The undisputed star of this year’s United Nations General Assembly in New York was Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former al-Qaeda commander who is now the president of Syria.
Sharaa came to New York for his Sept. 24 address to the world body — the first such address by a Syrian president since 1967 — where he appealed for international support and the lifting of sanctions on his country. On the sidelines, he met briefly with President Trump for the second time, following their 33-minute encounter in May during Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia.
Last December, Sharaa’s troops overthrew the blood-stained regime of Bashar Assad. Since then, the self-appointed president has defied expectations by taking a pragmatic approach to relations not just with the U.S., but with Israel, too. In response, Trump lifted most U.S. sanctions, saying he wanted “to give [Syrians] a chance at greatness.”
Yet on Syria’s home front, things are far from great. Forces affiliated with Sharaa have carried out massacres of minority groups — including the Druze and the Alawites — despite the U.S. making it clear that a permanent removal of sanctions and other benefits will depend on whether Sharaa gets his house in order.
The Syrian president arrived in New York as a diplomat. He opened his trip with a headline-grabbing sit-down with former CIA Director David Petraeus. From there, he swept through meetings with global heavyweights: Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, France’s Emmanuel Macron, European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky. These meetings reaffirmed Syria’s return to the international fold, and Sharaa was embraced as the man to lead it.
There is nothing in Sharaa’s background to indicate that his diplomacy might extend to Israel. After all, he celebrated the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, telling Palestinians, “You humiliated the arrogance of the Zionist occupiers.” Yet since taking power, Sharaa has said he will “seek no conflict” with the Jewish state. Now, he is on the brink of signing a security agreement with Israel that he describes as a “necessity.”
This transformation has taken place despite Israeli airstrikes and ground incursions inside Syria and its intervention on behalf of the Druze in July. The White House can take some credit; at their first meeting, Trump told Shaara that America wants full peace between Israel and Syria, with Damascus eventually joining the Abraham Accords.
Based only on Sharaa’s diplomatic record, one can argue that he has done plenty to earn America’s confidence. But what happens inside Syria still matters, since Sharaa only controls a bit more than half the country. If there are new killings, the country could plunge back into civil war.
After taking power, Sharaa vowed to create “an inclusive transitional government that represents the diversity of Syria.” Instead, his Islamist allies drafted the transitional constitution with no input from key groups such as the Kurds or the Druze. It gives the president sweeping executive authority for five years, allowing him to appoint lawmakers and judges, despite claiming to uphold a “separation of powers.” Oversight is nonexistent.
Sharaa has integrated Sunni Islamist factions into the new Syrian army while promoting foreign jihadists from Jordan, Turkey and China’s Xinjiang region to senior posts. As one Syrian journalist put it, the army “may come to resemble a cult-like political system where loyalty to ideology supersedes loyalty to the state.”
Unfortunately, absorbing the extremists into the army has encouraged neither restraint nor moderation thus far. It was foreign jihadists who took part in the massacres of Alawites in March and of Druze in July, killing more than a thousand each time. Naturally, this further eroded trust between Sharaa and the country’s minorities. Kurds in the northeast are now demanding self-rule; Druze in the south are pressing for outright independence; and clashes persist between the government and Alawites in the west.
Sharaa once pledged to “achieve civil peace and pursue those who committed massacres.” The U.S. should hold him to it — not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s in America’s interest to have a Syrian government that is stable enough to fight terrorists and improve relations with Israel. Sharaa needs to stay on good terms with America while rebuilding his country, and if the U.S. demands that he hold those who committed mass killings accountable while treating minorities fairly, he’ll have no choice but to take it seriously.
Ahmad Sharawi is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, focusing on Middle East affairs and the Levant.