President Trump met with the new president of Syria, Ahmad al-Sharaa, one day after announcing that the U.S. would lift sanctions that have crippled the country’s economy.
The two leaders spoke for about half an hour in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, before Mr. Trump’s summit with officials from six Arab countries.
Speaking at the summit, Mr. Trump said ceasing sanctions on Syria was the right thing to do.
“I felt very strongly that this would give them a chance,” he said. “Gives them a good, strong chance. It was my honor to do so.”
“We are currently exploring normalizing with Syria’s new government,” Mr. Trump continued.
Syrian sanctions were imposed by the U.S. and other nations because of the previous Syrian regime’s human rights abuses and support for terrorism, including the use of chemical weapons, torture and indiscriminate detention.
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Since the overthrow of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in December, ending a 13-year civil war, the sanctions that restrict trade and financial transactions have hobbled the new government’s efforts to rebuild the country. The lifting of the sanctions has had broad support spanning from the Middle East to the U.S., including bipartisan support in Congress.
Mr. Trump made the surprise announcement on Tuesday that he was ordering the end of sanctions on Syria.
The meeting Wednesday was the first between U.S. and Syrian presidents in 25 years. The last meeting was when President Clinton met with Syrian President Hafez Assad in Geneva in May 2000.
Photos posted on Saudi state television showed the two men shaking hands in the presence of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a strong sign that diplomatic attitudes toward Syria are changing.
Mr. Trump urged Mr. al-Sharaa to join the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco, which normalized relations with Israel under the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords in 2020, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on X.
Ms. Leavitt said the president told Mr. al-Sharaa that “he has a tremendous opportunity to do something historic in his country” after Mr. Trump announced he was lifting sanctions that have devastated Syria’s war-torn economy for years.
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The Abraham Accords normalized relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. Mr. Trump has hailed the agreement as one of his biggest foreign policy accomplishments.
Ms. Leavitt also said that Mr. Trump urged Mr. al-Sharaa to “tell all foreign terrorists to leave Syria, “deport Palestinian terrorists,” “help the United States prevent the resurgence” of the Islamic State and “assume all responsibility for ISIS detention centers in Northeast Syria.
Mr. al-Sharaa, she said, invited U.S. companies to invest in Syrian oil and gas and told Mr. Trump that he hopes Syria can serve as a trade link between the East and West.
A Syrian readout of the meeting did not mention that Mr. Trump urged the new government to normalize relations with Israel, which has pummeled Syria with airstrikes and carved out a buffer zone since the fall of the Assad regime, which resulted in Mr. al-Sharaa taking power. Instead, the Syrian readout focused on lifting sanctions and details ways in which the two countries could work together to combat terrorism.
The meeting comes just hours after Mr. Trump announced he would end sanctions against Syria to “give them a chance at greatness.” On Wednesday, Mr. Trump said the announcement generated the biggest applause of his speech at an investor’s conference in Saudi Arabia.
• Kerry Picket contributed to this report.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.