Live Updates: Joyous Syrians Overflow Mosques for 1st Friday Prayers Since al-Assad’s Fall

The moves highlight the uncertainty of Moscow’s foothold in Syria after rebel forces ousted the Assad regime.

At the air base, two An-124 heavy transport planes are seen in Maxar satellite imagery with their nose cones lifted, being prepared for loading. The imagery also showed a Russian-made Ka-52 attack helicopter being dismantled, likely as preparation for transport. Components of a Russian-made S-400 air defense unit had also been moved near the planes.

Two videos verified by The Times also show at least one convoy of Russian military vehicles moving north, near Damascus and Homs, in the direction of Khmeimim Air Base. The line of vehicles, stretching more than a half mile, was largely made up of cargo trucks, armored personnel carriers, mobility vehicles and SUVs. It is unclear from the videos if they arrived at the base, or whether a significant portion of Russian soldiers and equipment may be preparing to depart Syria.

The Russian Ministry of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Under the Assad government that previously ruled Syria, Russia has for years maintained a military presence throughout the country, including the Tartus naval base and Khmeimim air base. The bases enable Russia to project its military power throughout the Mediterranean and into the Gulf.

Russia’s ties to Syria have roots in the Soviet Union’s support of Mr. al-Assad’s father, President Hafez al-Assad, in the 1970s.

This was the first Friday that the square was filled with nothing but joy.

A song rang out from one end: “Raise your head high, you’re a free Syrian.” At the other, a man sang to his lungs’ limit — joined by many in the teeming crowd who knew the lyrics well. “He who kills his people is a traitor.”

Between them was a sea of Syrian flags — with a green band rather than a red one, representing what was once the Syrian opposition, now the rulers of much of the country.

On the wall of a small park in the center of the square hung a plaque from the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham government: “Renovation of the Seven Seas Roundabout and the area around it — 2021.” It showed how the group has focused on bringing order and repairing infrastructure, and reminded residents who did it. The group has tried to prove itself not only on the battlefield, but in the halls of governance as well.

In cities that were until recently under the control of the Assad government, residents complained about how it didn’t do anything for its people, including repairing the destruction wrought by its warplanes. In rebel-held areas, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham paved roads, helped build malls and undertook a massive project to register homes, businesses and even tents, and give them addresses.

A billboard over the square reads “The Revolution Continues.” It was put up in March for the anniversary of the start of the Syrian uprising in 2011. But the message may be prescient for Syrians who are watching to see whether the rebels usher in a new era for their country or succumb to some of the same authoritarian impulses as the leaders they replaced.

What is captagon?

Captagon is the former trade name for fenethylline, a synthetic stimulant created in Germany in the early 1960s to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, depression, and narcolepsy. Most countries banned it in the 1980s because it was found to be highly addictive, with dangerous side effects that include psychosis, severe anxiety and suicidal tendencies. The illicit version sold today, often referred to as “captagon” with a lowercase c, usually contains a mix of amphetamines, caffeine and various fillers that are easier and cheaper to obtain. Produced for pennies a pill in Syria, captagon can sell for anywhere from $3 to $20 a pop on the street.

Who uses it?

It is not widely used in the most of the world but is ubiquitous in the Middle East, where it is known as ‘Abu Hilalain,’ or ‘father of the two crescents’ for the logo of two interlocking Cs stamped on each pill.

Hundreds of millions of the tablets have been smuggled into Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Gulf countries over the past several years, hidden in hollowed-out fruit, canned vegetables, flour shipments, water heaters, bakery ovens, cargo containers and other things.

Soldiers use it to boost endurance on the battlefield — leading to another nickname, “the drug of jihad.” But it is also a popular recreational drug, and is often used as a concentration aid for studying, according to a recently published study in a Saudi pharmaceutical journal.

What is the captagon market worth?

During the war, captagon became Syria’s most valuable export, far surpassing its legal products, according to a database compiled by The Times of global busts.

