Welcome to Pushback. I'm Aaron Mate. A former top U.S. official has just acknowledged what has long been the obvious.

The U.S. is on the same side as al-Qaeda in Syria and even sees it as, quote, an asset.

The official, James Jeffrey, most recently served in the Trump administration as a special envoy

for Syria and the anti-ISIS coalition. And Jeffrey spoke to PBS about Hayat Tahrir al-Sham,

or HTS, which now controls the province of Idlib. HTS grew out of Jabid al-Nusra, which was the

official Syrian branch of al-Qaeda.

And according to PBS, Jeffrey called HTS an asset to America's strategy in Idlib.

Jeffrey added, quote, they are the least bad option of the various options in Idlib,

and Idlib is one of the most important places in Syria,

which is one of the most important places right now in the Middle East.

Now, HTS, under its leader, Muhammad Al-Jalani, says that it's no longer affiliated with al-Qaeda.

But U.S. officials have not agreed.

While James Jeffrey now calls HTS an asset,

his predecessor, Brett McGurk, said in 2017 that Idlib is in fact the largest Al-Qaeda safe haven since 9-11. Look, Idlib province is the largest Al-Qaeda safe haven since 9-11, tied directly to Iman al-Sahiri.

This is a huge problem.

It's been a problem for some time.

The approach by some of our partners to send in tens of thousands of tons of weapons and looking

the other way as these foreign fighters come into Syria may not have been

the best approach. And Al-Qaeda has taken full advantage of it. And Idlib now is a huge problem.

It is an Al-Qaeda safe haven right on the border of Turkey. Brett McGurk is now back in the White

House working under President Joe Biden. And Biden himself has made a similar admission. Speaking in 2014,

Biden said that U.S. allies in Syria, like Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, had directly supplied

...