President Donald Trump said the U.S. would explore normalizing relations with Syria after the toppling of longtime autocrat Bashar Assad, adding to a pledge to lift sanctions against the country’s new government.
Strengthening ties with Syria’s Islamist-led administration “gives them a good, strong chance” to recover after more than a decade of war that devastated the economy and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian and refugee crises, Trump said Wednesday in Riyadh.
He earlier sat down with Syria’s new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, the first meeting between heads of the two countries since 2000, when Bill Clinton was in power and met Assad’s father, Hafez.
“With the support of leaders in this room, and the great leaders you are, we are currently exploring normalizing relations with Syria’s new government,” Trump said during a U.S.-Gulf Cooperation Council summit in the Saudi capital.
“It gives them a chance for greatness,” he continued. “The sanctions were really crippling, very powerful.”
Saudi Arabia and its Gulf partners have been keen to pull Syria out from the orbit of Iran, their chief regional rival and a key backer of Assad. Sanctions relief would allow for international investment to stabilize and rebuild the war-torn country, and prevent the resurgence of militant groups such as Islamic State.
Trump started his four-day Middle East tour cultivating ties with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, prioritizing dealmaking and largely aligning himself with the foreign policy goals of the oil-rich kingdom’s de-facto leader.
Prince Mohammed, or MBS as he’s commonly known, sat in on the meeting with Sharaa, a former militant who joined Al-Qaeda in Iraq to fight American troops after the 2003 U.S. invasion.
When Syrians rose up against the Assad regime in 2011, Sharaa established an Al-Qaeda affiliate in the country, but later disavowed ties with the terrorist group. In December, he led the surprise rebel offensive that captured the Syrian capital of Damascus and ousted Assad.
Sharaa has since gone out of his way to prove to international governments that he’s a changed man and that his administration shouldn’t pay the price for the Assad era.
His regional backers — namely Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey — have pushed hard for the repeal of U.S. sanctions, arguing they’re a major obstacle to rebuilding and stabilizing a highly strategic Middle Eastern state previously under the influence of Moscow and Tehran, Assad’s main foreign patrons.
Israeli tensions
Any U.S. sanctions relief or normalization with Syria may spark fresh tensions with Israel, which has issued constant warnings about Sharaa’s government and carried out airstrikes in Syria since Assad’s ouster. The Israeli military has extended occupation of land in Syria’s southwest and intervened to defend the Druze minority, which called for international assistance after violent clashes with government forces.
“We told them we’re doing it,” Trump said of Israel after landing in Qatar later on Wednesday. The decision has been “very popular — certainly in the Middle East it’s been popular with virtually everybody.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dialed in to the Trump-Sharaa discussion.
Ankara’s potential contributions to rebuilding Syria’s infrastructure and transportation — whether that’s railways or roads — were discussed in the meeting, two Turkish officials with the discussions said, speaking on the condition of anonymity as the meeting was private.
The U.S. leader basked in the fact his Tuesday night announcement on lifting Syria sanctions received “the biggest applause” of his roughly hour-long speech to the U.S.-Saudi investment summit in Riyadh.
He said it was now up to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to work out the details when he meets Syria’s Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani, who once was one of the top commanders in the former Al-Qaeda-affiliated group established by Sharaa.
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