Estimates vary widely about the size of the overall market. According to the New Lines Institute, a New York-based policy group, global captagon sales are worth about $10 billion a year. Some 80 percent of the total was produced in Syria, which netted the Assad government about $2.4 billion a year.

How did the Assad government get involved?

Though captagon was manufactured and trafficked in Eastern Europe in the early 2000s, it didn’t really take off in the Middle East until 2006, when local authorities started reporting an uptick in seizures. When Syria descended into civil war in 2011, rebel groups got into the business to help fund their weapons purchases.

Syria had the needed components: experts to mix drugs, factories to make products to conceal the pills, access to Mediterranean shipping lanes and established smuggling routes to Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq.

By 2018, Mr. al-Assad’s government had largely consolidated control over production and trafficking to replenish its coffers, which had been decimated by economic sanctions. Captagon sales became an important source of hard currency for the regime.

An investigation by The New York Times found that much of the production and distribution was overseen by the Fourth Armored Division of the Syrian Army, an elite unit commanded by Maher al-Assad, the president’s younger brother and one of Syria’s most powerful men.

Major players also included businessmen with close ties to the government, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and other members of the president’s extended family.

Will Syria’s new leaders crack down?

The rebels who discovered the captagon factory this week in a quarry on the outskirts of Damascus burned some of the pills and dumped others into the sewer, according to video distributed by the AFP news agency.

But given the drug’s high street value, the easy availability of precursor chemicals and a deeply entrenched smuggling network, it will be difficult for the new government to eradicate.

Ahmed al-Shara, leader of the rebel offensive that orchestrated the fall of Mr. al-Assad, singled out the drug in his victory speech on Dec. 8.

“Syria has become the biggest producer of captagon on Earth,” he said, “and today, Syria is going to be purified by the grace of God.”

Additional reporting by Ben Hubbard and Hwaida Saad.

“This moment of change also carries risks and brings hardship,” Ms. von der Leyen said in a statement. “With the situation on the ground so volatile, our help to the people of Syria is ever more important.”

The emergency supplies will be taken from E.U. stockpiles in the United Arab Emirates and Denmark, and some will be flown in the coming days and distributed to Syria via Adana, Turkey. The European Union has also increased spending on humanitarian aid for Syria to more than 160 million euros ($168 million) this year, including food parcels for 61,500 people, emergency shelter kits and sanitation support.

One obstacle to helping stabilize and rebuild Syria is that the United States, the United Nations and others have long designated Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel group that led the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, as a terrorist organization. With that group now playing a central role in trying to govern Syria, international organizations and countries have limits on what aid they can provide to Syria.

Officials in the United States and elsewhere are evaluating whether to remove the terrorist label. That process can be lengthy, but the need in Syria is immediate.

In recent months, as war in Lebanon escalated, hundreds of thousands of Syrians who had sought refuge in Lebanon returned to Syria. Some of those who have gone back have found their homes damaged, destroyed or emptied out by looters.

Syria’s new leaders will need foreign aid to rebuild their country and may be more willing to meet demands by foreign countries as the government seeks to gain legitimacy and access that aid.

“Let’s make no mistake: giving answers to people will take weeks, months and maybe years, given the amount of information to process,” he added.

The Red Cross has documented 35,000 cases of disappearance in Syria, but believes there are many more who were arrested without a trace or whose families had no chance to report their fate or contact the Red Cross, Mr. Sakalian told reporters, speaking from Damascus.

The organization has opened two hotlines this week for former prisoners and for families of the disappeared to help reunify families separated in Syria’s 13-year civil war.

The chaotic scenes as families of the disappeared hunted through prison cells and offices for their missing relatives underscored some of the immediate challenges. Mr. Sakalian and a Red Cross team visiting the infamous Sednaya prison northwest of Damascus this week found crowds milling around in rooms littered with documents and with no form of security in place.

The Red Cross was contacting interim authorities and armed groups to preserve documents in prisons, morgues, hospitals and any of the former regime’s security branches, as well as mass graves and burial sites. But it was facing “quite a high level of disorganization here and not always the necessary clarity on who to call,” Mr. Sakalian said.

The organization was offering to provide a repository for securing such documents. “What we need is a more structured and urgent discussion with the interim government,” he said. “At the present moment we didn’t find the proper level to address these issues in a structured way.”

American officials have expressed concerned that the fall of Mr. al-Assad’s authoritarian regime could produce new instability across Syria that might threaten its neighbors. The outbreak of civil war in Syria in 2011 helped to fuel the rise of the Islamic State terrorist group, which conquered large swaths of Syria and Iraq.

A U.S.-led coalition shattered that group, but remnants of ISIS still operate in eastern Syria.

The State Department said in a statement that, while in Baghdad, Mr. Blinken would highlight efforts to ensure an “inclusive transition” in Syria, with various religious, ethnic and political groups involved, as well as other regional security challenges.

He also intended to discuss the American commitment to the U.S.-Iraq strategic partnership and to Iraq’s security, stability and sovereignty, the department said. But it is unclear what will become of such commitments under President-elect Donald J. Trump, who is set to take office in little more than a month and has more isolationist views.

In remarks to reporters after his meeting with Mr. al-Sudani, Mr. Blinken said that Washington was trying to encourage Syria’s new government to respect human rights and protect minorities.

He added that it was also crucial that ISIS not gain fresh strength, which could again threaten both Syria and Iraq.

“We are determined to make sure that Daesh cannot re-emerge,” Mr. Blinken said, using an alternative name for ISIS. “The United States and Iraq together had tremendous success in taking away the territorial caliphate that Daesh had created years ago, and now, having put Daesh back in its box, we can’t let it out,” he added.

After a visit to Jordan, Mr. Blinken met in Ankara on Thursday night with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. On Friday morning, he met with the Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, who told reporters afterward that they had discussed how to ensure that both ISIS and the Kurdish militant group known as the P.K.K. are not “taking action, abusing the situation” in Syria.

The P.K.K. is a Kurdish nationalist group in Turkey, tied to Kurdish rebel forces within Syria, that the Turkish government considers an enemy. The U.S. has backed the Kurdish rebel forces, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, to help fight Islamic State. That has caused friction with Turkey, and U.S. officials have sought to tamp down hostilities between Turkey and the S.D.F. that they worry could distract from efforts to contain ISIS.

That was a subject to which Mr. Blinken alluded only indirectly, saying he and Mr. Fidan had “discussed the imperative of continuing the efforts to keep ISIS down.”

“Our countries worked very hard and gave a lot over many years to ensure the elimination of the territorial caliphate of ISIS, to ensure that that threat doesn’t rear its head again,” he said. “And it’s imperative that we keep at those efforts.”

Jordan’s government announced that it would host a special meeting of foreign ministers from Arab countries and Turkey on Saturday, adding that Mr. Blinken would also attend.

Safak Timur contributed reporting from Istanbul.

“We are here for joy, then to celebrate,” said one of the faithful, Ali Sweid, 40.

Many people said they had not come to the mosque in years because they were scared they could be arrested by the Assad security forces. The mosque had been the site of brutal violence in the past, as security forces quashed anti-government demonstrations that erupted against the Assad regime during the Arab Spring revolts in 2011.

“The guy at the door was with the intelligence service,” Mr. Sweid recalled. “So was the guy inside, and the guy who called for prayer, and the preacher.”

On Friday, fighters in military uniforms — members of the rebel group that toppled Bashar al-Assad over the weekend — were mixed in with the faithful. Some sat on the carpet, their guns beside them or leaning against pillars nearby.

In the courtyard after the prayer, under the mosque’s famed mosaics, Abdullah Suleiman, a history professor at a Damascus university, said it was the largest crowd to pray at the mosque in memory, filling up the entire hall and the marble courtyard.

“It is a victory for the Syrian people who have been oppressed for 50 years,” he said, referring to the tenures of Bashar al-Assad and his father, Hafez. “For 50 years, we were deprived of these moments.”

“We hope for a state for all Syrians that does not exclude anyone or privilege anyone,” he said. “And the ballot box is the only way to accomplish that.”

Not all the chants were religious, reflecting the newfound sense of freedom in the capital. Outside the mosque, people chanted: “Hold your head high, you are a free Syrian!”

That carefully cultivated relationship opens up “an incredibly big domain for economic and political influence,” said Asli Aydintasbas, a visiting fellow at Brookings Institution in Washington with a particular focus on Turkey.

“Syria may not have a smooth transition, and there may be renewed fighting between factions,” she added. “But what is uncontestable is that Turkey’s influence will only grow, economically and politically.”

In the process, Turkey appears to have also weakened the regional influence of Russia, which along with Iran was a key backer of the Syrian president, she said. It is unclear whether Russia will be able to retain the military bases it has on Syria’s Mediterranean coast.

Initially, Turkey did not say much when the rebels swept across northern Syria, seizing two important cities in a few days. But when Mr. Erdogan finally did speak, he was quietly confident.

“The target is of course Damascus,” he said last Friday. “Our hope is for this march in Syria to proceed without incidents.”

Two days later, the rebels delivered a personal vindication for Mr. Erdogan by storming into Damascus and taking control. Within a few days, Turkey was making plans to reopen its embassy, which has been closed for almost 13 years, and a senior Turkish official, Ibrahim Kalin, the head of the national intelligence agency, was seen in the Syrian capital in footage showed on Turkish television.

On Thursday, Turkey assigned a temporary chargé d’affaires to Damascus, a Turkish official said, asking for anonymity under diplomatic protocol. Appointing a chargé d’affaires rather than an ambassador is a way for Turkey to keep diplomatic channels open without getting into the debate of whether it is recognizing the largest rebel force, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which led the offensive and has already set up a transitional government in Damascus. Turkey has considered the group a terrorist organization since 2018.

Mr. Erdogan’s relationship with Mr. al-Assad was not always tense. Early in the Turkish leader’s presidency, 20 years ago, Mr. Erdogan cultivated closer ties with Syria. It paid off then, and Mr. al-Assad made a historic trip to Ankara, the Turkish capital, in 2004, the first visit there by a Syrian president.

Trade flourished in the aftermath, with visa-free travel between Syria and Turkey, and the two presidents became firm friends. Mr. Erdogan and his wife even hosted the Syrian first couple for a vacation on the Turkish coast. Relations blossomed, and so did economic benefits for both countries.

The relationship turned sour with the Arab Spring protests of 2011. Mr. al-Assad chose to impose harsh repression against Mr. Erdogan’s advice, a former Turkish presidential aide said. Affronted, the Turkish leader helped arm part of the opposition over the course of Syria’s civil war, and excoriated his Syrian counterpart in speeches.

He took in more than three million Syrian refugees and committed Turkish troops to secure a buffer zone inside Syria for millions more displaced people who took refuge there. And he funded and trained a Turkish-backed rebel force, the Syrian National Army, which provided security for Turkish military bases in northern Syria and helped Ankara fight Kurdish forces that Turkey viewed as a threat.

Turkey also became the main interlocutor with H.T.S. The group is designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and European nations because of its history of Islamist extremism, but the Turks found a way to work with them and now have enormous leverage through that connection.

“Out of all the region’s major players, Ankara has the strongest channels of communication and history of working with the Islamist group now in charge in Damascus, positioning it to reap the benefits of the Assad regime’s demise,” Gonul Tol, the director of the Middle East Institute’s Turkish program, wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine on Thursday.

