Category: Washington Post

CARACAS, Venezuela — Hundreds of protesters took to the streets in Venezuela’s capital and across the country last week for Youth Day, asserting their right to demonstrate and calling for acting president Delcy Rodríguez to release political prisoners.

Thursday’s rallies, which proceeded peacefully, were seen as a test for the new government — the first major show of opposition in the streets since the U.S. capture Jan. 3 of President Nicolás Maduro, and since security forces made thousands of arrests in a large-scale crackdown on dissent in 2024, after Maduro claimed victory in an election that evidence shows he lost.

“We are not afraid anymore,” Zahid Reyes, 19, a student leader at the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas, said as he was getting ready to join a campus rally. “Venezuela has changed.”

“Amnesty now,” read banners at campus entrances.

An air of excitement prevailed, among the hundreds of students looking to give new voice to an opposition that faced increasingly harsh repression in recent years. Police and security forces cordoned off the area.

Miguel Angel Suarez, also from the Central University of Venezuela, said he was proud of students for claiming their right to protest. After Jan. 3, an opportunity opened, he said. “The fight will continue until we are heard.”

Venezuelan lawmakers are debating a mass amnesty of political prisoners, under pressure from the United States. Hundreds have been released since U.S. forces seized Maduro in a surprise raid that left at least 32 people dead — in what Venezuela’s government condemned as an illegal attack — and brought him to New York to face narco-terrorism charges, but an even larger share remain behind bars.

“I am filled with hope,” said Aryeliz Villegas, 22, a student at the university. “Whenever the country breaks down, the youth rise up.”

The demonstrations come as U.S. and Venezuelan relations are undergoing a fundamental change: President Donald Trump has forged ahead with plans to work with the authoritarian, socialist government of Maduro’s successor, Rodríguez, to open the country’s oil sector to the U.S. — while keeping at arm’s length the opposition, including Nobel laureate María Corina Machado, the key opposition leader in exile.

Many young activists say Maduro’s ouster feels like a fundamental shift, even if the opposition remains far from power. Andrea Isea, 33, a law student at the university, said the events of recent months have given her a new sense of purpose in her chosen profession. “I used to think about why I was going to all this trouble to study law in this country, but after January 3rd, I can see that there can be a future here for us students,” she said.

In downtown Caracas, Maduro loyalists held their own Youth Day celebration, with government support, calling for his return. Demonstrators said he had been kidnapped and remained the rightful president. Music from the Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny blared from speakers, as organized groups — many of them teenagers in school uniforms — danced, drummed, and marched under a warm sun.

Rodolfo Machado, 24, a city official focused on youth employment, said he thought Venezuela should continue “fighting against Westernism,” and that the U.S. exploits South America. “Delcy Rodríguez carries Nicolás Maduro’s mandate because she is a person who is prepared to continue fighting,” he said.

The White House is declaring victory on turning around the economy, after months of aides’ urging the president to find a more empathetic tone on Americans’ financial struggles.

But public attitudes about the economy have not risen to match the record-breaking stock market and expectations-beating inflation and jobs report, defining the challenge for the president’s party in November’s midterms. Most Americans say the economy is on the wrong track and disapprove of Trump’s handling of it, recent surveys show.

The gap between macroeconomic indicators and public sentiment echoes the dynamic that encumbered Trump’s predecessor, which the current president is similarly hoping to overcome through direct appeals to voters.

“I think we have the greatest economy actually ever in history,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Business’s Larry Kudlow that aired on Tuesday. “I guess I have to sell that because we should win in a landslide.”

Since the fall, advisers sensitive to the persistent pinch of higher prices urged Trump to modulate his tone on the economy by acknowledging the pain, blaming the conditions on former President Joe Biden, and highlighting his efforts to tame inflation. White House spokespeople and surrogates proved more faithful to that message than the president himself, who largely continued to insist that the economy was great and he deserved more credit.

Trump’s preference has now prevailed thanks to a record-high stock market, surprisingly strong January job numbers, and easing prices for gas, groceries, and housing.

“President Trump is absolutely right to celebrate inflation finally cooling and real wages finally growing for everyday American workers,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said.

