The al-Nusrah Front was removed from the U.S. terror list on July 7, 2025. Officially, it marked a shift. But under the surface, it looked a lot more like a pattern we've previously seen. America has been here before. We saw this exact playbook in Iraq: regime change, a rush to legitimize the replacement, sweeping sanctions relief, and a premature declaration of stability. It didn't work then. And it won't work now.
The backdrop to this sudden policy shift is the meteoric rise of Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria's new president. Less than a year back, al-Sharaa was still going by his old name, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani. For years, he led al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate. That group eventually rebranded as Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and now holds real control over large parts of the country. His troops helped remove Bashar al-Assad. And now, he's being treated as a legitimate head of state by Washington.
Syrian Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa attended the Antalya Diplomacy Forum on April 11, 2025, in Antalya, Turkey. Mert Gokhan Koc/ dia images via Getty Images
This normalization has come fast and without accountability. The Trump administration's May 2025 announcement in Riyadh, and subsequent executive order in June, lifting all sanctions on Syria and praising al-Sharaa as a "young,
attractive guy. Tough guy. Strong past. Very strong past. Fighter," which was followed barely two months later by the formal Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) delisting of al-Nusrah. The timing is not subtle. It signals a strategic pivot: from isolation to partnership, from punishment to pragmatism.
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