Stars & Stripes Raised Over US Embassy Damascus, Now With Syrian Al-Qaeda Founder As Country’s President

In a first since 2012, an American flag has been raised over the long shuttered US embassy in Damascus, Syria.

The US ambassador to Turkey, Tom Barrack – along with some US Marines – were on hand for the flag raising ceremony for the re-opening of the ambassador’s residence, which marks another huge milestone in the wake of Bashar al-Assad’s December 8 overthrow as Al-Qaeda linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) took over the country.

With regime change accomplished, Saudi and other Gulf and American money is quickly pouring in, and in the wake of President Trump having lifted the long in place sanctions during his Gulf tour this month.

Ambassador Barrack “met with Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa and attended the signing of an agreement for a consortium of Qatari, Turkish and U.S. companies for development of a 5,000-megawatt energy project to revitalize much of Syria’s war-battered electricity grid.”

WaPo details further, “Under the deal signed Thursday, a consortium led by Qatar’s UCC Concession Investments — along with Power International USA and Turkey’s Kalyon GES Enerji Yatirimlari, Cengiz Enerji — will develop four combined-cycle gas turbines with a total generating capacity estimated at approximately 4,000 megawatts and a 1,000-megawatt solar power plant.”

The US-led sanctions ultimately served the punish the Syrian population, even as Western officials feigned humanitarian concern for the suffering of the masses. But all along the Western and Gulf capitals poured billions in arms, munitions, and training into hardened jihadi groups – including HTS – led by one-time ISIS emissary Abu Mohammad al-Jolani (President Sharaa), which helped fragment and burn the country.

Syrian-Armenian Christian and geopolitical analyst Kevork Almassian explores an interesting theory and reporting of what happened in the immediate lead-up to Assad fleeing the country on a Russia-bound plane in early December:

THREAD: The speed at which the Syrian Army disintegrated raised eyebrows even among its most ardent opponents. Many knew a military operation was underway, but few understood the invisible war happening behind the frontlines.

Now, we may do. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/UBVmylLhEj

— Kevork Almassian (@KevorkAlmassian) May 28, 2025

The US Embassy closed up all operations in Damascus in protest of the Assad government in 2012, as the proxy war ramped up. The embassy still kept up its online presence and operations from neighboring Jordan, and also often referred people to consult the US Embassy in Beirut.

At the time US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford had actually traveled to various cities in Syria, fomenting street protests and ‘revolution’ against Assad – and all the while the CIA was pumping weapons into the insurgency, and many of these Islamist fighters had ironically just come from Iraq, where they had spent years been blowing up Americans and Iraqi civilians.

Meanwhile, the jihadis now in control of the Syrian state have been engaged in ethno-religious cleansing ‘score settling’ especially in coastal areas near Tartus and Latakia. This has involved mass killings targeting Alawites, Christians, and Druze – and sectarian fighting which has at times entered the environs of Damascus.

Middle East Christian lobby groups which work on Capitol Hill have meanwhile complained that President Trump should have more firmly linked the lifting of sanctions with firm demonstration that the HTS government would protect Christians and other Syrian ‘minority’ communities. The country has been rife with foreign jihadist fighters ever since the height of the US/Gulf backed proxy war for regime change, and the blood-letting of innocents is likely to continue. Washington has largely been silent.