Al-Julani — rendered in the source-corpus auto-captions variously as Galani, Jolani and al-Julani — is the former al-Qaeda commander who became president of Syria and whom John Kiriakou has used as his central example of how fast an official enemy can be converted into an official partner.
The résumé
Kiriakou’s summary of the record is short: “The guy was a member of al-Qaeda. He was a co-founder of ISIS. He allegedly took up arms against the United States. Everything about this guy shouts Osama bin Laden light.” On that record, he says, the man “should be, you know, buried under the jail, as the saying goes.”[1]
Instead: “we essentially usher him into Damascus over the course of a week or two weeks,” the president “off the top of his head just says, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m lifting sanctions on Syria effective immediately’” — with people, Kiriakou notes, literally dancing in the streets of Damascus — and then the White House invitation, “to be fêted by all the Washington swells.”[1][2]
The first hypothesis: a CIA asset
Kiriakou’s initial reading was drawn from the speed rather than from any inside knowledge: “I don’t mean to be cynical, but the only conclusion I can draw is that this guy had to be a long-term CIA asset. He had to be, with his resume.”[3]
What he found unanswerable was the tempo. “We don’t change our minds about people quickly like this. Look at US relations with Cuba — we’re still fighting Fidel Castro and he’s been dead for years now.” Asked whether Americans remained angry about the Russian revolution of 1917, he agreed: “We are. We’re still pissed.”[4]
The businessman’s account
Earlier, asked how a man went from insurgent to Western partner, Kiriakou gave a less conspiratorial reading of the same facts: “I think he’s a very savvy businessman, and I think that he came to the conclusion early on that it’s better to be friendly with the West than to be the enemy of the West.”[5]
The sequence he lays out: within days of taking power al-Julani invited the American assistant secretary of state Barbara Leaf and the assistant secretary for hostage affairs to Syria; in exchange for recognition, “the $10 million bounty that the US had on him was lifted, and now we’re all friends.” After that the United States carried his water — at the World Economic Forum, and with the European Union, “where the US whispers to the EU leadership: Galani is okay, you can deal with him.”[6][7]
The strategic payoff, on his account, was that weapons no longer moved from Iran through Syria and the Russian presence collapsed — “when the Russians have to issue a public statement saying ‘we would really appreciate it if you would respect our military bases,’ they’ve lost. And that’s exactly what happened.”[7][8]
The Turkish answer
Kiriakou later abandoned the CIA hypothesis on the strength of a single dinner. A senior Turkish government official visiting Washington asked him to dinner to talk foreign policy “from the perspective of an informed private citizen.” Kiriakou opened by telling him Turkey had to get out of Cyprus, then put his theory about Syria directly: “Jolani, this guy has to be a CIA asset, right? He has to be. I mean, he comes out of nowhere. He’s the former co-founder of ISIS. He’s a former senior commander of al-Qaeda. He appears to be installed in the presidency of Syria practically overnight, just like that. And then the very next day the president of the United States congratulates him and lifts all sanctions. That just has CIA written all over it.”[9][10]
“And the guy laughed. He said, ‘No, he’s ours. Turkish National Intelligence Organization. We created him from nothing and we installed him in Syria.’ I said, ‘You know what? That actually makes more sense.’” Kiriakou describes the official as having “proudly, gladly just came out with it” — and calls the claim “quite dramatic and utterly believable.”[11]
The unexplained reversal
Watching footage of al-Julani received as head of state in 2025, Kiriakou’s objection is that no account of the change has ever been given. Asked when al-Qaeda stopped being “head choppers,” he answers: “that’s a good question, and there’s never been any explanation by the US government as to why and even when the policy changed.”[12][13]
He restates the subject’s record before the reversal in the strongest terms available: “not only was a senior member of al-Qaeda, he was the deputy founder of ISIS. Why? Because al-Qaeda wasn’t radical enough.” And on the lifting of sanctions: “you just saved a guy who co-founded ISIS, a guy who was the head of al-Qaeda, then called the Nusra Front in Syria. Why? What necessitated this change in policy? This is the guy that dedicated his life to murdering Americans.”[14][13][15]
The unanswered question he attaches is addressed to the people who fought the earlier war: “what do you tell all the military people, or the families of military people, who were killed in this fight?”[15]