“While Biden downplayed and ignored this reality, President Trump has been focused on ending the Biden economic disaster since Day One with policies that work. That’s why inflation has cooled, real wages are up, and GDP growth has far surpassed expectations.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at about 50,000 points for the first time on Tuesday, and the S&P 500 is also trading at all-time highs. The economy added 130,000 jobs in January, more than double economists’ forecast. A gallon of gas averaged $2.94 on Wednesday, the lowest for this time of year since 2021, according to AAA. And inflation in January dropped to a low last seen in May, before Trump raised tariffs.

“We’re hitting all-time-high stock numbers,” Trump said Friday in a speech to troops at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. “All I know is forget about the stock market, forget about Wall Street, your 401(k)s are doing very well. I don’t have to ask you, ‘Is anybody doing poorly with their 401(k)?’ If they were, you’re a pretty bad investor.”

But the positive signs are unevenly felt, and skew toward the wealthy. About 40% of adults in the U.S. do not have a 401(k) or any other retirement savings account, according to a 2025 Gallup survey. Consumer sentiment among people without stock holdings remained near its lowest level since at least 2018, and the overall average was about 20% lower than in January 2025, according to the University of Michigan’s benchmark survey.

Desai said the stock market highs reflect pro-business policies that are driving investment and will create jobs and increase wages. Most business spending and stock market increases are driven by investments in artificial intelligence by tech companies such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta. The data centers they’re building demand electricity and produce fewer jobs than traditional factories, and some members of Trump’s coalition, such as Tucker Carlson, argue that AI will reduce American jobs in the future.

Fifty-nine percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of their cost of living, 43% strongly, according to a Reuters-Ipsos poll conducted Jan. 23-25. He performed better on employment and jobs, though half of respondents still disapproved. The survey found only 28% of Americans said the economy is on the right track.

White House officials also pointed to a four-year low in median national rents and a four-year high in the Intercontinental Exchange’s measure of mortgage affordability. But those measures offer only a partial snapshot. To return to pre-pandemic affordability levels, household incomes would need to rise more than 15% while home prices remain flat, the exchange reported this month. Grocery prices remain volatile, with some falling and others rising — a mix that has made day-to-day food costs uneven for consumers.

“I brought prices way down,” Trump said in response to a question from the Washington Post last week. “You don’t hear it anymore — when I first came in, the Democrats were screaming ‘affordability.’”

Mark Mitchell, the head pollster at the conservative Rasmussen Reports, has been critical of the Trump administration’s emphasis on a surging stock market while young Americans are experiencing difficult job and housing markets. “Let them eat S&P,” he wrote repeatedly on X in response to videos of Trump and top administration officials touting stock performance.

White House officials acknowledged that voters are hard to persuade about their own personal financial circumstances. Since the start of the administration, economic advisers regularly met to focus on policy actions that would deliver benefits Americans would feel in time for the midterms, one of the officials said. The White House was determined to adopt tax cuts earlier than in Trump’s first term to ensure refunds would begin reaching households in 2026.

The White House is also counting on more momentum, including interest rate cuts from Trump’s new pick to chair the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, and cheaper prescription drugs available through government-negotiated deals on a website called TrumpRx. The website currently lists 43 medications. Desai said the administration is working to add more pharmaceuticals from companies with existing deals and through negotiations with other drugmakers.

“There’s reason for some hope” now for Republicans in Congress, said Gregg Keller, a GOP strategist working for a super PAC supporting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the state’s Senate race. “If the economy rolls this year and if voters give Trump and Republicans credit for it, that bodes well [for] us avoiding a drubbing in the elections.”

Voters say Trump’s economy is better than Biden’s, but they want to hear more about what the administration is doing to ease everyday costs of living, according to Mitch Brown, a partner at the Republican polling firm Cygnal. Only 30% of voters can handle an unexpected expense of $1,000 or more, heightening their anxiety, Brown said.

