A top American diplomat in the Middle East is traveling to Damascus to meet with Mohammad Abu al-Julani. The trip is a sign that the US may lift sanctions on the al-Qaeda-affiliated rebel group that deposed former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. 

The Financial Times reports that President Joe Biden has deployed Barbara A. Leaf, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, to Syria to meet with Julani. Julani, the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has recently said he hopes Western countries will be willing to lift sanctions on Syria and remove HTS from the foreign terrorist organizations list. 

British diplomats met with Julani earlier in the week. The meetings come as Julani continues to have a $10 million bounty from the State Department for his capture. 

Following Assad’s ouster, Biden heralded Assad’s fall and Julani’s rise as a “fundamental act of justice.” Politico explained that a furious debate broke out in the White House on the issue of removing HTS’s terrorism designation.

Julani, who fought for Al-Qaeda in Iraq during the Iraq War, has attempted to soften his image in recent years by giving friendly interviews to Western journalists, often appearing in a suit and with a trimmed beard to obscure his jihadist ideology. 

In one of his first addresses to the Syrian people, he declared the institution of Sharia law, according to Israel National News. He said that the morality police should enforce Islamic law through education rather than force. Julani noted violence was still an option, saying, “The jihad is obligatory for this reason.”

HTS was given the terror designation shortly after Julani founded the organization in 2017. The organization grew out of the al-Nursa Front, al-Qaeda’s Syria affiliate. At the time, Washington and London recognized Julani’s reorganization of his militant group as an effort to obscure its al-Qaeda origins. 

While Julian’s embrace of bin Ladeniate jihadism is concerning, as al-Qaeda affiliate groups have plotted and executed multiple terrorist attacks in the US, Washington and its regional allies have backed HTS against Assad over his long-standing ties to Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah.