section_path: De facto leader of Syria (2024–2025)/Formation of caretaker government
section_name: Formation of caretaker government
paragraph_text: Formation of caretaker government
  
  On 8 December 2024, then-Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali announced that the Syrian government would hand over power to a new elected government following the departure of Assad from Damascus, and al-Sharaa announced further that al-Jalali will "supervise state institutions until they are handed over". Al-Jalali later noted to Al Arabiya that he and al-Sharaa had been in contact prior to the announcement to discuss the handover. Al-Jalali announced in a social media video that he planned to stay in Damascus and cooperate with the Syrian people while expressing hope that Syria could become "a normal country" and begin to engage in diplomacy with other nations. On the same day, al-Sharaa delivered a speech at Damascus's Umayyad Mosque, calling the fall of Assad's regime "a new chapter in the history of the region" and condemning Syria's role as "a playground for Iranian ambitions", characterized by sectarianism and corruption. In his victory speech following the fall of Damascus, he condemned Iran as a source of sectarianism and corruption, and framed the triumph as a turning point for the region.
  
  Al-Sharaa subsequently became the country's de facto leader as head of the HTS. On 9 December, HTS released a video of al-Sharaa, al-Jalali and Mohammed al-Bashir, the head of the de facto government in Idlib. On the same day, following the fall of the Assad regime, the Prime Minister of the Syrian Salvation Government, al-Bashir, was tasked with forming a transitional government after meeting with al-Sharaa and outgoing Prime Minister al-Jalali to coordinate the transfer of power. The next day, he was officially appointed by the Syrian General Command as the prime minister of the caretaker government.