“President Trump knows this and his administration is working to not only address these concerns with policy, but getting the rest of the GOP to hit this message hard that we have done great work but will continue to fight hard to lower costs in the midterms,” Brown said. “Democrats don’t hold a majority of voters’ trust on a single issue, so the opportunity to keep the majority is well within the GOP’s grasp.”

Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican consultant specializing in polling, said while people with “substantial resources invested in the stock market” are satisfied with a surging Dow, the data suggest “most Americans are still not happy” with progress on inflation and the strength of the economy.

“Presidents who’ve done a good job capturing the sentiments of the American people are those who articulate a message that is consistent with what most people feel,” Ayres said. “Bill Clinton was probably the best of anyone at that, but it’s very difficult to persuade Americans to believe something they’re not feeling in their daily lives.”

House Republicans need Trump to use the full weight of his presidency to make the case that his administration has brought down the cost of living, said longtime GOP strategist Ron Bonjean.

“House Republicans are entering a really dangerous phase. They have to defy history. They need everything,” he said. “They need a president who has the loudest megaphone in the country’s history.”

MUNICH — Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that the United States and Europe “belong together” in a speech Saturday aimed at unifying the Western alliance, while condemning hallmarks of globalization, open borders, unfettered free trade, “deindustrialization,” and mass migration.

Rubio’s message, in a keynote address at the annual Munich Security Conference, received applause from a demoralized audience of European leaders who are deeply distressed about divisions with the United States stoked by President Donald Trump’s punitive tariffs, territorial ambitions for Greenland, and disagreements over how to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together,” Rubio said.

But even as he appealed to those ties, Rubio promoted several Trump administration positions that are deeply controversial among the United States’ closest traditional allies. He showed disdain for policies to reduce carbon emissions, staunchly criticized the United Nations — which many in Europe view as critical to protecting smaller states’ sovereignty — and lauded unilateral U.S. military action in Latin America and the Middle East.

“On the most pressing matters before us, [the U.N.] has no answers and has played virtually no role,” Rubio said.

Compared, however, to Vice President JD Vance’s blistering speech in Munich last year, which left the audience stunned by his seeming contempt for Europe, Rubio’s appeal to strengthen the alliance was received as more constructive.

“Our home may be in the Western Hemisphere, but we will always be a child of Europe,” Rubio said.

The moderator of the event, Wolfgang Ischinger, called the remarks a “sigh of relief” and a message of “reassurance” and “partnership.”

Europe’s top leaders descended on the Bavarian capital this weekend, proclaiming the need to overhaul the relationship with the U.S. that has spurred economic prosperity and guaranteed security since World War II.

European leaders promised to chart their own course and forge a version of the Western alliance in which they depend less on the United States.

“In today’s fractured world, Europe must become more independent — there is no other choice,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a speech early Saturday, to applause.

As European and American politicians issue post-mortems for the world order in Munich, officials from each side of the Atlantic said it was high time for Europe to pay its own way for security. On that point, European and U.S. leaders appeared in sync.

For the Europeans, the call to take charge of the continent’s defense is about more than addressing U.S. demands: It could also provide the ability to stand up to Washington and an administration with which they concede they do not share some interests.

Rubio’s remarks about Europe were softer than Vance’s criticism of the suppression of far-right parties — and, in his characterization, free speech — or Trump’s threats to seize Greenland from NATO ally Denmark.

But European leaders know well that a crisis with the administration could still erupt on an array of issues, including Greenland, negotiations with Russia over Ukraine, and regulation of hate speech and Big Tech.

The leaders of Europe’s political and economic powerhouses, France and Germany, stressed that a more powerful Europe could shield itself from the whims of Washington and Moscow, and they delivered a stern rebuke of Trump’s foreign policy gyrations including on trade and climate.

French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking at the conference Friday night, said Europe had been unjustly “vilified” as a continent of unfettered immigration and repression — an apparent reference to Vance’s speech and to a recent U.S. National Security Strategy that said Europe was facing “civilizational erasure.”

“Everyone should take their cue from us, instead of criticizing us or trying to divide us,” Macron said. He called for “derisking vis-à-vis all the big powers,” not just in defense, but also in the economy and technology.

