Syrian media has confirmed that Syria’s de facto president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former al-Qaeda leader, will be attending the UN General Assembly in New York City this month, where he may land a meeting with President Trump.
Syrian diplomatic sources told The Media Line that the US has granted an entry visa to Sharaa for the General Assembly, which he will be attending from September 21 to September 25, a step the US is taking while denying visas to Palestinian Authority officials as an effort to impede Western countries from recognizing a Palestinian state.
The Media Line report also said that preparations are underway for a bilateral meeting between Trump and Sharaa on the sidelines of the General Assembly. The two leaders met in Saudi Arabia back in May, and Trump praised Sharaa as a “young, attractive guy” with a “strong past.”
Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, got his start with al-Qaeda in Iraq, where he fought an insurgency against US troops before being imprisoned from 2006 to 2011. In 2012, he travelled to Syria and formed al-Qaeda’s affiliate in the country, the al-Nusra Front.
In 2016, Sharaa claimed the al-Nusra Front was cutting ties with al-Qaeda. At the time, he thanked the “commanders of al-Qaeda for having understood the need to break ties.” In 2017, Julani merged his group with several other Islamist factions to form Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the group that led the offensive that ousted former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
According to The New Arab, Syria’s new foreign minister, Asaad al-Shaibani, who will also be traveling to New York, was also a founding member of the al-Nusra Front and oversaw its transition into HTS. The US will be welcoming the two former al-Qaeda leaders to New York less than two weeks after the 24th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, which killed 2,606 people at the Twin Towers in New York City.
Reports say the US may be placing travel restrictions on Iranian officials who are attending the General Assembly, but there’s no sign that travel will be limited for Sharaa and his delegation. The Media Line report said Sharaa may also visit New York’s Turkish House, the headquarters of several Turkish diplomatic missions, together with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, one of HTS’s major backers.
While Sharaa now presents himself as a moderate, Syrian government forces have been responsible for the massacre of thousands of Alawites and other minorities since he took power. Since Assad was ousted, there have been over 3,000 extrajudicial executions in Syria.
Despite the violence, the US has embraced the new Syrian government by lifting sanctions and removing HTS from its list of terror organizations. Israel, which supported and celebrated the overthrow of Assad, has used the HTS takeover as a pretext to invade and occupy more territory in southwest Syria.
