Commentary
Ahmed Al Sharaa: The unstoppable rise of the reluctant jihadist
Al Sharaa’s trip reflects a strategic shift for the U.S. administration. During his first term, Trump’s position was that the U.S. should get out of Syria and the Middle East. But now Washington has reversed this position.
The new Middle East may not look like what the shameless cheerleaders of the Gaza genocide in Italy had imagined.
Israel will not have total carte blanche in the region, as some here and in Tel Aviv had hoped. For the first time since Syrian independence in 1946, a Syrian president has visited Washington. But above all, it is the first time that a former Al Qaeda member, Ahmed Al Sharaa, has been invited to the White House, 24 years after the September 11, 2001 attacks. This is the same man who was imprisoned by the Americans in Camp Bucca in Iraq alongside Al Baghdadi, the future leader of the Caliphate, from which Al Sharaa split off in 2013, before also separating from Al Qaeda three years later.
He has a controversial resume, to say the least, whose latest entry is his indirect election as president in October by “people’s councils” in which half the members had been directly appointed by Al Sharaa himself. If we add to this the freezing of the country’s constitution and the pogroms against Alawites and Druze, he certainly cannot be said to have shining democratic credentials. However, in a Middle East where the West's greatest ally, Benjamin Netanyahu, is wanted on an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, even the Syrian leader's record passes muster.
He may even be received by the Pope soon, given that Al Sharaa was on good terms with the Christians of Idlib and, in any case, massacred fewer of them than ISIS did, which made him the latter’s enemy alongside the U.S. The alliance was also sealed, for the cameras, by the Syrian president playing a game of basketball with American soldiers in Syria. Nothing can surprise us anymore at this point from Al Sharaa, a wayward and reluctant jihadist who had already shaken hands with Trump and with a group of Western leaders (including Meloni) in Saudi Arabia.
He is a sort of jihadist "reformed" by his main sponsor, Erdoğan, who in Turkey is not only the leader but also passes himself off to the people as a sort of imam. Al Sharaa, a repressor of Alawite and Druze minorities at home, is an avowed Salafist, representing a Sunni world that has taken its revenge against Shiite Iran – once the great protector of former President Bashar Assad, along with Putin's Russia. Incidentally, Al Sharaa has already been to the Kremlin, which is very interested in negotiating the reopening of the Syrian naval base at Tartus, the only Russian base remaining in the Mediterranean. The Trump-Erdoğan-Putin triangle offers a vision for the Middle East that deeply worries Israel: the Jewish state, which has occupied the Golan Heights since 1967, is now at the gates of Damascus, does not trust either Erdoğan or Al Sharaa, has bombed all Syrian military installations, and has the new president himself in its sights. Quite literally: Al Sharaa is practically under house arrest, and Israel could take him out at any time.
This is why Al Sharaa is seeking American protection and is ready to allow a U.S. base south of Damascus as a guarantee against possible Israeli military operations. The increased American military presence is a message to Israel, which wants a divided, fragmented, and weak Syria. But it is also a message to Erdoğan and his neo-Ottoman aspirations for Syria, where Turkish military forces, already occupying some northern districts, were the architects of Al Sharaa’s rapid seizure of power in the winter of 2024.
Al Sharaa’s trip reflects a strategic shift for the U.S. administration. During his first term, Trump’s position was that the U.S. should get out of Syria and the Middle East – what he called the “endless wars.” He ran his campaign on the “America First” message and wanted to withdraw from these conflicts.
But now Washington has reversed this position, largely because allies like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey and Jordan are pushing it to take a more prominent role in Syria. The Gulf petro-monarchies in particular – including those that have signed onto the Abraham Accords – fear Israel's overwhelming military hegemony, to the point that Riyadh has placed itself under Pakistan’s nuclear umbrella. This is another reason why Trump must present himself as Al Sharaa’s protector.
Al Sharaa arrived after months of conciliatory signals between Washington and Damascus: the removal of the Syrian leader's name from the list of “global terrorists,” the removal of his organization, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, from the list of terrorist groups, and the U.S. request, accepted by the UN, to lift sanctions on Damascus to begin cooperation on security and reconstruction. Syria’s coffers are empty, and without aid, it risks falling apart at a time when Gaza is near-razed and dying, and Lebanon, bombed by Israel in its Hezbollah-controlled south, can no longer cope with the region's refugees. Among those refugees are some 700,000 Palestinians who had been living in Syria for decades and who, in recent months, have already become “bargaining chips” between the U.S. and the Syrian president.
All this comes after Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu made the most serious mistake of his entire career as a tireless slaughterer of Arabs on September 9: bombing Doha. Qatar is a key U.S. ally, a massive buyer of U.S. arms, and host to 10,000 U.S. Marines. There are many things Trump doesn’t mind, but he does have one basic principle: his best customers are off-limits.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/lascesa-irresistibile-del-jihadista-riluttante on 2025-11-11