“Europe is rearming, but we must now go beyond,” he added. “Europe has to learn to become a geopolitical power.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, in his welcoming remarks on Friday, said: “The culture wars of MAGA in the U.S. are not ours.”

Merz also said that the U.S. claim to global leadership was being “challenged” in an era of great power rivalry, including rising Chinese influence, and he warned that Washington will need allies.

“Even the United States will not be powerful enough to go it alone,” he said. “Dear friends, being a part of NATO is not only Europe’s competitive advantage. It is also the United States’ competitive advantage.”

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that “we shouldn’t get in the warm bath of complacency. He said the U.K. must reforge closer ties with Europe to help the continent “stand on our own two feet” in its own defense, and said there needs to be investment that “moves us from overdependence to interdependence.”

Hanno Pevkur, the defense minister of EU and NATO member Estonia, said it was “quite a bold statement to say that America is ‘a child of Europe’.”

“It was a good speech, needed here today, but that doesn’t mean that we can rest on pillows now,” he told The Associated Press. “So still a lot of work has to be done.”

A meeting on Greenland

Rubio didn’t mention Greenland. After last month’s escalation over Trump’s designs on the Arctic island, the U.S., Denmark, and Greenland started technical talks on an Arctic security deal.

The Secretary of State met briefly in Munich on Friday with the Danish and Greenlandic leaders, a meeting Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen described as constructive.

But Frederiksen suggested Saturday that although the dispute has cooled, she remains wary. Asked whether the crisis has passed, she replied: “No, unfortunately not. I think the desire from the U.S. president is exactly the same. He is very serious about this theme.”

Asked whether she can put a price on Greenland, she responded “of course not,” adding that “we have to respect sovereign states … and we have to respect people’s right for self-determination. And the Greenlandic people have been very clear, they don’t want to become Americans.”

Working in strict secrecy, a government scientist in Norway built a machine capable of emitting powerful pulses of microwave energy and, in an effort to prove such devices are harmless to humans, in 2024 tested it on himself. He suffered neurological symptoms similar to those of “Havana syndrome,” the unexplained malady that has struck hundreds of U.S. spies and diplomats around the world.

The bizarre story, described by four people familiar with the events, is the latest wrinkle in the decadelong quest to find the causes of Havana syndrome, whose sufferers experience long-lasting effects including cognitive challenges, dizziness, and nausea. The U.S. government calls the events Anomalous Health Incidents.

The secret test in Norway has not been previously reported. The Norwegian government told the CIA about the results, two of the people said, prompting at least two visits in 2024 to Norway by Pentagon and White House officials.

Those aware of the test say it does not prove AHIs are the work of a foreign adversary wielding a secret weapon similar to the prototype tested in Norway. One of them noted that the effects suffered by the Norwegian researcher, whose identity was not disclosed by the people familiar, were not the same as in a “classic” AHI case. All spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the subject’s sensitivity.

But the events bolstered the case of those who argue that “pulsed-energy devices” — machines that deliver powerful beams of electromagnetic energy such as microwaves in short bursts — can affect human biology and are probably being developed by U.S. adversaries.

“I think there’s compelling evidence that we should be concerned about the ability to build a directed-energy weapon that can cause a variety of risk to humans,” said Paul Friedrichs, a retired military surgeon and Air Force general who oversaw biological threats on the White House National Security Council under President Joe Biden. Friedrichs declined to comment on the Norway experiment.

The Trump administration took office promising to pursue the AHI issue aggressively. But there has been little apparent movement. A review ordered by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is expected to focus mostly on the Biden administration’s handling of the issue, and its release has been delayed, people familiar with the issue said.

In a separate development that has become public in recent weeks, the U.S. government covertly purchased at the end of the Biden administration a different foreign-made device that produces pulsed radio waves and which some experts suspect could be linked to AHI incidents, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The device is being tested by the Defense Department. It has some Russian-origin components, but the U.S. government still has not determined conclusively who built it, said one of the people.

The U.S. acquisition of the device was first reported last month by independent journalist Sasha Ingber and CNN, which said it had been purchased for millions of dollars by Homeland Security Investigations, part of the Department of Homeland Security.

