The leader of the jihadist de facto government of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, published a statement congratulating President Donald Trump on his inauguration on Monday and stating he was “confident” that Trump could “bring peace to the Middle East.”
Sharaa offered a brief word of congratulations to Trump on Monday in a statement posted on the encrypted messaging app Telegram.
“The past decade has brought immense suffering to Syria, with the conflict devastating our nation and destabilizing the region,” Sharaa wrote. “We are confident that he is the leader to bring peace to the Middle East and restore stability to the region”.
Sharaa, formerly known by the jihadi name “Abu Mohammed al-Jolani,” is the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an al-Qaeda offshoot militia formerly known as the Nusra Front. Jolani led the Nusra Front through much of the Syrian Civil War and remains in charge of HTS in the aftermath of the collapse of the Bashar Assad regime in late 2024.
HTS was one of over ten militias, state actors, terrorist organizations, and other parties warring in battlefields of the Syrian Civil War for over a decade. The war, prompted by Assad violently suppressing protests against his regime in 2011, had stalled after the collapse of the Islamic State during the first Trump term in 2017, but roared back into action in November 2024 as HTS successfully executed a surprise attack on Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city. The fall of Aleppo expedited a rapid expansion of territorial control for HTS that culminated in its jihadists reaching the capital of Damascus on December 7; Bashar Assad and his family fled to Russia soon thereafter.
Sharaa abandoned his nom de guerre and his military fatigues soon after capturing Damascus and has endeavored to reassure the West that his government would be “inclusive” and worth investing in since. Sharaa has insisted, however, that HTS would pursue an Islamist regime structure and has not guaranteed that the new regime would allow women basic civil liberties, instead offering vague assurances to respect minorities.
Sharaa also stated after the fall of Damascus that HTS would be dissolved and morphed into a new armed forces for Syria, but that elections would not be held for at least 4 years due to, among other factors, the massive refugee population scattered around the planet – meaning Sharaa and his HTS henchmen would effectively govern the country for at least that long.
As part of the charm offensive on the West, Sharaa welcomed a delegation from the United States in the final days of the administration of former President Joe Biden, led by a woman, then-Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf. Leaf described her meeting with Sharaa as “quite good, very productive, detailed” and, as a result, Biden lifted the $10 million bounty that the U.S. had outstanding for Sharaa as a result of his decades-long involvement with terrorist organizations.
Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, assured after the fall of the Assad regime that Biden would “recognize and fully support” the new regime so long as it arose from “an inclusive and transparent process.”
Trump has remained tight-lipped on how he would approach the developing situation in Syria and offered no assurances resembling Blinken’s. The current president has emphasized, however, that he is not interested in maintaining any long-term American military presence in the country.
In a message on his social media outlet Truth Social shortly before Assad fled the country, Trump wrote that Syria’s conflict “is not our fight.”
“Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT,” Trump asserted. “THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!”
Trump also criticized former President Barack Obama, his predecessor, for drawing a “red line” by vowing American intervention if Assad used chemical weapons. Obama ultimately did not escalate any conflict with Assad after widespread reports of chemical weapons use, though he ordered an ill-fated program to armed “moderate” Syrian rebels that ultimately resulted in handing weapons over to Sharaa and his Nusra Front, at a time during which it took orders from al-Qaeda.
In a rare 2015 interview, Sharaa admitted that he did not order attacks on Western powers simply because al-Qaeda’s leadership discouraged it.
“The orders from Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri (current al-Qaida leader) are we should not attack the West from Syria, because it won’t help us, and it may complicate the situation,” “Abu Mohammad al-Golani” told UPI. “We will continue our focus on Damascus and on toppling this regime. I assure you, Assad’s fall won’t take a long time.”
Following Sharaa’s success a decade later, Trump offered comments to reporters in which he described HTS’s victory against Assad as an “unfriendly takeover” by Turkey’s Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan openly cheered for HTS to topple Assad even as his government supported another jihadist militia, the Syrian National Army (SNA), which is currently engaged on a campaign to exterminate the Kurdish population of Northern Syria.
“Nobody knows who really the final – I believe it’s Turkey. And I think Turkey is very smart. … Turkey did an unfriendly takeover without a lot of lives being lost,” Trump told reporters in December.
Trump added tha Assad was a “butcher” and noted that, while Obama did not act to maintain the chemical weapons “red line,” he did during his first term.
Trump ordered a cruise missile strike on an Assad airbase in 2017 in response to reports of a massacre of civilians in a chemical attack.
“This was in response to the Syrian chemical weapons attack April 4th in Khan Sheikhoun… That attack killed and injured hundreds of innocent Syrian people, including women and children,” Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis said at the time.
Trump himself described the attack as a “horrible, horrible thing, and I’ve been watching it and seeing it, and it doesn’t get any worse than that.”
The bombing prompted widespread alarm that Trump would escalate American military involvement in Syria but, to the contrary, he removed the vast majority of America’s ground presence there after the fall of the Islamic State “caliphate.”