Turkey has provided indirect assistance to the group, Ms. Tol wrote, by shielding it from Syrian government attacks through the presence of Turkish troops in Idlib Province. It also channeled humanitarian aid and trade into the region, which helped H.T.S. gain legitimacy among the people of the region. “All this has given Turkey influence over H.T.S.,” she wrote.

A Syrian rebel commander, interviewed on Friday, said the rebels had set up a joint command to coordinate rebel group operations. Turkey was aware of the planning of the offensive and ongoing operations, he said.

Ms. Aydintasbas, who is in touch with Turkish officials in Ankara, said she believed Ankara would have given at least tacit approval for the offensive. “They never thought it would be widely successful,” she said.

Ms. Aydintasbas also credited Turkey, along with international aid organizations working in northwestern Syria, with pushing H.T.S., a former Qaeda affiliate, to moderate its extremism.

Turkey’s mentoring of the group could be seen in the early statements of the H.T.S. leader Ahmed al-Shara, who used the nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, as he reassured Syria’s minorities that there would be no repression and ordered restraint from his soldiers.

“There has been a lot of hand-holding,” Ms. Aydintasbas said of Turkey’s relationship with the group.

Turkey has also started to raise its voice internationally on behalf of Syria. In a statement, Turkey’s foreign ministry voiced strong support for Syria’s sovereignty, political unity and territorial integrity, and condemned Israel for breaking a longstanding disengagement agreement by “entering the Israel-Syria zone and its continuing advance into Syrian territory.”

(Since Mr. al-Assad’s ouster on Sunday, Israel has conducted hundreds of aerial strikes on military targets in Syria.)

Turkey has been conducting its own military operations, including airstrikes, in northern Syria against Kurdish militants whom it considers a terrorist threat to Turkey.

One of Turkey’s most powerful politicians has also floated an offer to release the long-imprisoned Kurdish militant leader, Abdallah Ocalan, if he agrees to renounce militancy and disband his armed movement, a gesture that suggested a new openness in the Turkish government to the possibility of revived peace talks between the longtime adversaries.

Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, has urged swift international assistance for Syria. “Syria has reached a stage where the Syrian people will shape the future of their own country,” he said after a meeting in Doha, Qatar, among Turkey, Russia and Iran, Mr. al-Assad’s other main backer. “Today, there is hope. The Syrian people cannot achieve this alone. The international community must support the Syrian people.”

Ms. Aydintasbas said the primary concern of Turkey and H.T.S. was “to prevent an utter state collapse, and so they have been doing all the right things, trying to preserve institutions and even the bureaucracy inside institutions, even ministries.”

Safak Timur contributed reporting from Istanbul, and Ruhullah Khapalwak from Vancouver, Canada.

One former lawmaker, Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, said in a social media post that Iranians should rejoice at the fall of Iran’s longstanding ally, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. “No one will be able to waste Iran’s dollars for maintaining a spider web any more,” he said.

While opponents of the government have long bristled at the money Iran has sent all over the Middle East, the sentiment now seems to have spread. Even some who fought on their government’s behalf in Syria or lost family members in the civil war there are asking if it was worth it.

The Assad regime, some noted, was not the only loser to emerge from the uprising.

Ebrahim Motaghi, a professor of international relations at Tehran University, said on a talk show that Iran had been reduced from regional power to merely another country.

Some questioned the very foundation of Iran’s strategy over the past decades for making itself a dominant regional force that would confront Israel and its main backer, the United States: Tehran’s support for the array of militant groups across the Middle East that it called the axis of resistance.

In a front-page opinion piece in the newspaper Ham Mihan, a former Iranian representative to the intergovernmental Organization of Islamic Cooperation lashed out at his government. The defeat of Mr. al-Assad, wrote the cleric Mohammad Shariati Dehghan, exposed Iranian’s strategy as misguided and “built on weak foundations.”

Mr. Shariati Dehghan demanded a new approach that prioritized building alliances with countries instead of propping up militant groups, and redirecting money and resources back to the people of Iran.