The device that the scientist constructed in Norway was not identical to the one that the U.S. government covertly acquired, one of the people familiar with the events said. The Norwegian device was built based on “classified information,” suggesting it was derived from blueprints or other materials stolen from a foreign government, this person said.

At about the same time the U.S. became aware of the two pulsed-energy machines, two spy agencies altered their previous judgment and concluded that some of the incidents involving AHIs could be the work of a foreign adversary, delivering that verdict in an updated U.S. intelligence assessment issued in January 2025 during the Biden administration’s final weeks.

“New reporting,” the assessment said, led the two agencies “to shift their assessments about whether a foreign actor has a capability that could cause biological effects consistent with some of the symptoms reported as possible AHIs.”

One was the National Security Agency, which intercepts and decodes foreign electronic communications, several people familiar with the issue said. The other, said two of those people, was the National Ground Intelligence Center, a U.S. Army intelligence agency in Charlottesville that produces intelligence on foreign adversaries’ scientific, technical, and military capabilities.

The majority of U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA and four others, said they continued to judge it “very unlikely” that the attacks were the result of a foreign adversary or that a foreign actor had developed a novel weapon. In conversations intercepted by U.S. spy agencies, American adversaries were heard expressing their own surprise at the AHI incidents and denying involvement, U.S. officials have said.

The CIA declined to comment on the Norwegian test or how it impacted the agency’s analysis. Norway’s embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

Some former officials and AHI victims have pointed to Russia as the prime suspect in the AHI incidents because of its decades of work in directed-energy devices. So far, no conclusive proof has publicly emerged, and Moscow has denied involvement.

Taken together, the two known directed-energy devices along with other research appear to have prompted a reconsideration by some of the causes of Havana syndrome, so named because of the mysterious 2016 outbreak of symptoms reported by personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Havana.

In subsequent years, U.S. personnel reported hundreds of cases globally, in China, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere. A top aide to then-CIA Director William J. Burns reported symptoms while traveling in India in 2021.

At a conference in Philadelphia earlier this month, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Chris Schlagheck, at times his voice breaking, said he was hit five times in 2020 in his home in Northern Virginia, where a Russian family lived across the street. It was not until last year that a doctor told him his symptoms were the same as those reported from Havana a decade earlier.

Much about the Norway test remains obscured by its highly classified nature. People familiar with the events declined to identify the scientist or the Norwegian government agency he worked for.

The results were all the more shocking because the Norwegian researcher had earned a reputation as a leading opponent of the theory that directed-energy weapons can cause the type of symptoms associated with AHIs, those familiar with the events said. Trying to dramatically prove his point, with himself as a human guinea pig, he achieved the opposite.

“I don’t know what possessed him to go and do this,” one of the people said. “He was a bit of an eccentric.”

A delegation of Pentagon officials traveled to Norway in 2024 to examine the device. In December of that year, a group of intelligence and White House officials also went to Norway to discuss the issue, those familiar with the events said.

In January 2022, the CIA produced an interim assessment that concluded a foreign country was probably not behind Havana syndrome. It emerged weeks before a major panel of government and nongovernment experts produced a report commissioned by the director of national intelligence and deputy CIA director that came to a markedly different conclusion.

That panel concluded in February 2022 that pulsed electromagnetic energy, particularly in the radio-frequency range, ‘’plausibly explains the core characteristics of reported AHIs,” although it acknowledged many unknowns. “Information gaps exist,” it reported.

The conclusion marked the first time a report issued publicly by the U.S. government acknowledged that the symptoms could be caused by human-made, external events.

The IC Experts Panel, as it was known, interviewed several people who had suffered accidental exposure to electromagnetic energy, said David Relman, a Stanford University microbiologist who chaired the panel.

But the CIA interim assessment overshadowed the expert panel’s report. Then, in March 2023, the full intelligence community issued an assessment that unanimously concluded that it was unlikely that a foreign adversary was behind the incidents. “There is no credible evidence that a foreign adversary has a weapon or (intelligence) collection device that is causing AHIs,” the unclassified version of their report said, citing secret intelligence data and open-source information about foreign weapons and research programs.

