Until recently, Ahmed al-Sharaa had a $10 million bounty on his head from the United States government.

Sharaa enlisted with the terror group al Qaeda around 2003, joining the War on Terror on the side of the terrorists who made New York City burn on 9/11. He pioneered al Qaeda’s entry into Syria, running an affiliate that eventually split to form its own entity, known today as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (hts). He conquered territory from secular Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and ruled it as a strict Islamist state. He has never renounced his links to the world’s most notorious terror groups. He still commands armies of thousands of jihadists who journeyed from all over the world to be guided by his Islamist vision.

This same man, after ousting Assad in late 2024, now rules Syria. And U.S. President Donald Trump, who sits in the same White House from which President George W. Bush announced the war on al Qaeda, said in May 2025 that he wants to give Sharaa’s new Syria “a chance at greatness.”

Throughout 2025, the U.S. progressively removed economic sanctions on Syria, hts and Sharaa himself. It accepted Sharaa’s Syria as a member of the international coalition against the Islamic State. It transferred control of prisons holding Islamic State members to the Syrian government.

Last November, Sharaa became the first Syrian head of state ever hosted at the White House. It was a surreal spectacle seeing the leader of an al Qaeda offshoot being greeted by supporters shouting “Allahu Akbar!” at the gate of the president’s mansion. At a press conference, President Trump praised Sharaa as being a “strong leader” and said, “We’d do everything we can to make Syria successful.” The president shrugged off a question regarding Sharaa’s connection with terror groups, stating: “We’ve all had rough pasts.”

President Trump trusts Sharaa so much he is willing to hand over all U.S. military assets. Syria’s Foreign Ministry confirmed April 16 that all former U.S. military bases are under its control. U.S. Central Command confirmed the next day this is “part of a deliberate and conditions-based transition.” America no longer has a meaningful military presence in Syria.

Sharaa’s regime is still relatively new. He has only recently finished consolidating his hold on power. But the actions he and his men have already taken give clues about where he intends to take Syria. It doesn’t look good.

Persecuting Minorities

Sharaa and hts obtained power in December 2024. Sharaa said he would lead a secular, democratic republic. He returned Syria’s flag to its pre-Assad design. He emptied Assad’s dungeons.

Then he began filling them with his own prisoners.

In March 2025, Assad loyalists began attacking hts positions. Sharaa-aligned factions accused elements within the Alawite community—the minority from which Assad hails—of supporting the insurgency. March 6 and 7 saw clashes where Sharaa’s Sunni Muslim forces targeted Alawite civilians. Later investigations suggest that more than 1,400 civilians, mostly Alawites, were killed over several days. Even more dramatic massacres were committed in July by Islamists affiliated with Sharaa against another minority, the Druze. Ethnic clashes left an estimated 1,700 people dead according to the United Nations, the vast majority being Druze.

The Damascus government has tried to distance itself from much of the bloodshed, claiming this was the result of rogue actors and that it would investigate. Whether or not Sharaa personally ordered or approved the violence, it happened under his watch. His men didn’t join a subsidiary of al Qaeda without expecting to go after “infidels.”

This past January, the next group to be targeted was the Kurds. Kurds are non-Arabs who speak a different language and have been pushing for their own country in one form or another for over a hundred years. During Syria’s civil war, Kurdish militias controlled their own territory independently of Damascus. After Assad fell, these militias were the biggest counterbalance to Sharaa’s rule.

After a lightning offensive capturing Kurdish positions, the Syrian government pressured the Syrian Democratic Forces (sdf), the main Kurdish militia, to sign an agreement that was essentially a surrender, where the militia agreed to merge with the government and give up the dream of Kurdish autonomy. This time, the government was less heavy-handed. The Kurdish militias were to be integrated into the main military rather than disbanded, and the Kurds received cultural rights like protection of their language. But it was still the regime consolidating power against its opponents.

America’s sponsorship of Syria’s Kurds goes back over a decade. Syria wouldn’t have launched its January offensive if it thought America would intervene to protect the Kurds; America didn’t. U.S. Special Envoy to Syria Tom Barrack posted on social media after the surrender: “The U.S. has no interest in [a] long-term military presence; it prioritizes defeating [Islamic State] remnants, supporting reconciliation, and advancing national unity without endorsing separatism or federalism.” He elaborated: “[T]he original purpose of the sdf as the primary anti-[Islamic State] force has largely expired.”

