On July 8, the Department of State removed Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), also known as Jabhat al-Nusrah, from the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list. In a press release previewing the delisting, Secretary of State Marco Rubio noted that the action fulfills President Donald Trump’s May 13 pledge to offer sanctions relief to the people of Syria. On June 30, the White House followed up on Trump’s promise by announcing that the United States would lift all sanctions on Syria, except for those imposed on former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group. The White House ordered the State Department to review the listing of HTS and its leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, also known as Ahmed al-Jawlani. The State Department’s FTO delisting of HTS is in direct response to the White House’s order.
The move to delist HTS as an FTO is not without risk, especially when considering its lineage, and Jawlani’s historical direct links to two of the world’s deadliest terrorist groups: ISIS and al-Qaeda. Both organizations are still significant threats to U.S. national security interests.
I was the head of the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism Finance and Designations when the U.S. government first designated Nusrah Front as an alias for al-Qaeda in Iraq on Dec. 11, 2012. Nusrah was added to the list of terrorist organizations because it was a ruthless terrorist group. As described in the State Department’s press release: “Since November 2011, al-Nusrah Front has claimed nearly 600 attacks,” including “40 suicide attacks,” and “sought to portray itself as part of the legitimate Syrian opposition while it is, in fact, an attempt by [al-Qaeda in Iraq] AQI to hijack the struggles of the Syrian people.” AQI, of course, was a precursor to what would become ISIS. The State Department also explained that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (the first leader of ISIS’s so-called caliphate, which seized much of Iraq and Syria) tasked Jawlani with establishing AQI’s (ISIS) operations in Syria. In other words, Jawlani was originally Baghdadi’s point person in Syria.
Baghdadi and Jawlani broke up in 2013, with Jawlani renewing his allegiance directly to the head of al-Qaeda and Nusrah breaking off from ISIS. The split between the two led to a global, bloody rivalry between ISIS and al-Qaeda. Then, in 2016, Jawlani and Nusrah disassociated themselves from al-Qaeda. Like a chameleon changing its stripes, Nusrah later changed its name to HTS. This is when the group tried to hide its past.
The State Department and the wider U.S. government national security architecture did not buy Nusrah’s rebranding. In May 2018, the State Department amended Nusrah’s terrorist listing to add HTS as an alias. I was still the head of the Counterterrorism Finance and Designations office when we made that determination. As the State Department stated in a press release, Nusrah had “launched the creation of HTS as a vehicle to advance its position in the Syrian uprising and to further its own goals as an [al Qaeda] affiliate.” My boss at the time, Ambassador Nathan Sales, who was appointed by President Trump, explained that the amended “designation serves notice that the United States is not fooled by this al-Qaeda affiliate’s attempt to rebrand itself.”
The U.S. government adds groups to terrorist lists based on all-source information, often a compilation of classified and unclassified information. Simply put, in the case of HTS and Jawlani, who was sanctioned by the State Department pursuant to E.O. 13224 on May 16, 2013, it was very clear that they were dangerous terrorists.
This is, in part, why Trump’s move to delist HTS is risky and why the president’s photo-op with Jawlani in mid-May was ill-advised. HTS and Jawlani have a lot of baggage. Of course, the downfall of the brutal Assad regime is a positive development for the Syrian people. Assad’s monstrous rule is well-documented. And HTS played an instrumental role in Assad’s ouster. The new political reality, in which HTS runs the post-Assad government, requires fresh thinking on the sanctions front. But HTS’s involvement in human rights abuses, including the targeting of minority Druze communities earlier this year, as well as during recent clashes, is deeply problematic. At bottom, the decision to delist HTS as an FTO remains risky as a matter of policy.
There are other complications. Jawlani has distanced himself from al-Qaeda, but HTS has lingering ties to al-Qaeda-affiliated actors in Syria. And some HTS members are not as nationalist-minded as Jawlani. According to Reuters, a U.N. monitoring team report that is expected to be published this month concludes that there are no “active ties” between HTS and al-Qaeda. However, that same analysis reportedly reads: “Many tactical-level individuals [within HTS] hold more extreme views than … [Jawlani] and Interior Minister Anas Khattab, who are generally regarded as more pragmatic than ideological.”
