. The Israel-U.S. war on Syria escalated in 2011 and 2012, when Barack Obama covertly tasked the CIA with the overthrow of the Syrian Government in Operation Timber Sycamore. That effort finally came to “fruition” this week, after more than 300,000 deaths in the Syrian war since 2011.

Syria’s fall came swiftly because of more than a decade of crushing economic sanctions, the burdens of war, the U.S. seizure of Syria’s oil, Russia’s priorities regarding the conflict in Ukraine, and most immediately, Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah, which was the key military backstop to the Syrian Government. No doubt Assad often misplayed his own hand and faced severe internal discontent, but his regime was targeted for collapse for decades by the U.S. and Israel.

Since 2011, the Israel-U.S. perpetual war on Syria, including bombing, jihadists, economic sanctions, U.S. seizure of Syria’s oil fields, and more, has sunk the Syrian people into misery.

Before the U.S.-Israel campaign to overthrow Assad began in earnest in 2011, Syria was a functioning, growing middle-income country. In January 2009, the IMF Executive Board had this to say:

Executive Directors welcomed Syria’s strong macroeconomic performance in recent years, as manifested in the rapid non-oil GDP growth, comfortable level of foreign reserves, and low and declining government debt. This performance reflected both robust regional demand and the authorities’ reform efforts to shift toward a more market-based economy.

Since 2011, the Israel-U.S. perpetual war on Syria, including bombing, jihadists, economic sanctions, U.S. seizure of Syria’s oil fields, and more, has sunk the Syrian people into misery.

In the immediate two days following the collapse of the government, Israel conducted about 480 strikes across Syria, and completely destroyed the Syrian fleet in Latakia. Pursuing his expansionist agenda, Prime Minister Netanyahu illegally claimed control over the demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights and declared that the Golan Heights will be a part of the State of Israel “for eternity.”

Netanyahu’s ambition to transform the region through war, which dates back almost three decades, is playing out in front of our eyes. In a press conference on December 9th, the Israeli prime minister boasted of an “absolute victory,” justifying the on-going genocide in Gaza and escalating violence throughout the region:

I ask you, just think, if we had acceded to those who told us time and again: ‘”The war must be stopped”– we would not have entered Rafah, we would not have seized the Philadelphia Corridor, we would not have eliminated Sinwar, we would not have surprised our enemies in Lebanon and the entire world in a daring operation-stratagem, we would not have eliminated Nasrallah, we would not have destroyed Hezbollah’s underground network, and we would not have exposed Iran’s weakness. The operations that we have carried out since the beginning of the war are dismantling the axis brick by brick.

The long history of Israel’s campaign to overthrow the Syrian Government is not widely understood, yet the documentary record is clear. Israel’s war on Syria began with U.S. and Israeli neoconservatives in 1996, who fashioned a “Clean Break” strategy for the Middle East for Netanyahu as he came to office. The core of the “clean break” strategy called for the Israel (and the US) to reject “land for peace,” the idea that Israel would withdraw from the occupied Palestinian lands in return for peace. Instead, Israel would retain the occupied Palestinian lands, rule over the Palestinian people in an Apartheid state, step-by-step ethnically cleanse the state, and enforce so-called “peace for peace” by overthrowing neighboring governments that resisted Israel’s land claims.

The long history of Israel’s campaign to overthrow the Syrian Government is not widely understood, yet the documentary record is clear.

The Clean Break strategy asserts, “Our claim to the land—to which we have clung for hope for 2000 years—is legitimate and noble,” and goes on to state, “Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach, and one with which American can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon…”

In his 1996 book Fighting Terrorism, Netanyahu set out the new strategy. Israel would not fight the terrorists; it would fight the states that support the terrorists. More accurately, it would get the US to do Israel’s fighting for it. As he elaborated in 2001:

The first and most crucial thing to understand is this: There is no international terrorism without the support of sovereign states.… Take away all this state support, and the entire scaffolding of international terrorism will collapse into dust.

Netanyahu’s strategy was integrated into U.S. foreign policy. Taking out Syria was always a key part of the plan. This was confirmed to General Wesley Clark after 9/11. He was told, during a visit at the Pentagon, that “we’re going to attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years—we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.” Iraq would be first, then Syria, and the rest. (Netanyahu’s campaign for the Iraq War is spelled out in detail in Dennis Fritz’s new book, Deadly Betrayal. The role of the Israel Lobby is spelled out in Ilan Pappé’s new book, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic). The insurgency that hit U.S. troops in Iraq set back the five-year timeline, but did not change the basic strategy.

