Trump hosts Syria’s al-Sharaa in White House: 5 takeaways from historic meeting

US President Donald Trump hosted Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa in a historic meeting on Monday (Nov 10) in the White House. The American president vowed to do everything he could to make Syria successful. He is the same person who was sanctioned by Washington as a foreign terrorist until recently. He was a former al-Qaeda commander.

Al-Sharaa came to power after overthrowing the autocratic leader Bashar al-Assad this year. Since then, the Syrian president has been busy touring the world and presenting himself as a moderate politician. Among his top priorities to visit the US was pushing for the full removal of the toughest US sanctions. After a closed-door meeting with Trump, the US Treasury Department announced a 180-day extension of its suspension of enforcement of the so-called Caesar sanctions.

Here are 5 key points of the meeting:

1. Trump met the 43-year-old leader for the first time in Washington and six months after their first meeting in Saudi Arabia. In the latter, Trump had promised to lift sanctions on him. It was just days after the US said he was no longer a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist."

2. Al-Sharaa once had a $10 million US bounty on his head. The Syrian leader entered the White House through a side door, where reporters only got a glimpse instead of through the West Wing main door, where cameras often capture Trump greeting VIPs.

3. Trump, in a press briefing, called al-Sharaa a "strong leader" and added: We’ll do everything we can to make Syria successful."

4. Syria recently signed a political cooperation declaration with the US-led "Global Coalition to Defeat Islamic State," the Syrian information minister said in a post on X after the meeting.

5. Just hours before the meeting, two separate Islamic State plots were reported to assassinate al-Sharaa.

Al-Sharaa and his dramatic political shifts

Al-Sharaa joined al-Qaeda in Iraq around the time of the 2003 US-led invasion and spent years in a US prison there. Later, he returned to Syria and joined the insurgency against Assad.

In 2013, the US designated Sharaa, then known as Abu Mohammad al-Golani, as a terrorist for his ties to al Qaeda. Al-Sharaa broke his ties with the terror group in 2016. In December this year, the US removed the bounty on him.