It was surreal to sit down with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa in his suite at the St. Regis, right next to the White House, on the eve of Veterans Day.
In 2005, U.S. forces caught him planting roadside bombs in Iraq and held him for six years. Then he led Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate, the Nusra Front, before breaking away in 2016. Until December, the U.S. government had a $10 million bounty on his head. Just Friday, the State Department removed him from a list of designated terrorists.
It was surreal to sit down with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa in his suite at the St. Regis, right next to the White House, on the eve of Veterans Day.
In 2005, U.S. forces caught him planting roadside bombs in Iraq and held him for six years. Then he led Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate, the Nusra Front, before breaking away in 2016. Until December, the U.S. government had a $10 million bounty on his head. Just Friday, the State Department removed him from a list of designated terrorists.
Sipping espresso around 7 p.m. Monday, the 43-year-old reflected on a day of warm meetings that would have been unthinkable a year ago, including 90 minutes with President Donald Trump. In the Oval Office, he sat next to Vice President JD Vance, who served in Iraq. On Capitol Hill, he met with multiple veterans of the Middle East wars.
More than anyone else, Sharaa personifies Trump’s foreign policy doctrine of “no permanent enemies.” The United States has decided that the former jihadist is its best bet for stability in the heart of a volatile region and, also crucial, to help crush his former allies in the Islamic State. The president acknowledged Sharaa’s “rough past” but argued that only a “tough guy” like him could emerge as “a very strong leader” in such a dangerous neighborhood.
In an hour-long conversation with Post journalists, Sharaa talked about his childhood passion for the NBA and Michael Jordan, his preference for baseball over soccer and his talent at playing pool. He said he’s determined to disprove stereotypes about bearded Islamists preferring war to politics. He retains his military bearing but has dropped his nom de guerre (Abu Mohammed al-Jolani) and traded his turban for a tailored suit with cufflinks.
His priority in Washington was persuading lawmakers to lift sanctions they imposed on Syria in 2019 when dictator Bashar al-Assad was butchering civilians. Sharaa led the rebel forces that toppled Assad in December and liberated Damascus. Now he’s trying to rebuild.
The World Bank estimates that reconstruction after the 13-year civil war will cost $216 billion. Sharaa says he prefers to do it with foreign investment rather than humanitarian aid, but the 2019 sanctions law expelled Syria from the global banking system and limited what products the country could import.
Trump suspended those sanctions in June and, on Monday, extended that order for another six months. But Sharaa says Congress needs to repeal the sanctions outright so that businesses have more certainty to enter his markets. A repeal will probably happen in the year-end defense reauthorization bill, though there remains some debate about whether to include snapback provisions or other conditions. It probably makes sense to lift all the sanctions for now, though, especially because the U.S. could easily impose fresh restrictions if Syria backslides.
Thousands have died in Syria this year during episodic sectarian violence. Security forces under Sharaa’s command have been linked to multiple massacres. He has promised to hold perpetrators accountable. At the same time, he downplayed sectarian strife by saying that certain religious groups are resisting the central government simply because they want to continue their multibillion-dollar trade in Captagon, a synthetic amphetamine-type stimulant.
Sharaa said he studied the failures of nation-building in Lebanon and Iraq, which is why he won’t agree to quotas in parliament for the country’s myriad ethnic and religious groups. He asks Americans for patience during this transitional period. The youthful president pointed out that violence continued in the American South after the North won the Civil War, and he recalled that Germany took 45 years to reunify after World War II.
He sounded other pragmatic notes. For instance, Assad fled to Moscow; asked whether he pressed Russian President Vladimir Putin to turn over the dictator during a trip to the Kremlin, Sharaa said that his focus was on getting Russia’s vote to drop other sanctions as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. That happened last week.
It doesn’t mean he’s forgotten their history. Sharaa noted that Russia repeatedly tried to kill him for a decade as it propped up Assad. “They announced that they killed me several times,” he said through a translator.
Sharaa estimates that 1 million of the 14 million refugees who fled Syria during the civil war have already returned, and he thinks economic growth would make the country a magnet for millions more to repatriate. A stable security situation is a prerequisite, and U.S. leadership can help.
Israel invaded parts of southern Syria as Assad fell and continues to occupy them. The Trump administration has been trying to broker a deal that would get the Israelis to pull back. Sharaa said Trump is the only one who could do it. Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, and Tom Barrack, the president’s special envoy for Syria, have visited Damascus twice in six weeks.
Sharaa expressed hope that a deal will be worked out to the satisfaction of both parties. “You can’t say you have a fish until you catch the fish,” he said, repeating an Iraqi proverb. “We have to catch the fish.”
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