Trump meets with Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa after US removes him from terrorist list

Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa met with President Trump at the White House on Monday, continuing a surprising reversal of fortune for a man labeled an international terrorist by the US government three days ago and with a $10 million bounty on his head.

The former leader of an Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria repudiated Islamic extremism after rising to lead his war-torn country. Almost a year ago, he led his rebel militia to force Veteran dictator Bashar al-Assad out of office and to exile in Russia.

Syria was paralyzed for decades by sanctions imposed by the United States and other nations against Assad, and Al-Sharaa is now seeking to normalize relations.

A senior administration official confirmed to News themezone on Monday that Syria will join the US-led Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, marking a significant shift in US foreign policy. Al-Sharaa’s former militia, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, opposed ISIS during the final years of Syria’s 14-year civil war, when it used the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani.

He was expected to possibly sign a formal agreement with President Trump during their in-person meeting on Monday, which will be their third to date, to cooperate on counterterrorism. It would be a highly symbolic moment, signaling a 180-degree turn in the way the US government views Syria.

Under Assad about 12 years ago, ISIS was allowed to grow and metastasize into one of the most powerful terrorist organizations in the world. At one point, it controlled a huge swath of land spanning the border between Syria and Iraq.

After meeting Al-Sharaa for the first time in Saudi Arabia in May, Trump called the Syrian leader a “young, attractive guy, tough guy, with a strong past.”

Over the weekend, he also became the first Syrian leader to play basketball with the US military. A video shared Saturday by the Syrian Foreign Ministry shows him hitting a three-pointer while playing with an American admiral and a brigadier general at an undisclosed location in the United States.

But as of Friday morning, the Syrian president remained officially designated a terrorist by the U.S. government, as he had been since 2013. That designation was lifted at the end of the day.

There was expected to possibly be a discussion at the White House on Monday about officially lifting US economic sanctions against Syria, which Mr. Trump got going in May with an executive order.

That order removed sanctions on Syria, “while maintaining sanctions on former President Assad, his associates, human rights violators, drug traffickers, individuals linked to chemical weapons activities, ISIS and its affiliates, and their Iranian proxies,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in June.

Al-Sharaa’s transitional government has pressured the Trump administration to ease sanctions for months, and work had been underway to ease some sanctions even before the president’s announcement in May, but other measures have yet to be formally repealed by Congress.

In an apparent attempt to show its determination to crack down on ISIS and other extremists, the Syrian government announced that more than 70 suspected members of the group had been detained just hours before al-Sharaa landed in Washington.

In September, addressing the UN General Assembly in New York (another historic moment, as it had been nearly six decades since a Syrian leader had done so), Al-Sharaa told the assembled leaders that his country was “reclaiming its rightful place among the nations of the world.”

But to regain its place, it also needs to rebuild itself, a Herculean task that Al-Sharaa recently said Margaret Brennan of News themezone in an interview for 60 Minutes It will probably cost between $600 and $900 billion.

He stressed that it would require the help of the international community.

“The world watched this tragedy for 14 years and could do nothing to stop this massive crime,” he said of the Syrian civil war. “Therefore, the world today should provide support to Syria.”

On Monday, he will probably ask the leader of the world’s richest nation to help him in any way he can.