President Trump said Tuesday that he will move to normalize relations and raise the sanctions to the new Government of Syria to give the country “a peace opportunity.”
Mr. Trump met Wednesday Saudi Arabia With Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa, the insurgent of last year led the overthrow of former leader Bashar Assad. He said the approach effort occurred at the request of the heir prince Mohammed Bin Salman, the de facto Saudi ruler and the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“There is a new government that we expect success,” said Trump or SyriaAdding: “I say good luck, Syria. Show us something special.”
The developments were a great impulse for the Syrian president who at one time was imprisoned in Iraq for his role in the insurgency after the 2003 invasion led by the United States of the Arab country. Al-Sharaa was appointed president of Syria in January, a month after an impressive offensive by insurgent groups led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham or HTS of Al-Sharaa who assaulted Damascus the 54-year rule of the Assad family.
The United States has weighed how to drive Al-Sharaa since Tok Power in December. The Gulf leaders have recovered behind the new government in Damascus and will want Trump to follow, believing that he is a bulwark against Iran’s return to the influence in Syria, where he had helped underpin the duration of the Government of Assad a civil war of a decade.
The then President Joe Biden left the decision to Mr. Trump, whose administration has not yet formally recognized the new Syrian government. The sanctions imposed on Damascus under Assad also remain in place.
“The president agreed to greet the Syrian president while in Saudi Arabia tomorrow,” said the White House before Mr. Trump’s comments.
The comments marked a surprising change in the tone of Mr. Trump and disagreed with the former ally of the United States Israel, which has been deeply skeptical of the extremist adjustments of Al-Sharaa and warned against the rapid recognition of the new government.
Previously known by Guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani, Al-Sharaaa joined the ranks of Al Qaeda insurgents who fight against US forces in Iraq after the invasion led by the United States in 2003 and still faces an order for his judgment in Iraq in Iraq.
Al-Sharaa, to whom the United States once sacrificed $ 10 million for information about Hiyabouts because or its left to Al-Qaida, he returned to his country of origin after the conflict in 2011, where he directed the Al Qaida branch that used the uses. Later he changed the name of his group A Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and reduced the links to Al-Qaida.
Al-Sharaa will become the first Syrian leader to meet an American president from the late Hafez Assad with Bill Clinton in Geneva in 2000.
Trump was in Saudi Arabia On Tuesday for the first stop or its four -day trip to Middle East. The trip is Trump’s first in his second term that already this week, he will travel to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
The president delivered comments at a Useaudi investment summit in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, when the White House announced an investment of $ 600 billion of Saudi Arabia, including which promoted the sales agreement in history. “