Less than a year after his rapid rise to power, Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa is cementing his transformation from jihadist to global statesman in a historic visit to the White House that reveals as much about the young leader as it does about his efforts to diplomatically reinvent his country.
The al-Sharaa meeting this Monday (10) — the first visit by a Syrian head of state to the White House — will be his 20th international trip since he appointed himself president of Syria in January, and his second trip to the United States, after New York in September.
This meeting will, however, be the most important and decisive yet, a previously unthinkable meeting between the US commander in chief and a man who has already faced American forces on the battlefield.
In May, after a brief meeting brokered by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, US President Donald Trump praised the 43-year-old Syrian leader, calling him an “attractive young man”, and ordered the lifting of some of the harsh US sanctions against Syria, a country that for decades has been firmly aligned with important adversaries of the United States, such as Russia and Iran.
However, the strictest sanctions against Damascus remain and cannot be fully lifted without congressional approval.
al-Sharaa’s immediate objective in Washington is to press for its removal, in addition to requesting that Trump pressure and withdraw his troops from the south of the country.
His broader goal, reflected in his extensive global travels, is to reverse Syria’s isolation, a legacy of the previous regime that left the country economically devastated and diplomatically limited to a small core of allies.
In this context, the visit to the White House carries a deep symbolic weight. Al Sharaa played basketball with senior American military officers after arriving in Washington on Sunday (9).
History of enmity with Washington
But in his early twenties, he saw the United States as an enemy, joining Islamic insurgents fighting American forces in Iraq.
Captured and later released, he crossed the border into Syria in 2011 and established an al-Qaeda-backed rebel army to fight forces loyal to the then president.
After more than a decade of brutal conflict against Assad’s autocratic regime, Al-Sharaa ended Syria’s protracted civil war by launching a 53-year surprise offensive, an Arab relic of the Cold War.
During their decades in power, the Assads have aligned Damascus firmly with Moscow, relying on aid, weapons and unconditional diplomatic support.
In Hafez al-Assad’s first full year in power in 1971, the Soviet Union established its strategic Mediterranean naval base in the Syrian city of Tartus.
And it was Vladimir Putin’s decisive military intervention in 2015 that allowed Bashar al-Assad to survive the civil war.
The Russians, who killed dozens of Syrians during their campaign to keep Assad in power, continue to maintain control of their military base in Tartus even after Assad’s fall. And last month, no.
As he seeks to build ties with Western nations, the Syrian leader has been careful not to antagonize Moscow.
“Entering conflict with Russia now would be very costly for Syria, nor would it be in the country’s interest,” Al-Sharaa told CBS’s “60 Minutes” program in an interview aired in October.
Once sanctioned for terrorism by the West, the leader now appears to be on a global diplomatic offensive, bolstered by aggressive lobbying from regional powers such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey, allies of the United States eager to fill the power and economic vacuum left by Iran and Russia.
For the US, Syria represents both a strategic prize and a significant risk, while neighboring Lebanon descends into instability and Iraq remains fertile ground for Iran’s proxy militias.
“The US is making a big bet on Ahmad al-Sharaa and Syria,” Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, told CNN. “As Ambassador (Tom) Barrack has stated several times, the US has no alternatives. Lebanon is a failed state by his assessment”
“Iraq is deeply infiltrated by pro-Iranian militias,” he added.
And despite a clear orientation toward the West, the former jihadist leader remains steadfast in balancing Syria’s foreign policy away from conflict in an increasingly polarized world — a policy now followed by several developing countries around the world.
“In this new era, no one aligns completely with any side. We saw that with (Sharaa’s) visit to Putin, who is an active ally of the Assad regime… and you see that with diplomacy on the part of the Syrian government globally,” said Natasha Hall, senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