The brash public debate is nothing short of extraordinary, given that for years Iranian leaders portrayed their support for Syria and allied militant groups fighting Israel as a nonnegotiable principle of the Islamic revolution and critical for national security.

“The Syria debate is happening at all levels of society, not just in the media and social media, but in daily interactions everywhere,” one prominent analyst, Hassan Shemshadi, said in a telephone interview from Tehran. “People are asking: Why did we spend so much money there? What did we achieve? What is our justification now that it’s all gone?”

Mr. Shemshadi, who is close to the government and until last year served as the head of the Iran-Syria Joint Chamber of Commerce, said that while the shape of future Iranian and Syrian relations was now uncertain, a strategic partnership built over four decades was now clearly history.

Gone, too, he said, is the unfettered access to supply routes in Syria that Iran had long had to equip militants across the region with weapons and other material.

The reaction from official Iran has been muddled.

President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi have sought to distance the nation from the events next door.

The Syrian people, the president and foreign minister said, have the right to determine their political future. The Iranian vice president for strategy, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said his country “stands ready to have good relations with the future government of Syria, and we have always stood at the side of Syrian people.”

But Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, in his first public address about events in Syria, took a harsher tone on Wednesday. He blamed the United States and Israel for Mr. al-Assad’s downfall, referring to the rebels who toppled him as “aggressors” with competing motives who were serving their masters. He also alluded to Turkey’s support for some of the rebels in Syria.

“By God’s blessing, the territories occupied in Syria will be freed by the brave young people of Syria,” Mr. Khamenei said. “Have no doubt that this will happen.” He predicted that the “resistance” would spread widely across the region, and Iran would grow stronger.

“God willing,” chanted the audience of several hundred men and women sitting on the floor in the visitor’s hall of his compound.

But Mr. Khamenei’s speech flew in the face of the reality on the ground in Syria, where the army quickly folded as the rebels advanced and Syrians — young and old, men and women — celebrated the downfall of a tyrannical ruler by dancing in the streets chanting, “Freedom.”

Even Hamas, the Gazan militants for whom Iran and its ally Hezbollah in Lebanon went out on a limb, issued a statement congratulating the Syrian rebels on their victory and declared it was standing with the Syrian people. Hamas had a brief falling out with Iran over a decade ago, when the Syrian uprising started, because each supported different sides.

Mr. Khamenei appeared outraged at the open criticism.The comments, he said, were “a crime” because they were sowing fear among the public. Within hours, Iran’s judiciary announced a criminal investigation into a list of prominent figures and news outlets that have been leading the criticism. The list included Mr. Falahatpisheh, the former lawmaker, who revealed that Syrian debt to Iran amounted to about $30 billion.

For over 40 years, Syria served, in effect, as Iran’s central command base in the region. Its access to territory, shipping ports and airports was so unimpeded that a senior military commander once described Syria as a province of Iran.

Iran controlled military bases, missile factories, tunnels and warehouses that served the supply chain for its network of militants. From Syria, Iran funneled weapons, cash and logistical support to Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and militants in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Iraq.

“Syria was a linchpin to Iran’s regional plan, the encircling of Israel in a ring of fire,” said Matthew Levitt, director of the counterterrorism program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a research organization. “The axis of resistance was a three-legged stool of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, and it no longer stands. ”

Mr. Levitt said Iran also counted on Syria economically. Its purchases of Iranian crude and refined oil, despite U.S. sanctions on Iran, helped Tehran pay for its military operations in the region.

Five Iranian officials said that after Syria fell, many colleagues, reeling, privately disclosed that Iran had lost everything in just 11 days. The officials said the government was still “disorientated,” “befuddled” and trying to find a way forward with Syria.

