US military supported Syrian rebel offensive that toppled Assad government

Syrian rebel commanders admitted that the US military helped them overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad. NATO member Turkey and Israel played key roles as well.

Syrian rebel commanders have boasted that the US military helped them overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad.

They acknowledged this in a report published by major British newspaper The Telegraph, titled "US ‘prepared Syrian rebel group to help topple Bashar al-Assad’”.

The article revealed that a rebel group armed, trained, and funded by the United States, based in the south of Syria, collaborated with rebranded al-Qaeda in the north to jointly topple the Syrian government.

According to the report, the US military helped to create a Syrian militia called the Revolutionary Commando Army (RCA). The US and UK armed and trained the RCA. The Pentagon paid its fighters a salary of $400 per month, which The Telegraph noted was "nearly 12 times what the soldiers in the now defunct Syrian army were paid". (This was because illegal unilateral Western sanctions on Syria had crushed the country's economy, causing high rates of inflation that decimated local purchasing power.)

The US military knew that an offensive was being planned to topple Assad, The Telegraph reported. The Pentagon pressured disparate rebel groups and mercenaries in southern Syria to unify behind the US-funded RCA.

In the lead-up to the assault, which was launched in November 2024, US military officers met with Syrian rebel commanders in the Al-Tanf base that the US had built on the border with Iraq.

The Pentagon told the Syrian rebels to “be ready” for the impending offensive. An RCA commander recalled in an interview with The Telegraph, “We were just told: ‘Everything is about to change. This is your moment. Either Assad will fall, or you will fall’”.

While the United States was overseeing the Syrian rebel operations in the south, NATO member Turkey was doing the same in the north.

When extremist Salafi-jihadist rebels took over Syria's second-most populous city, Aleppo, in late November, French state media outlet France 24 reported, "Opposition sources in touch with Turkish intelligence said Turkey, which supports the rebels, had given a green light to the offensive”.

US allied with Al-Qaeda in Syria

Washington claims the fighters it sponsored in Syria were so-called "moderate rebels", but they were in fact allied with rebranded Al-Qaeda.

The Telegraph wrote that there is evidence that "indicates not only that Washington knew about the offensive led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which toppled the Assad regime on Dec 8, but that it had precise intelligence about its scale".

HTS is a rebranded version of Syrian Al-Qaeda, which was previously called Jabhat al-Nusra, before it changed its name in 2017.

An RCA commander said his US-backed rebel group and HTS "were co-operating, and communication between the two forces was being co-ordinated by the Americans at Al-Tanf", The Telegraph reported.

The British newspaper noted the "irony" that "the US has been in an effective alliance with a group like HTS, which was al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria until it broke away in 2017".

Jake Sullivan, the Biden administration's national security advisor, published an email to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton back in 2012, when he served as her aide, admitting that "AQ [Al-Qaeda] is on our side in Syria”.

After the Syrian war broke out in 2011, the CIA launched one of its largest covert programs in history, called Operation Timber Sycamore, in which the spy agency spent nearly $1 billion per year arming and training anti-government rebels. According to the Washington Post, this made up roughly $1 out of every $15 in the CIA's budget.

Many of these US-backed rebels went on the join Al-Qaeda and ISIS, or gave their US weapons to the extremist groups.

US diplomats meet with former Al-Qaeda leader in Syria

When Syria's Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra rebranded as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in 2017, the US State Department still recognized the extremist militia as a terrorist organization.

The US embassy even put a $10 million bounty on the head of Syrian Al-Qaeda leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani.

Al-Jolani led HTS as the extremist group took over Damascus in December 2024. He is now the de facto leader of Syria.

In a step toward recognizing the new rebranded Al-Qaeda regime in Syria, Washington has moved to delist HTS.

The US State Department even lifted its $10 million bounty on al-Jolani, who has also personally rebranded and now uses his birth name Ahmed al-Sharaa.

This decision came after the US government sent a delegation of top diplomats to Damascus to meet with the HTS chief.

US Assistant Secretary of State Barbara Leaf said her in-person discussion with the former Al-Qaeda leader was "very productive". She praised al-Jolani/al-Sharaa as "pragmatic".

The BBC noted that this was "the first formal American diplomatic appearance in Damascus in more than a decade". The British state media outlet also sent a journalist to Damascus in December to help do public relations work for al-Jolani/al-Sharaa.

Other Western media outlets have tried to whitewash the former Al-Qaeda leader. CNN published a softball interview with him titled "How Syria’s rebel leader went from radical jihadist to a blazer-wearing ‘revolutionary’”. The Telegraph ran a similar puff piece with the headline "How Syria’s ‘diversity-friendly’ jihadists plan on building a state".

The former Syrian Al-Qaeda chief has publicly stated that he has "no intention of confronting Israel”. Al-Jolani/al-Sharaa stressed, "We are not looking to engage in a conflict with Israel".

While the HTS leader calls for peace with Israel, the regime of Benjamin Netanyahu is colonizing Syrian territory. Immediately after the Assad government was overthrown, Israel invaded Syria, seizing more territory.

The Israeli regime announced that it had "annexed" the Golan Heights, which according to international law is Syrian sovereign territory that has been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967. Prime Minister Netanyahu announced plans to double the number of illegal Israeli settlers in the occupied Golan Heights.

Netanyahu also traveled for a photo op on Syria's tallest mountain, Mount Hermon, which the Israeli military seized.

US military has 2000 troops occupying Syria

US-funded forces from the so-called Revolutionary Commando Army (RCA) now control roughly one-fifth of Syrian territory, in the south of the country, according to The Telegraph.

NATO member Turkey occupies land in northern Syria as well.

This is in addition to the approximately one-third of Syrian territory, in the east, that is run by another US-backed armed group, called the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

A former top Pentagon official, Dana Stroul, boasted that “one-third of Syrian territory was owned via the US military, with its local partner the Syrian Democratic Forces”.

While the Defense Department had previously reported that 900 US troops were in Syria, it revealed in December that that number had increased to 2000.

These 2000 US soldiers are occupying some of Syria's most strategic land, including its oil and wheat fields.

As president in 2020, Donald Trump gloated, "I left troops to take the oil. I took the oil. The only troops I have are taking the oil".

The Biden White House has continued Trump's policy, emphasizing that these US soldiers will remain in Syria.