In other words, You’re on your own. We’re siding with Sharaa now.

Harboring Terror Groups

During the civil war, hts was not a uniquely Syrian force. Sunni extremists traveled from all over the world to spread jihad in Syria under Sharaa’s leadership. Many of these terrorists came from places as remote as Xinjiang, China. Such connections are one of the reasons China is a major international adversary of hts; hts collaborated with Chinese jihadist groups like the Turkistan Islamic Party fighting Assad. Starting in June 2025, the regime began integrating these foreign fighters into Syria’s military despite international opposition.

In November, Israeli public broadcaster kan claimed Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Gaza-based terror group that helped Hamas invade Israel and massacre civilians on Oct. 7, 2023, had been consolidating forces and developing military capabilities near Damascus. The group reportedly favored Syria for this purpose because of U.S. pressure on Israel not to strike the country. kan claimed Sharaa was not only aware of this militarization but had even appointed a presidential envoy to facilitate communication between Syria and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

At the very least, this all suggests Syria under Sharaa is becoming a haven for terrorists. Sharaa either feels powerless to stop them or actively supports them. Neither is good for the West.

Despite all this, the Trump administration has gone out of its way to reintegrate Syria into the international community. The U.S. is becoming one of Syria’s biggest backers, if not the biggest.

Today, it’s clear Sharaa’s victory was no victory for freedom in the Middle East. Syria has replaced one tyrant with another. Siding with a former enemy with a history like Sharaa is astonishing. And Bible prophecy reveals it is extremely dangerous.

Blotting Out America

The relevant passage, in Psalm 83, describes several Middle Eastern peoples who combine forces “that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance” (verse 4). “Israel” in prophecy includes the modern State of Israel and also the United States. (Request your free copy of The United States and Britain in Prophecy, by Herbert W. Armstrong.)

This alliance is composed of “[t]he tabernacles of Edom, and the Ishmaelites; of Moab, and the Hagarenes; Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalek; the Philistines with the inhabitants of Tyre; Assur also is joined with them …” (verses 6-8).

Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has identified this as a prophecy for our time. “The key to unlocking this prophecy is to know the modern descendants of these peoples,” he wrote in his 2021 article “Deadly Flaw in Mideast Peace Deals” (theTrumpet.com/23199). “And God in this end time has supplied this key. Based on biblical and historical research and with God’s inspiration, Herbert W. Armstrong gave a good general idea of which nations these peoples correspond to today, equating the Ishmaelites with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, the Hagarenes with Syria, the Philistines with the Palestinians, Gebal and Tyre with Lebanon, Moab and Ammon with Jordan, and Edom and Amalek with Turkey. … Notice too that Assur, or Assyria, is on this list. This refers to modern-day Germany.”

Other prophecies show Germany and its allies will fight against Iran and its radical Islamist allies. (Mr. Flurry’s free booklet The King of the South explains in more detail.) Syria was, for years, one of Iran’s most important proxies. That ended with the fall of the Assad regime. But the new Syria, while less beholden to Iran, is also overtly anti-American. Through naivety or supposed pragmatism, President Trump is helping build this new al Qaeda-led Syria. He is giving “a chance of greatness” to jihadists connected to al Qaeda.

“We all want peace,” Mr. Flurry wrote. “But sadly, these recent peace pacts have a deadly flaw. … While it seems that these nations are moving away from radicalism and violence, we must look beneath the surface. After all, this prophecy reveals that they will take ‘crafty counsel’—subtle and shrewd dealing. This sure prophecy shows that these nations will ally to try to blot out the name of Israel forever! That is intense hatred!” (ibid).

Mr. Flurry wrote those words regarding the “Abraham Accords” that President Trump brokered between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain during his first term. The U.A.E. and Bahrain are stable, prosperous Gulf states not ruled by jihadists. If Mr. Flurry’s words apply to the Gulf Arabs, they definitely apply to a country like Syria, which has a long history of warring against America and Israel and is now ruled by the successors of the terrorists of 9/11. America sponsors the new Syria to its own peril.