A previous U.N. sanctions monitoring team report, published in February, noted that while HTS had spearheaded the campaign to defeat the Assad regime in late 2024, “other listed and non-listed entities were involved” as well. Those listed entities include foreign fighter groups such as the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), Katibat al-Imam al-Bukhari (KIB), and Katibat al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (KTJ), all three of which are part of al-Qaeda’s global network. Still other al-Qaeda-affiliated groups were involved in the insurgents’ successful offensive. “While [HTS’s] leadership promoted a nationalist agenda, nearly half the HTS forces were reportedly aligned with” al-Qaeda’s “ideology,” the U.N. team wrote. The analysts also reported that al-Qaeda’s “affiliates” – including Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), Al-Shabaab and Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) – all “published congratulatory messages for HTS” after the fall of Damascus last December. The “de facto Taliban authorities” in Afghanistan congratulated HTS as well.
Nonetheless, HTS’s delisting is well within legal parameters and historical FTO delisting decision-making. There are three pathways to delisting FTOs. The Secretary of State may delist an FTO if it is defunct, meaning there has been a change of circumstances since the group’s last listing or relisting. Since the advent of the FTO list in 1997, 21 groups have had their FTO listing rescinded, with the vast majority of these organizations being defunct.
The Secretary of State may also delist an FTO for national security reasons. This pathway has never been pursued by the State Department. Finally, there is a third discretionary pathway for delisting. Secretary of State Rubio can simply remove any group from the FTO list for any reason. It is likely that this third pathway is the one the State Department used given HTS’s checkered and deadly terrorist past, involvement in human rights abuses (which can, depending on the exact context of each abuse, be a legal basis for keeping a listing intact), and past precedent. For instance, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a discretionary decision to remove the Mujahedeen e-Khalq Organization (MEK) from the FTO list in 2012.
What nearly all news reporting and think-tank analysis of the HTS FTO delisting misses, however, is the fact that the group remains listed as a terrorist organization pursuant to U.S. law. As such, the Trump administration retains leverage over Jawlani, current and former HTS members, and the new Syrian regime. Secretary of State Rubio did not revoke HTS’s E.O. 13224 designation as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” (SDGT). Nor did Rubio remove Jawlani, also designated pursuant to E.O. 13224, from the rolls of terrorist actors.
Furthermore, the U.N. maintains the listings of HTS and Jawlani on its ISIS and al-Qaeda list of terrorists. It is very likely, though, that the United States, the original sponsor of the U.N.’s Nusrah and Jawlani listings, has proposed the delisting of HTS and Jawlani from the U.N. 1267 Committee. The United States, unless it wants to be non-compliant with its U.N. obligations, cannot unilaterally remove HTS’s or Jawlani’s E.O. 13224 listings. This compliance matters even more because the U.S. government is about to undergo its mutual evaluation by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in 2026. FATF reviews whether a country’s Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism architecture is compliant with FATF recommendations that protect financial systems from criminal and terrorist abuse. One aspect of that compliance is ensuring a country is meeting its U.N. 1267 obligations.
The world should not, however, hold its breath for a U.N. 1267 delisting. Therefore, it could take time before Jawlani and HTS are removed from the E.O. 13224 list of terrorists. Russia, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, seems unlikely to comply quickly with a U.S. proposal to remove HTS and Jawlani from the U.N. 1267 list. Assad now lives in Russia and is a long-time ally of Vladimir Putin. In other words, Russia will need substantial political concessions before allowing HTS and Jawlani to be removed from the U.N.’s list of terrorists.
The Trump administration’s recent Syria sanctions relief efforts, including the delisting of HTS, are only the beginning of what will be an incredibly complex set of delistings. By necessity, these moves will require high-level negotiations in New York and several capitals, Moscow included.
The U.S. government has more room to maneuver on Syria’s listing as a State Sponsor of Terrorism (SST). In 1979, Syria was the first country added to the State Department’s SST list. With its change of government, Syria may be eligible for removal. That decision, however, like that of finally removing Jawlani and HTS from the E.O. 13224 terrorist lists, must result in iron-clad guarantees that the new Syrian regime will not allow ISIS or al-Qaeda to use Syrian soil as a sanctuary for their international terrorist plotting. Furthermore, the Trump administration must push hard for Syria’s new de facto government to respect the human rights and religious freedom of all Syrians.
