The President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, met on Wednesday with the new interim president of Syria, Ahmad al-Sharaa, a former rebel leader who spent years imprisoned by American forces after being captured in Iraq.
The meeting took place before Trump concluded his stay in Saudi Arabia and traveled to Qatar, as part of a Middle East tour that will also include a stop in the United Arab Emirates.
Trump and al-Sharaa met behind closed doors, while journalists were not allowed to participate, according to a report by the Associated Press.
Al-Sharaa was declared president of Syria in January, a month after a surprise offensive by rebel groups led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which he headed. This organization is designated as a terrorist group by the United States. These forces seized Damascus and ended the 54-year rule of the Assad family.
Trump said, before the meeting, that he decided to meet al-Sharaa after being encouraged by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He also promised to lift long-standing sanctions on Syria.
“There is a new government in Syria that, hopefully, will manage to stabilize the country and maintain peace,” Trump said in a broad foreign policy speech on Tuesday, where he announced the lifting of sanctions that had been in place since 2011.
“This is what we want to see in Syria.”
Previously known by the alias Abu Mohammed al-Golani, al-Sharaa had joined the ranks of al-Qaeda against American forces in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion.
He is still subject to an arrest warrant for terrorism charges in Iraq. At one point, the U.S. had offered a $10 million reward for information about his whereabouts, due to his links to al-Qaeda.
Al-Sharaa returned to Syria after the outbreak of conflict in 2011 and took over the leadership of al-Qaeda’s branch there, known as Jabhat al-Nusra. He later renamed the group to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, distancing it formally from al-Qaeda.
The sanctions on Syria dated back to the time of Bashar al-Assad, who was overthrown in December. These aimed to severely damage the economy of his regime.
Both U.S. administrations – the previous Biden administration and the current Trump administration – had kept these sanctions in place even after Assad’s fall, while assessing al-Sharaa’s stance, who has denied ongoing ties to al-Qaeda.
