HALABJA, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – The US State Department on Monday filed a memo that will see the terrorist designation for Syria's Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) be revoked, with the memo being published in a preview of the Federal Register ahead of official publication on Tuesday.

"In consultation with the Attorney General and the Secretary of the Treasury, I hereby revoke the designation of al-Nusrah Front, also known as Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (and other aliases) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization," reads the notice signed by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, which dates from June 23.

A rebel offensive in early December of last year, spearheaded by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), saw the ouster of Bashar al-Assad, ending the Assad family's five-decade-long rule and shifting the political scene in Syria and the Middle East. The overthrow ultimately led to HTS chief Ahmed al-Sharaa being appointed as Syria’s president in the following months.

The HTS was designated as a terrorist organization by the US, the UK, the United Nations, and other Western nations. Its leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani at the time, had a 10-million-dollar bounty by the US government that was announced in 2018.

Sharaa joined al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2003, just weeks before the American invasion, and quickly rose through the group’s ranks. He was arrested by US forces in Iraq in 2006 and imprisoned for over five years. His release in 2011 coincided with the start of the Syrian civil war, and he would go on to form Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, after reaching an agreement with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Emir of the Islamic State (ISIS).

Former US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in December, days after the ouster of Assad that “we’re going to judge them [the HTS] by their actions. And our policy response will be determined by the actions they take,” adding that they “have heard them saying the right things about inclusion and a political process forward.”

US President Donald Trump met with Syria’s Ahmed al-Sharaa in Riyadh in May, in the presence of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan via video conference. A meeting that came one day after Trump made a landmark decision to remove all sanctions on Syria “in order to give them a chance at greatness.”