DAMASCUS (Dispatches) -- Syria’s de facto foreign minister met a senior U.S. official in Damascus on Monday to expand bilateral cooperation, even as Israeli forces conducted fresh incursions into southern Syria and Washington continued its embrace of a regime led by a man who once had a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head.
Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani held talks with U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Jake McGee, with the two discussing “ways to deepen cooperation” and “prospects for broadening the Syrian-U.S. partnership,” according to the SANA news agency. 
McGee also addressed a visiting U.S. economic delegation, telling American businesses that Washington encourages investment in the Syrian market and that “Syria’s needs are substantial”.
The engagement represents a remarkable turn for de fact president Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, who led the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham before toppling Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. 
Trump first met Jolani in Riyadh in May 2025, praising him as a “young, attractive guy. Tough guy. Strong past”. . Then Jolani visited the White House in November 2025 — the first such visit by a purported Syrian head of state since 1946.
Trump later announced the lifting of all U.S. sanctions on Syria, telling reporters it would give the country “a chance for greatness”.
Yet the diplomatic warmth has coincided with what observers describe as a tacit American tolerance for Israeli military invasion of Syrian soil. 
On Monday, approximately eight Israeli military vehicles entered the village of Saida al-Golan in Quneitra’s countryside, accompanied by reconnaissance aircraft, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. 
Artillery shells also struck the outskirts of Beit Jinn in the Damascus countryside, according to Syrian state television.
The incursions have become a near-daily occurrence since Assad’s fall, with Israeli forces entering southern villages, firing on agricultural land, and conducting frequent incursions into Syria. 
 A U.S.-brokered “coordination mechanism” announced in January was supposed to suspend Israeli military incursions and attacks, but no such suspension has materialized, and Israel has not withdrawn from the security zone it controls in southern Syria.