The U.S. has by now led or sponsored wars against Iraq (invasion in 2003), Lebanon (U.S. funding and arming Israel), Libya (NATO bombing in 2011), Syria (CIA operation during 2010’s), Sudan (supporting rebels to break Sudan apart in 2011), and Somalia (backing Ethiopia’s invasion in 2006). A prospective U.S. war with Iran, ardently sought by Israel, is still pending.

Strange as it might seem, the CIA has repeatedly backed Islamist Jihadists to fight these wars, and jihadists have just toppled the Syrian regime. The CIA, after all, helped to create al-Qaeda in the first place by training, arming, and financing the Mujahideen in Afghanistan from the late 1970s onward. Yes, Osama bin Laden later turned on the U.S., but his movement was a U.S. creation all the same. Ironically, as Seymour Hersh confirms, it was Assad’s intelligence that “tipped off the U.S. to an impending Al Qaeda bombing attack on the headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet.”

Operation Timber Sycamore was a billion-dollar CIA covert program launched by Obama to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. The CIA funded, trained, and provided intelligence to radical and extreme Islamist groups. The CIA effort also involved a “rat line” to run weapons from Libya (attacked by NATO in 2011) to the jihadists in Syria. In 2014, Seymour Hersh described the operation in his piece “The Red Line and the Rat Line”:

“A highly classified annex to the report, not made public, described a secret agreement reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdoğan administrations. It pertained to the rat line. By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria.”

Soon after the launch of Timber Sycamore, in March 2013, at a joint conference by President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House, Obama said: “With respect to Syria, the United States continues to work with allies and friends and the Syrian opposition to hasten the end of Assad’s rule.”

To the U.S.-Israeli Zionist mentality, a call for negotiation by an adversary is taken as a sign of weakness of the adversary. Those who call for negotiations on the other side typically end up dead—murdered by Israel or U.S. assets. We’ve seen this play out recently in Lebanon. The Lebanese Foreign Minister confirmed that Hassan Nasrallah, Former Secretary-General of Hezbollah had agreed to a ceasefire with Israel days before his assassination. Hezbollah’s willingness to accept a peace agreement according to the Arab-Islamic world’s wishes of a two-state solution is long-standing. Similarly, instead of negotiating to end the war in Gaza, Israel assassinated Hamas’ political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran.

To the U.S.-Israeli Zionist mentality, a call for negotiation by an adversary is taken as a sign of weakness of the adversary.

Similarly in Syria, instead of allowing for a political solution to emerge, the U.S. opposed the peace process multiple times. In 2012, the UN had negotiated a peace agreement in Syria that was blocked by the Americans, who demanded that Assad must go on the first day of the peace agreement. The U.S. wanted regime change, not peace. In September 2024, Netanyahu addressed the General Assembly with a map of the Middle East divided between “Blessing” and “Curse,” with Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran as part of Netanyahu’s curse. The real curse is Israel’s path of mayhem and war, which has now engulfed Lebanon and Syria, with Netayahu’s fervent hope to draw the U.S. into war with Iran as well.

The U.S. and Israel are high-fiving that they have successfully wrecked yet another adversary of Israel and defender of the Palestinian cause, with Netanyahu claiming “credit for starting the historic process.” Most likely Syria will now succumb to continued war among the many armed protagonists, as has happened in the previous U.S.-Israeli regime-change operations.

In short, American interference, at the behest of Netanyahu’s Israel, has left the Middle East in ruins, with over a million dead and open wars raging in Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, and with Iran on the brink of a nuclear arsenal, being pushed against its own inclinations to this eventuality.

All this is in the service of a profoundly unjust cause: to deny Palestinians their political rights in the service of Zionist extremism based on the 7th century BCE Book of Joshua. Remarkably, according to that text—one relied on by Israel’s own religious zealots—the Israelites were not even the original inhabitants of the land. Rather, according the text, God instructs Joshua and his warriors to commit multiple genocides to conquer the land.

Against this backdrop, the Arab-Islamic nations and indeed almost all of the world have repeatedly united in the call for a two-state solution and peace between Israel and Palestine.

Instead of the two-state solution, Israel and the U.S. have made a desert and called it peace.

See more reports from JDS

Freddie Ponton
21st Century Wire

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Source: https://21stcenturywire.com/2025/11/13/from-most-wanted-to-most-welcomed-the-reinvention-of-ahmed-al-sharaa/