U.S. officials say they are closely monitoring the situation in Syria where 900 U.S. troops are

still stationed mostly in the country's northeast. John Feiner is the principal deputy national

security advisor, and I spoke with him moments ago. John Feiner, welcome back to the news hour.

President Biden said yesterday that the sudden collapse of the

Syrian government under Assad is a fundamental act of justice, but he said it's a moment of risk and

uncertainty for the Middle East. What are those risks and what is the administration doing to mitigate them?

Well, Jeff, let's just not lose track of the opportunity side of this

before we get to the risks. And the opportunity here for the Syrian people is to have their

first experience with a government free of oppression in many generations after 13 years of just an

excruciating violent civil war. That is the opportunity that presents itself by the fall of Assad.

The risk, of course, is that the groups that toppled Assad, some of them have their own

checkered history, history with human rights abuses, with violent extremism, with terrorism.

Now, many of those groups are saying that they have changed, that they have reformed.

Many of them are saying the right things in the current moment, as the president pointed out yesterday,

but we'll be judging those groups by their actions, by how they deal with this new moment of responsibility that's been brought about.

And I think the future of the Syrian people is going to depend on the choices that they make.

The leader of Syria's rebel offensive, Abu Muhammad Al Jolani, he is said to have evolved from

his past as a hardline jihadist.

What's the current U.S. assessment of him and are the terrorist designations of him and

his group still warranted?

Those designations very much remain in place because those designations are based on actions,

not just on words.

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