About two decades ago, Ahmed al Sharaa was just another Al Qaeda militant locked up by the U.S. military in Iraq. After Sharaa was released, he formed Jabhat al-Nusra, Al Qaeda’s splinter group in Syria, which utilized suicide bombings against targets in areas of the country controlled by Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Sharaa was, in essence, Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri’s man in the Levant, tasked with overthrowing a family-based kleptocracy viewed in jihadist circles as a godless oppressor.
Of course, the Ahmed al Sharaa of 2025 is no longer the Ahmed al Sharaa of 2003 or even the Ahmed al Sharaa of 2015. The man who once traveled to Iraq to kill Americans will be at the White House on Monday, Nov. 10, clasping hands with an American president and appealing for dollars to help restart an economy that has been torn asunder by nearly a decade and a half of civil war. To say this is quite the transformation would be an understatement of the century.
Granted, there are some constituencies both inside and out of Syria who don’t believe Sharaa has fully transformed himself into a peace-loving, pluralistic democrat. Not without reason; Sharaa’s tenure as Syria’s interim president, which will reach the one-year mark in December, has been host to spasms of sectarian bloodshed perpetrated in many cases by the very Syrian army he’s trying to build from scratch.
In March, in response to an attack by former members of the Assad regime, Sharaa’s men, in tandem with unaccountable jihadist militias who may or may not be connected to the new government in Damascus, streamed into Latakia and killed hundreds of defenseless civilians. A similar bout of violence occurred over the summer, when clashes between Druse militias and Bedouin tribes eventually dragged the Syrian army into the fighting. Concerned about the Druze getting wiped out, Israel intervened, bombing Syrian government forces as well as Damascus to compel Sharaa’s men to stop.
Israel, in particular, is still highly skeptical of Sharaa’s motives. Whereas the Gulf States see a highly pragmatic man who they can do business with, Israel sees a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Senior Israeli officials have either intimated that the post-Assad government is run by a bunch of well-groomed, suited jihadists or have stated it outright. Some U.S. lawmakers feel the same way. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast remains opposed to giving Damascus a clean bill of health in the form of permanent U.S. sanctions relief, in large part due to the Sharaa administration’s treatment of minority groups in the country.
The Trump administration, however, appears fully committed to Sharaa and is convinced of his ability to turn Syria around. That obviously includes President Donald Trump himself, who broke ground by meeting with Sharaa during his trip to the Middle East in May, becoming the first U.S. president to meet his Syrian counterpart in a quarter-century (Trump and Sharaa had a quick meet-and-greet during the U.N. General Assembly meetings in September as well).
In June, the White House ordered the complete lifting of U.S. sanctions against Syria through an executive order. Trump is clearly impressed with Sharaa’s past as a fighter and sees him as a leader who can bring Syria out of Tehran’s orbit. Indeed, in the lead-up to Sharaa’s visit next week, the White House made a push on Capitol Hill to overturn the 2019 Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, which codified comprehensive Syria sanctions into law. The logic behind the effort is straightforward: nobody is going to invest in Syria’s reconstruction if U.S. sanctions technically remain on the books.
That’s probably a correct assumption; while there’s a lot of money to be made in Syria now that Assad’s clique of thieves is gone, no company is going to take the chance if there’s a possibility of some U.S. administration in the future — or even the current administration if U.S.-Syria rapprochement stalls —turning around and enforcing the sanctions again. It wouldn’t be the first time something like this happened in the annals of U.S. history. Just ask Cuba, which saw a two-year detente during President Barack Obama’s second term evaporate the moment Trump entered office in January 2017.
WHAT WILL AND WON’T MATTER IN THE MIDTERM ELECTIONS FROM TUESDAY’S RESULTS
Given the litany of items on its to-do list, Congress simply doesn’t have the time to cater to the Trump administration’s wishes right now. The U.S. sanctions will still be in place when Sharaa lands in Washington. But don’t expect the White House to quit pressing the point.
Even beyond implementing the 20-point peace plan in Gaza or solving the war in Ukraine, turning an historically adversarial U.S.-Syria relationship into a fruitful working partnership is a top Trump diplomatic priority. And unlike the first two, the last item is actually achievable.