U.S. intelligence agencies “essentially ignored” the experts panel’s work, Relman told the conference in Philadelphia. The agencies, particularly the CIA, “had developed a very firm set of conclusions, world view that caused them I think to become dug in,” he said.

By late 2024, senior White House officials in the Biden administration had come to question the absolutist position taken by U.S. intelligence agencies in their 2023 assessment.

There were some officials, including within the intelligence community, who insisted that “there was nothing here” — that every reported case could be explained by some environmental or medical factor, said one person familiar with the administration’s views.

The more “responsible” view, the person said, was to admit “we don’t know the answers” and that it was “plausible that pulsed electromagnetic energy could account for some subset of cases.”

After the November 2024 election, White House officials who were working on an AHI brief for the incoming Trump administration invited several victims to a meeting to offer their input. The officials also wanted to reassure the victims that they realized the intelligence community assessment called into question the very real health issues they experienced and what caused them.

At one point, an official turned to the victims who were gathered in the Situation Room and said, “We believe you.” The White House wasn’t yet certain it was a foreign actor but believed it was plausible that the symptoms had been caused by external factors, said the person familiar with the administration’s views.

Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer and AHI victim who attended the unclassified meeting, said, “It was clear to the victims, but also unsaid, that new information had come into the NSC that had caused them to make such a statement.”

The U.S. military has completed the transfer of thousands of suspected Islamic State fighters to the Iraqi government, setting the stage for the expected withdrawal of many — perhaps even all — American troops from Syria within months despite concerns about the Syrian government’s ability to prevent a resurgence of the group, officials familiar with the issue said.

The movement of 5,700 detainees, underway for weeks, was completed Thursday night with a flight from northeastern Syria to Iraq, U.S. military officials said in a statement. The effort signals a forthcoming end to a yearslong mission overseen by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish militia group that had managed the detention facilities in territory it controlled in northeastern Syria.

The transfer began Jan. 21 as U.S. troops teamed with SDF and Iraqi counterparts to move the detainees using aircraft and armed ground convoys. It marks one of the most significant developments in years for the remnants of the Islamic State, the militant group whose bloody campaign across Syria and Iraq resulted in a multinational military intervention beginning in 2014. A smaller number of Syrians, fewer than 2,000, are expected to remain in Syria in the SDF-run detention centers until they are turned over to the Syrian government.

Many of the detainees who have been transferred are expected to be held at the Al-Karkh prison, an Iraqi facility near Baghdad International Airport, said U.S. officials, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations. It was once called Camp Cropper and used by the U.S. military to house detainees during the Iraq War. Iraq’s supreme judicial council said Friday that about 3,000 Syrians are among the detainees transferred.

In a statement, the White House said Trump is committed to a Syria that is “stable, unified and at peace with itself and its neighbors.” That requires Syria not being a base for terrorism or to pose a threat in the region and beyond, it says.

The United States is monitoring the situation in Syria and working with all sides, the statement says, to ensure that “ISIS detainees remain in detention,” including an organized transition of other detention centers in Syria to Syrian government control.

The shift underscores a major shift in U.S. policy toward Syria, as President Donald Trump, who has aligned himself with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, seeks to extricate the roughly 1,000 American troops who have remained there functioning as a backstop to prevent a resurgence by the Islamic State.

A report by the Director of National Intelligence last year said that the Islamic State will attempt to “reconstitute its attack capabilities,” including plotting against the West, and free prisoners to rebuild its ranks. Three U.S. troops were ambushed and killed by a suspected Islamic State member in Syria in December, prompting Trump to approve retaliatory airstrikes days later.

Sharaa, a former al-Qaeda militant who broke with the group in 2016, has sought to unify his country since his forces forced the December 2024 ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad, a dictator whose 24-year rule was marked by mass atrocities and a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people. The Islamic State has repeatedly attempted to assassinate Sharaa over the last year, according to a United Nations report released this week.

One step in the withdrawal occurred Wednesday, as U.S. troops at the Tanf garrison in the southeastern part of Syria turned control over to Sharaa’s forces. Adm. Brad Cooper, the top officer overseeing U.S. operations in the region, said in a statement that U.S. forces retain the ability to respond to any threats posed by the Islamic State in the region.

