Trump urge Syria to normalize relations with Israel at the first meeting with its president | International

The president of the United States, Donald Trump, has met this Wednesday morning with the interim president of Syria, Ahmed al Shara, in Riad, capital of Saudi Arabia, in a meeting that has lasted just over half an hour and that symbolically seals the return of that country, razed by a bloody 14 -year -old war, to the fold of the international community. The American president had advanced on Tuesday his decision to accept a “greeting” with the leader of Syria, shortly before making a surprise announcement: the lifting of Washington’s sanctions on the Syrian economy.

“It has potential. He is a real leader,” Trump said, according to Reuters, about the Syrian president, already aboard the presidential plane that has taken him to Doha, the capital of Qatar, where he already landed this afternoon. Until last December, Washington offered ten million dollars (about nine million euros) for Al Shara’s head.

The White House spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, had needed shortly before what is the first price that the president has asked Al Shara for lifting the sanctions and therefore staged with the handshake that has taken place before a summit between the United States and the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council. That price is peace with Israel.

According to the spokeswoman, the president has urged the Syrian leader to join the Abraham agreements, the 2020 pacts for which three other Arab countries, Morocco, United Arab Emirates (EAU) and Bahrain, established diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. Washington also aspires that Saudi Arabia firm that normalization, which was considered imminent before the Israeli offensive in Gaza in October 2023, and now riad subject to the establishment of a road map for a Palestinian state. Trump has alluded to that step, which, he said, the Arab kingdom will give “following his own times.”

The Republican has fulfilled his promise to meet with his Syrian counterpart before leaving Saudi Arabia, the first stage of a three -day regional tour of the Middle East, which, after his visit to Qatar, will take him on Thursday to Eau and that, significantly, has left Israel out. The president has left open the possibility of a final scale in Türkiye, if a meeting between the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodimir Zelenski.

The three Gulf states included in the Trump agenda began a race for entertaining him trying to speak in the language of the former real estate tycoon. To do this, he was offered contracts for astronomical figures whose realization experts have questioned, in a context of falling oil prices, the raw material from which the opulence of these three countries is nourished. Riad advanced Tuesday at that bid for Washington by announcing agreements for 600,000 million dollars in weapons and rare minerals.

A dark past

The president’s hand to Shara, which Trump has strengthened before a pleased Mohamed Bin Salmán – the heir prince and Saudi strong man – is also that of the leader of Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), an organization that until 2016 was affiliated with Al Qaeda with the name of the Nusra. That dark past was the fundamental reason for the republican’s reluctance to meet with Shara, who today continues to appear in the cast of terrorists of the US State Department, as published on Tuesday the US media Axios.

In 2006, the now Syrian president was even captured by the US army in Iraq and spent five years, without trial or positions, imprisoned in several detention and torture centers of those troops. Among them, that of Camp Bucca, and the infamous jail of Abu Ghraib, famous for torture to the inmates.

Already on the way to Qatar, journalists have mentioned an alleged offer of the former Salafist leader to the president of the United States: to build a Trump tower in Damascus, the Syrian capital. The president has avoided responding before describing Al Shara as “a young and attractive guy” and his past as “strong.” “It has potential. He is a real leader,” he added, before summarizing the encounter between them with an adjective: “Great”

Who has convinced Trump to run a veil about this trajectory that Al Shara tries to forget – he has abandoned the allusions to an “Islamic regime” in Syria and his war name, Abu Mohamed al Juani; He has also trimmed his beard and adopted the western suit – they have been two leaders that the US president had defined on Tuesday as “two friends.” This is the Saudi heir and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president. Erdogan has also participated by phone in Trump’s meeting with Al Shara.

Both Riad and Ankara had pressed Washington to raise the sanctions against Syria, which until now had maintained despite the overthrow in December of the Bachar the Asad regime, against which they were directed.

The last time two American and Syrian leaders met was 25 years ago, in 2000, when Bill Clinton and Hafez El Asad – the father of the overthrown Bachar El Asad – held a meeting. It was in the Swiss city of Geneva, where they discussed without success seal peace between Syria and Israel.

A high price

The normalization with Israel that Trump has claimed to his counterpart is not a low price for getting Syria out of the list of countries considered Parias. Since 1967, Israel keeps the Golán Sirios occupied, where Al Shara’s family comes precisely. The population of the Arab country is also, in large part, Antiisraelí, a feeling now probably exacerbated, not only for Israel’s offensive in Gaza, but for the recent occupation of another portion of Syrian territory by its neighbor.

After a lightning offensive by an alliance of armed groups led by HTS, which overthrew Bachar the Asad in 12 days, Israel took the opportunity to take more Syrian territory, in the demilitarized area near the Highs of the Golán. In that area, he has raised at least seven military bases. The Benjamín Netanyahu government has also proclaimed its intention to remain there, while it does not stop bombing the few facilities and equipment of the almost dismantled Army of Syria.

On May 2, Israel came to bombard an area located very close to the Damascus presidential palace, supposedly in support of the Drusa minority, a part of which also lives in the highs of the occupied goal. Israeli authorities try to attract the favor of that community and spur the sectarian divisions in a country whose ethnic and religious puzzles are trying to rebuild their new authorities.

Al Shara’s response has demonstrated the great pragmatism attributed to him. Until now, he has avoided the slightest conato of war confrontation with Israel, whose military superiority is overwhelming, and even maximized his statements about Israeli aggression. Now Trump claims, however, a giant step that its population may not understand: establish diplomatic relations with the country that keeps part of Syria under occupation.

Israel is interested that this neighboring country remains fragile and ethnically divided and aspires to have internal allies that exercise fifth column of their interests. Hence, it has opposed the lifting of the very hard sanctions that prevent Syria from accessing the world financial system, venting foreign investment and hinders the task of humanitarian organizations.

Israel hits the main objective expressed by the Syrian leader: the reconciliation of his country, torn for 14 years of war and deplores at least 600,000 dead since 2011. The second objective of Al Shara, confirmed as an interim president to pilot a transition without deadlines in January, was and is that international sanctions are raised to initiate the titanic task of reconstructing his country.