Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world
The US has said it will remove a $10mn bounty for Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist group that spearheaded the overthrow of Syria’s Assad regime, in a sign that Washington is willing to engage with the new leadership.
In exchange, Jolani, who now goes by his birth name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, agreed that terrorist groups could not be allowed “to pose a threat inside of Syria or externally, including to the US and our partners in the region”, Barbara Leaf, the State Department’s top Middle East official, said on Friday.
Leaf met Jolani in Damascus earlier in the day and told reporters that lifting the bounty would allow US officials to engage with the rebel leader without having to turn him over to US law enforcement.
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Leaf said her meeting with Jolani was “quite good, very productive, detailed.”
“He came across as pragmatic,” she said, adding that he made “moderate” statements on equal protections for women and minorities. “We will judge by deeds, not just by words,” she added.
HTS is designated as a terrorist organisation by the US, EU, UN and others, which means Washington cannot offer the group material support, but it can communicate with its members. Jolani has said Assad’s departure means sanctions on the state should be lifted.
US officials have said they would consider lifting both the sanctions and the terrorist designation, which has been in place since 2018, if HTS proved its commitment to “inclusive” rule and to maintaining stability.
They say Jolani and an eventual transitional government will face internal pressure to take steps needed for the sanctions regime to be lifted.
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“I think there’s going to be quite a degree of internal pressure on both the interim authorities and then whatever transitional government comes a few months from now, to move in the direction that would, in fact, be consonant with the kind of requirements that we would have in terms of sanctions,” Leaf said.
She added that Jolani had stressed that he wanted to begin working on an economic recovery for Syria.
The US delegation to Damascus also included Roger Carstens, the US special envoy for hostages, and senior diplomat Daniel Rubenstein, who will be leading engagement with Syria.
The diplomats held meetings and visited a site in the capital as part of efforts to find Austin Tice, an American journalist who disappeared in Damascus in 2012.
Carstens said it was is unclear whether Tice was still alive. “The information that we have right now doesn’t confirm either one way or the other,” he said.
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US officials say they plan to engage with transitional officials and other Syrians in further trips to Syria as conditions allow.
Note: Map shows the area with a shake intensity of 4 or greater, which U.S.G.S. defines as “light,” though the earthquake may be felt outside the areas shown. All times on the map are Central time.The New York Times
A light, 4.9-magnitude earthquake struck in Louisiana on Thursday, according to the United States Geological Survey.
The temblor happened at 5:30 a.m. Central time about 6 miles west of Edgefield, La., data from the agency shows.
U.S.G.S. data earlier reported that the magnitude was 4.4.
As seismologists review available data, they may revise the earthquake’s reported magnitude. Additional information collected about the earthquake may also prompt U.S.G.S. scientists to update the shake-severity map.
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Source: United States Geological Survey | Notes: Shaking categories are based on the Modified Mercalli Intensity scale. When aftershock data is available, the corresponding maps and charts include earthquakes within 100 miles and seven days of the initial quake. All times above are Central time. Shake data is as of Thursday, March 5 at 8:40 a.m. Eastern. Aftershocks data is as of Thursday, March 5 at 10:46 a.m. Eastern.
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The allegation sounded like the stuff of spy movies: A Pakistani businessman trying to hire hit men, even handing them $5,000 in cash, to kill a U.S. politician on behalf of Iran ‘s powerful paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
It was true, and potential targets of the 2024 scheme included now-President Donald Trump, then-President Joe Biden and former presidential candidate and ex-U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, the man told jurors at his attempted terrorism trial in New York on Wednesday. But he insisted his actions were driven by fear for loved ones in Iran, and he figured he’d be apprehended before anything came of the scheme.
“My family was under threat, and I had to do this,” the defendant, Asif Merchant, testified through an Urdu interpreter. “I was not wanting to do this so willingly.”
Merchant said he had anticipated getting arrested before anyone was killed, intended to cooperate with the U.S. government and had hoped that would help him get a green card.
U.S. authorities were, indeed, on to him – the supposed hit men he paid were actually undercover FBI agents – and he was arrested on July 12, 2024, a day before an unrelated attempt on Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania. During a search, investigators said they found a handwritten note that contained the codewords for the various aspects of the plot, CBS News previously reported.
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Merchant did sit for voluntary FBI interviews, but he ultimately ended up with a trial, not a cooperation deal.
“You traveled to the United States for the purpose of hiring Mafia members to kill a politician, correct?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nina Gupta asked during her turn questioning Merchant Wednesday in a Brooklyn federal court.
“That’s right,” Merchant replied, his demeanor as matter-of-fact as his testimony was unusual.
The trial is unfolding amid the less than week-old Iran war, which killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a strike that Trump summed up as “I got him before he got me.” Jurors are instructed to ignore news pertaining to the case.
The Iranian government has denied plotting to kill Trump or other U.S. officials.
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Merchant, 47, had a roughly 20-year banking career in Pakistan before getting involved in an array of businesses: clothing, car sales, banana exports, insulation imports. He openly has two families, one in Pakistan and the other in Iran – where, he said, he was introduced around the end of 2022 to a Revolutionary Guard intelligence operative. They initially spoke about getting involved in a hawala, an informal money transfer system, Merchant said.
Merchant testified that his periodic visits to the U.S. for his garment business piqued the interest of his Revolutionary Guard contact, who trained him on countersurveillance techniques.
The U.S. deems the Revolutionary Guard a “foreign terrorist organization.” Formally called the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the force has been prominent in Iran under Khamenei.
Merchant said the handler told him to seek U.S. residents interested in working for Iran. Then came another assignment: Look for a criminal to arrange protests, steal things, do some money laundering, “and maybe have somebody murdered,” Merchant recalled.
“He did not tell me exactly who it is, but he told me – he named three people: Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Nikki Haley,” he added.
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In 2024, multiple sources familiar with the investigation told CBS News Merchant planned to assassinate current and former government officials across the political spectrum.
Merchant allegedly sketched out the plot on a napkin inside his New York hotel room, prosecutors said, and told the individual “that there would be ‘security all around’ the person” they were planning to kill.
“No other option”
After U.S. immigration agents pulled Merchant aside at the Houston airport in April 2024, searched his possessions and asked about his travels to Iran, he concluded that he was under surveillance. But still he researched Trump rally locations, sketched out a plot for a shooting at a political rally, lined up the supposed hit men and scrambled together $5,000 from a cousin to pay them a “token of appreciation.”
This image provided by the Justice Department, contained in the complaint supporting the arrest warrant, shows Asif Merchant.
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AP
He even reported back to his Revolutionary Guard contact, sending observations – fake, Merchant said – tucked into a book that he shipped to Iran through a series of intermediaries.
Merchant said he “had no other option” than to play along because the handler had indicated that he knew who Merchant’s Iranian relatives were and where they lived.
In a court filing this week, prosecutors noted that Merchant didn’t seek out law enforcement to help with his purported predicament before he was arrested. He testified that he couldn’t turn to authorities because his handler had people watching him.
Prosecutors also said that in his FBI interviews, Merchant “neglected to mention any facts that could have supported” an argument that he acted under duress.
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Merchant told jurors Wednesday that he didn’t think agents would believe his story, because their questions suggested “they think that I’m some type of super-spy.”
“And are you a super-spy?” defense lawyer Avraham Moskowitz asked.
