--- title: "Syria's Spy Chief Addresses the U.N., a Milestone for Post-Assad Diplomacy" description: "The head of Syria's intelligence service addressed a United Nations counterterrorism conference in New York this week — the first such appearance by a senior Syrian security official since the fall of Bashar al-Assad, and a striking marker of how far Washington's relationship with Damascus has shifted in 18 months." category: "World" category_url: https://herald.la/category/world author: "Brandon Cole" published: 2026-06-30T14:48:00.000Z updated: 2026-06-30T14:48:00.000Z canonical: https://herald.la/article/syria-s-spy-chief-addresses-the-un-a-milestone-for-post-assad-diplomacy tags: ["Syria", "United Nations", "counterterrorism", "US-Syria relations", "Ahmed al-Sharaa", "sanctions", "Middle East"] --- # Syria's Spy Chief Addresses the U.N., a Milestone for Post-Assad Diplomacy The head of Syria's intelligence service addressed a United Nations counterterrorism conference in New York this week — the first such appearance by a senior Syrian security official since the fall of Bashar al-Assad, and a striking marker of how far Washington's relationship with Damascus has shifted in 18 months. A man who once fought under the banner of jihadist groups stood at a United Nations podium this week — as the official face of Syria's counterterrorism efforts. ## A former militant at the podium Syria's intelligence chief, Hussein al-Salama, addressed a UN high-level counterterrorism conference in New York during the body's Counter-Terrorism Week, [Arab News reported](https://www.arabnews.com/node/2649009/middle-east). His presence was notable for the biography he carries: by the accounts of several security researchers, al-Salama was once a member of al-Qaeda and later a senior commander in Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist faction that led the offensive that toppled Assad in December 2024. He was named to lead Syria's General Intelligence Service in 2025 in a quiet appointment that drew little official notice — a reflection of how sensitive his past is internationally. ## What he told the conference Al-Salama framed Syria's new government as a break from the conditions that bred extremism, saying the country had "regained its sovereignty" and that the Assad era had created "a fertile environment for extremism and terrorism," per Arab News. He described overlapping threats facing Damascus — remnants of the Islamic State, cells loyal to the former regime, Hezbollah-linked groups and what he called continued Israeli military pressure — and called for international support to rebuild institutions and choke off extremist financing, pledging deeper intelligence cooperation. ## Why it is historic The visit lands amid a rapid normalization that would have been unthinkable two years ago. Washington revoked its comprehensive Syria sanctions and removed HTS's foreign-terrorist-organization designation in 2025, and later struck the new Syrian president, Ahmed al-Sharaa — a former U.S.-designated terrorist once known as Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani — from its sanctions list, [according to sanctions-law trackers](https://sanctionsnews.bakermckenzie.com/united-states-lifts-comprehensive-syria-sanctions/). U.S.-Syria diplomatic ties, cut in 2012, reopened in 2025, and in January the two governments joined Israel in a U.S.-brokered meeting that set up a de-escalation channel, [the State Department said](https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2026/01/joint-statement-on-the-trilateral-meeting-between-the-governments-of-the-united-states-of-america-the-state-of-israel-and-the-syrian-arab-republic), with al-Salama among the Syrian representatives. ## The uneasy subtext The appearance crystallizes the central tension in the West's dealings with the new Syria: its senior ranks are filled with men whose résumés include years in organizations the United States branded terrorist. For Washington, the calculation is pragmatic — Syria holds thousands of Islamic State detainees, borders five countries and sits at the center of regional reconstruction — and engagement, in the current U.S. view, beats isolation. For critics and many of the Assad and jihadist eras' victims, watching a former militant address a counterterrorism summit is harder to absorb. Both realities now sit, uneasily, in the same room. ## Sources - [Syria has turned the page on extremism but Israel remains a threat, spy chief tells UN](https://www.arabnews.com/node/2649009/middle-east) - [United States lifts comprehensive Syria sanctions](https://sanctionsnews.bakermckenzie.com/united-states-lifts-comprehensive-syria-sanctions/) - [Joint statement on the US-Israel-Syria trilateral meeting](https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2026/01/joint-statement-on-the-trilateral-meeting-between-the-governments-of-the-united-states-of-america-the-state-of-israel-and-the-syrian-arab-republic)