Ex-CIA Chief Gives Warm Welcome To Founder Of Syrian Al-Qaeda In New York

You can’t make this up: just a couple weeks after the nation remembered the 24th anniversary of 9/11 attacks, Al Qaeda is back in New York, but this time its Syrian founder is getting the red carpet treatment.

Self-appointed Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, whose al-Qaeda and ISIS name is Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, will attend the meeting on the UN General Assembly (UNGA), the first Syrian president to do so since 1967.

“The visit marks a major diplomatic moment for Damascus as it returns to the UN stage at the head-of-state level for the first time after nearly six decades,” Syria’s state-run SANA stated.

Only a short time ago, Jolani had a $10 million bounty on his head for being founder of the Nusra Front, recognized a terrorist organization.

But soon after his rebranded AQ-affiliate group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), took Damascus and toppled Assad last December, that bounty was dropped by the US and President Trump later vowed to drop sanctions on Syria.

Former CIA Director David Patraeus to Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa:

We were on opposite sides in Iraq: I commanded the surge, you were detained.

Now you’re Syria’s President at the UNGA.

al-Sharaa:

We moved from war to discourse. pic.twitter.com/wdf6IOux2a

— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 22, 2025

Jolani had fought American troops in Iraq, and dispatched suicide bombers, and later crossed over into Syria as the personal envoy of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Now he’s being hosted on a stage in New York by former CIA Director David Petraeus…

Former CIA Director David Petraeus said to President Ahmad Al-Sharaa: I was facing great difficulties in Iraq. How will you face the challenges in Syria?

President Ahmad Al-Sharaa replied: Surely my mission in Syria is harder than yours was in Iraq. You had the option to leave… pic.twitter.com/Ftqwuy4NqM

— Nedal Al-Amari (@nedalalamari) September 22, 2025

At one point in the conversation, there was this exchange:

Petraeus: We were on different sides when I was commanding the surge in Iraq… Please help us understand how you got from al Qaeda in Iraq 20 years ago to where you are today?

Sharaa: At a time, we were in combat and then we now move to the discourse… We cannot judge the past based on the rules of today, and cannot judge today based on the rules of the past

All smiles as Syria’s Ahmad al-Sharaa meets Marco Rubio

Once hunted with a $10 MILLION US bounty on his head

Set to deliver FIRST UN General Assembly address by a Syrian leader in decades pic.twitter.com/lkKUOdexZe

— RT (@RT_com) September 22, 2025

Al-Qaeda, the CIA, and the US Secretary of State in New York to hail the spread of “democracy” in the Middle East after toppling another secular government in the Middle East… more signs of the rapidly moving decline of American Empire.