On Tuesday, May 6, on the eve of his visit to Paris (his first trip to a Western capital), Ahmed al-Sharaa appeared rather relaxed. In a video that went viral on social media, the interim Syrian president appeared on a basketball court in Damascus, wearing a white shirt, red tie and suit pants, dribbling and hitting shots with surprising skill alongside his foreign minister, Assaad al-Shibani.

The scene might seem inconsequential if it hadn't been unthinkable just a few months ago. Very few would have bet that this former jihadist – the son of a Nasserist family who fought the American invasion of Iraq before joining the ranks of the Islamic State group (IS), leading the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda and then founding his own rebel Islamist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – would rise from the Idlib province, besieged by Bashar al-Assad's regime, to the presidential palace atop the heights of Damascus as head of the Syrian government.

This video of a cheerful and relaxed president is part of a polished political communication strategy embraced by the new strongman since he took power in December 2024. Abandoning his war name, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, he has begun his transformation. In five months, he has worked to make people forget his past as a jihadist leader in an attempt to assume the role of a respectable head of state with international stature.

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