The US has made "direct contact" with the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) under Abu Mohammad al-Jolani which now holds Damascus and most major Syrian cities in the wake of Assad's fall. "We’ve been in contact with HTS and with other parties," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said following talks with Arab diplomats in Aqaba, Jordan. This is the first official acknowledgement that the Biden administration is interacting with HTS, which has long been an officially...
