Donald Trump and Ahmed al-Sharaa jointly condemned a deadly insider ambush in Palmyra that killed two American soldiers and an interpreter, exposing severe weaknesses in the fragile USA–Syria counterterrorism partnership created after Bashar al-Assad’s fall.Investigators in Washington and Damascus say a Syrian Interior Ministry officer with suspected sympathies for ISIS opened fire on a joint convoy before being killed, prompting emergency airlifts to the Al-Tanf garrison, multiple arrests inside General Security, and furious accusations that the USA-led coalition ignored warnings about jihadist infiltration.Vowing retaliation, Trump,
Pete Hegseth,
Joe Kent,
Marco Rubio,
Assaad al-Chaibani,
Tom Barrack,
Sean Parnell,
Ahmed al-Sharaa, and Syrian spokesman
Nour Eddin al-Baba all promised expanded operations against
ISIS sleeper cells across
Syria, even as deep mutual distrust, the Islamist past of the Damascus leadership, and intense political risk threaten to destabilize the new alliance.