President Trump on Monday hosted a meeting at the White House with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former al-Qaeda leader who took power in Damascus with his group of Jihadists, known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, in December of last year.
The Syrian Presidency said Sharaa and Trump were joined by Syrian Interior Minister Anas Hasan Khattab, another former al-Qaeda member, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Photos of the meeting show that Vice President JD Vance and US Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, who has acted as an envoy to Syria, also attended.
The Syrian Presidency said the officials “addressed the bilateral relations between the Syrian Arab Republic and the United States, as well as ways to strengthen and develop them, in addition to a number of regional and international issues of common interest.” The meeting marked the first time a Syrian president visited the White House since the country gained independence from France in 1946.
Despite his al-Qaeda past, Sharaa has been embraced by the Trump administration, which announced after the meeting that it was continuing its waiver of most Caesar Act sanctions on Syria for another 180 days. Sanctions under the Caesar Act were first imposed in 2020 and were designed to prevent the reconstruction of the country as long as former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad remained in power.
“The US government has adopted new policies and regulatory posture to encourage US businesses and banks, the international community, the Syrian people, and regional partners to contribute to Syria’s stability while denying resources to harmful actors,” the US Treasury Department said.
Sharaa was hoping for a permanent lifting of the US sanctions, but that requires action from Congress, which hasn’t been in session due to the government shutdown. Earlier in the day, Sharaa met with several members of Congress, including Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), who called for a “complete and total” repeal of the Caesar Act.
Sharaa also met with Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “Last evening, the new Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and I broke bread. We had a long and serious conversation about how to build a future for the people of Syria free of war, ISIS, and extremism,” Mast said in a statement on the meeting.
“He and I are two former soldiers and two former enemies. I asked him directly ‘Why we are no longer enemies?’ His response was that he wishes to ‘liberate from the past and have a noble pursuit for his people and his country and to be a great ally to the United States of America,'” Mast added.
While Sharaa now presents himself as a moderate, there have been massacres of thousands of Alawite and Druze civilians committed by government forces or government-linked fighters since he took power.
Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Julani, fought against US troops in Iraq as a member of al-Qaeda and was imprisoned from 2006 to 2011 before traveling to Syria, where he founded al-Qaeda’s Syria affiliate, known as the al-Nusra Front. Before his visit to the White House, the US got the UN Security Council to lift sanctions on Sharaa, which were imposed on him in 2013 due to his association with Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda leader who was known for helping Osama bin Laden plot the 9/11 attacks, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the founder of ISIS.
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, he merged his group with several other Islamist factions to form Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which the US State Department designated as a foreign terrorist organization in 2018, a designation that was lifted earlier this year.
The US is now forming a military alliance with Sharaa’s government, and he was expected to formally enlist Syria in the US-led anti-ISIS coalition during the White House meeting. According to a report from Reuters, the US is planning to establish a military presence at an airbase in Damascus as part of a plan to monitor a potential security deal between Syria and Israel.
While Israel has used the new HTS-led government in Damascus as an excuse to invade southwestern Syria, it aided in the regime change effort that ousted Assad, who Israel wanted out of power due to his alliance with Iran and Hezbollah. According to President Trump, Israel and Turkey had “requested” that the US lift sanctions on Syria.
