Syria’s Jihadi President Gets Warm Welcome on First Trip Abroad to Saudi Arabia

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa made his first trip overseas since his formal appointment as head of state on Sunday, receiving a warm welcome in Saudi Arabia.

Sharaa, formerly known as “Abu Mohammed al-Jolani,” is a wanted terrorist and leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an al-Qaeda offshoot. HTS won the Syrian Civil War, which lasted nearly a decade and a half, in December after longtime dictator Bashar Assad fled the country. Assad received political asylum in Russia, leaving HTS in charge of the country.

Sharaa has spent much of his time in power promising Syria’s many minority groups, including Christians and Kurds, that he would build an “inclusive” government and urging global powers to invest in his regime. To comfort concerned free nations, Sharaa has abandoned his jihadi nom de guerre and now wears Western-style suits, but he has repeatedly defended Islamist rule and suggested that he would impose a sharia regime.

“People who fear Islamic governance either have seen incorrect implementations of it or do not understand it properly,” Sharaa told CNN shortly before HTS’s conquest of Damascus.

The “Military Operations Command” of HTS, the de facto ruling government of Syria, announced last week that it would officially install Sharaa as its president, dissolve the Assad-era constitution, and grant Sharaa the power to establish an interim legislature to pass new laws. The Command promised to dissolve HTS and all other militias emerging from the Civil War, eventually seeking to turn them into a functional Syrian armed forces. Assad’s armed forces collapsed after HTS attacked Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, in November.

In his first foreign trip as president of Syria, Sharaa visited Riyadh, where he received a warm welcome from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, commonly known by his initials MBS. The crown prince is the prime minister and de facto ruler of the country, leading the day-to-day operations of Saudi Arabia. Sharaa and his foreign minister, Asaad al-Shaibani, met with MBS to discuss, among other issues, Saudi Arabia financially and diplomatically supporting the reconstruction of Syria after the war.

“We discussed comprehensive plans for the future in the fields of energy, technology, education and health, with the aim of achieving a real partnership,” Sharaa said following his meeting with the crown prince, “that will contribute to preserving peace and stability in the region and improving the economic reality in Syria.”

Sharaa said, according to the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), that in his talks with MBS he “sensed and heard a genuine desire to support Syria in building its future, and keenness to support the will of the Syrian people and the unity and integrity of its territories.”

The Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs published images of MBS embracing Sharaa and relayed that Sharaa expressed “gratitude and appreciation” to the Saudi government for its support, in addition to discussing “bilateral relations and opportunities to strengthen ties across various fields.”

The state Saudi Press Agency (SPA), according to a translation by Al Arabiya, described the conversation between the two leaders as focusing on “ways to support the security and stability of sisterly Syria.” Al Arabiya noted that in its own recent interview with Sharaa, the Syrian leader said he spent many of his formative years in Saudi Arabia and claimed to be born there as a result of his father working abroad.

Saudi Arabia, with its close ties to the United States, has emerged as a critical ally to the new Syria. Among the massive challenges facing Sharaa are the fact that Syria, under the Assad dynasty, was placed on the State Department’s State Sponsors of Terrorism list, effectively banning it from most international trade. HTS is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), which also bans Americans from cooperating with it in any way.

The Saudi government called for America and other nations sanctioning Syria to stop doing so after hosting a summit on the future of the country in January. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan bin Abdullah Al Saud encouraged the world to “coordinate efforts to support Syria and work towards lifting the sanctions imposed on it.”

Prince Faisal “stressed that the continuation of sanctions imposed on the former Syrian regime will hinder the aspirations of the Syrian people for development, reconstruction, and stability,” according to the Saudi government.

The administration of President Donald Trump has been tight-lipped regarding its approach to the situation in Syria. Trump has repeatedly asserted that Syria is a “mess” that has little to do with the United States and suggested he had little interest in maintaining a military presence there.

“Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social in December. “THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!”

Trump has also displayed little respect to HTS, however, suggesting that its victory was due to support from neighoring Turkey and that the demise of the Assad regime was a foreign “unfriendly takeover” and not the result of HTS’s individual military prowess.

Sharaa has nonetheless responded favorably to Trump’s hesitation in staying involved in Syria. Following Trump’s inauguration in January, the jihadi president issued a statement congratulating Trump and praising him as capable of bringing peace to his country.

“The past decade has brought immense suffering to Syria, with the conflict devastating our nation and destabilizing the region,” Sharaa wrote in a social media message. “We are confident that he is the leader to bring peace to the Middle East and restore stability to the region.”

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