US to drop terror designation for Syria HTS as Trump gives new prez a chance

The State Department is poised to officially drop its designation of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — the Islamist group that toppled the Bashar al-Assad regime and whose former leader is now the president of Syria — as a foreign terrorist organization.

A memo set to be published Tuesday details plans to formally revoke the designation and follows President Trump’s action last week lifting sanctions on the Damascus government.

The revocation memo was first reported Monday by Politico.

Trump met with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa during his three-nation swing through the Middle East in May and agreed to waive sanctions following pleas from the new leader.

The US president hailed his Syrian counterpart at the time as “attractive” and “tough.”

Al-Sharaa is desperately seeking to keep his country together amid widespread fears that Syria could devolve into sectarian fighting once again. In May, Rubio warned lawmakers Syria could be weeks away from collapse.

“It is our assessment that, frankly, the transitional authority, given the challenges they’re facing, are maybe weeks — not many months — away from potential collapse and a full-scale civil war of epic proportions,” the secretary of state told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

HTS, also known as the al-Nusra Front, traces its roots to an offshoot of Al Qaeda that worked with what later became known as ISIS in the early 2010s.

Around the time ISIS split off from Al Qaeda, a precursor group to HTS — Jabhat al-Nusra, aka the Al-Nusra Front — began fighting the terror group in early 2014.

Al-Nusra formally broke ties with A Qaeda in 2016 and began softening some of its fundamentalist Islamist views. That group and others later merged and rebranded as HTS in 2017.

Al-Sharaa has sought to mend relations with the West, particularly the US. Since taking power, he has met with several American lawmakers and pleaded for sanctions relief.

The new leader of Syria has said that he intends to rule the country for the next five years before holding elections, two lawmakers who met with him previously told The Post.

“Recent positive changes and actions taken by the Government of Syria, after the fall of the brutal Assad Regime, demonstrate promise for a stable and peaceful future,” read a White House fact sheet issued last week.

“A unified Syria that protects its people and rejects extremism strengthens security and prosperity in the Middle East.”