The officials, including members of the elite Revolutionary Guards Corps who have spent time in Syria, insisted on anonymity because they were discussing sensitive matters. They said that Iranian leaders were now resigned to accepting any level of diplomatic presence, however small, that Syria’s new leaders allowed. Two of the officials said Iran was keen to avoid the embarrassment of being completely ousted from Syria, with diplomatic ties cut and its embassy there shuttered.

Mr. Araghchi, the foreign minister, said in an interview with state television on Sunday that Iran would base its next steps on the actions of Syria’s transitional leaders. He confirmed that Iran and the rebels had already exchanged messages, with the Syrians agreeing to requests that they protect Shia religious shrines and Iranian diplomatic outposts.

“Iran wants to move toward a direction that would eventually normalize its relations with Syria, but it’s going to be very difficult,” Rahman Ghahremanpour, a political analyst based in Tehran, said in a telephone interview. “The first priority right now is to make sure Syria does not turn into a base against Iran and a launchpad to attack its interests in Iraq or Lebanon.”

Mr. Ghahremanpour said the public reckoning that had erupted over Iran’s conduct in Syria could not be contained, and any official sugarcoating would not soften the severe blow. Some families of fighters killed when Iran deployed forces to Syria to help keep Mr. al-Assad in power are now asking if their loved ones had died in vain.

Alireza Mokarami, an Iranian veteran who fought in Syria’s civil war and now runs a local news site, posted a scathing takedown of Iran’s “catastrophic failure” in Syria in a widely circulated essay.

“Why were you spending billions of dollars of oil revenues that belong to the Iranian people on Assad until the very end if he wasn’t even listening to you?” he asked. He added, “At least on the topic of Syria, stop lying and be honest with the people.”

For the moment, the prospects of replicating the ties Iran once had with the Syria appear dim.

After the Assad regime was overturned, Syrians stormed the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, tearing down pictures of Iranian leaders and bringing down its flag. And Ahmed al-Shara, the Islamist rebel leader who spearheaded the insurgency, chastised Iran publicly.

The Assad regime, he said, brought many ills to his country — among them turning Syria into “a farm for Iranian greed.”

Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting.

Prosecutors said Mr. al-Sheikh ordered prisoners to be taken to a part of the prison known as the “punishment wing,” where they were beaten while hanging from the ceiling. Guards would forcibly fold bodies in half, resulting in terrible pain and fractured spines.

The indictment was the second time in a week that the Justice Department announced that it had charged top Syrian officials with human rights abuses. The moves underscore its efforts to hold to account the top reaches of the government for a brutal system of detention and torture that flourished under Mr. al-Assad.

The charges against Mr. al-Sheikh on Thursday add to earlier charges in July that accused him of attempted naturalization fraud in his effort to seek U.S. citizenship, according to a criminal complaint. He was arrested attempting to fly to Beirut.

The U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, Martin Estrada, cast the new charges against Mr. al-Sheikh in a grim light. “The allegations in this superseding indictment of grave human rights abuses are chilling,” he said.

Mr. al-Sheikh was charged with three counts of torture and one count of conspiracy to commit torture.

Mr. al-Sheikh immigrated to the United States in 2020 and applied for U.S. citizenship in 2023, lying on federal forms about the abuses, the authorities have said.

Prosecutors said he was appointed governor of the province of Deir al Zour by Mr. al-Assad in 2011. Mr. al-Assad’s authoritarian government crumbled over the weekend after rebels routed his forces and took control of swaths of the country.

On Monday, federal prosecutors unsealed charges against two top-ranking Syrian intelligence officials, accusing them of war crimes. The pair, Jamil Hassan and Abdul Salam Mahmoud, oversaw a prison in Damascus during the Syrian civil war, prosecutors said.

That indictment signaled the first time the United States had criminally charged top Syrian officials with human rights abuses used to silence dissent and spread fear through the country.

Mr. Hassan was the head of the Air Force Intelligence Directorate, and Mr. Mahmoud served as a brigadier general in the Air Force’s intelligence unit. Their location is unknown.