Other bases could be transferred to Sharaa’s forces in coming days or weeks as conditions warrant, two officials familiar with the issue said. Doing so could allow Trump to fully end the U.S. mission there, a goal since his first administration that consistently collided with challenges posed by Syria’s fractured state.

Trump has downplayed Sharaa’s past as a jihadist, telling reporters in January that the Syrian leader was “working very hard.” He’s characterized him as a “tough guy” with a “pretty tough resumé.”

“You’re not gonna put a choir boy in there and get the job done,” Trump said at the time.

Still, U.S. officials said, Washington had privately delivered warnings to their Iraqi counterparts about Sharaa’s ability to ensure security over the ISIS detention camps. One senior U.S. official said in an interview with the Washington Post that the Trump administration had told Baghdad in the fall that it was “entirely likely” that if Sharaa’s government took control of the alleged terrorism suspects, they could be freed or break loose at some point and attack Iraq again.

Sharaa could not be reached for comment.

Iraqi officials acknowledged then that there was cause for concern, the senior U.S. official said. But those anxieties accelerated last month, as Sharaa’s forces pressed forward with an armed offensive into SDF-held territory, forcing the group to abandon two major facilities, the Shaddadi prison and al-Hol camp, allowing about 200 detainees to escape on Jan. 19.

The detainees were considered “low-level” fighters, and dozens were later recaptured, U.S. officials said. But the episode triggered alarm in Washington and Baghdad and prompted numerous phone calls from senior U.S. officials to Sharaa, officials said, including at least one by Cooper on Jan. 21 and one by Trump on Jan. 27, these people said.

Abdulkarim Omar, a representative with the SDF’s civilian government, called the moves of Sharaa’s forces in the region “aggression.” The Kurdish people, he said, “became victims of international arrangements concluded over their heads” and have seen “international silence.”

Cooper also made a visit to northeastern Syria on Jan. 22, as his team attempted to ensure that Sharaa’s forces and the SDF adhered to a ceasefire as the detainees were transferred from Syria to Iraq, according to a U.S. military statement at the time.

“It definitely could have gone completely sideways, to be completely honest with you,” a senior U.S. official told the Post, noting that U.S. soldiers remained in the region as tensions were high between the SDF and Sharaa’s fighters.

Trump acknowledged calling Sharaa, saying his team had “solved a tremendous problem in conjunction with Syria and saved many lives.” He did not elaborate.

The undertaking has triggered mixed feelings in the region, even as officials there appear to cooperate with U.S. desires.

Hussein Allawi, an Iraqi security adviser, said his government is urging other governments to take back ISIS suspects from their countries so that Iraq is not overwhelmed. Iraq, he said is “totally capable” of handling the issue, but will face infrastructure challenges.

Jiwan Soz, a Kurdish researcher, said that “despite the interference of the Americans” in the dispute between the SDF and Sharaa’s fighters, the Syrian president “cannot control the situation.” The armed groups Al-Sharaa relies on have a variety of tribal affiliations and allegiances, he said, and armed skirmishes have continued.

“There are huge challenges there, and I don’t believe al-Sharaa can succeed,” he said.

Nawar Rahawie, a Syrian official, said the ceasefire is fragile and will require persuasion. Tribal fighters who aligned with both the SDF and the Syrian government have kept their fighters out of the fray, he said, and Sharaa has “a certain level of control over the tribes and fighters.”

He added that people of all kinds were “harmed by the Assad regime,” and credited Sharaa’s government for offering a new way. Syrian officials are investigating “crimes and murder” that have emerged, and will seek accountability, he said.

James Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador who focused on Syria during the first Trump administration, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee this week that he is “wary” of Sharaa, but has watched him push Iranian influence away from Syria and combat Islamic State fighters who remain — both core U.S. goals.

U.S. troops in Syria have worked with both the SDF and Sharaa’s forces in recent months, Jeffrey said, and Washington will have a better understanding of what occurs in the region the longer they remain.