Syrian jihadist de facto government leader Ahmed al-Shalah issued a statement Monday congratulating President Donald Trump on his inauguration, saying he is “confident” that President Trump can “bring peace to the Middle East.” ” he said.
Sharaa provided President Trump was briefly congratulated in a statement posted on the encrypted messaging app Telegram on Monday.
“The past decade has brought untold suffering to Syria, and the conflict has devastated our country and destabilized the region,” Sharaa wrote. “We are confident that he is the leader who will bring peace to the Middle East and restore stability to the region.”
Sharaa, formerly known by his jihadi name Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, is the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an al-Qaeda splinter militia formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra. be. Jolani led Nusra through much of Syria's civil war and continues to head HTS after the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime at the end of 2024.
HTS was one of more than a dozen militias, state actors, terrorist organizations, and other actors fighting on the battlefields of Syria's civil war for more than a decade. The war, sparked by President Bashar al-Assad's violent crackdown on protests against his regime in 2011, stalled after the collapse of the Islamic State group during Trump's first term in 2017, but will continue until November 2024. It became active again after HTS successfully carried out a surprise attack on Aleppo in September. Syria's second city. The fall of Aleppo prompted HTS's rapid expansion of territorial control, culminating in jihadists reaching the capital Damascus on December 7. Bashar al-Assad and his family fled to Russia soon after.
Sharaa abandoned him nom de guerre His army became fatigued shortly after taking Damascus, and he has since sought to reassure Western powers that his government is “inclusive” and worth investing in. But Shaller insists that HTS will pursue an Islamist regime structure, making no guarantee that the new government will grant basic civil liberties to women, instead offering vague guarantees that it will respect minorities. giving.
Shaller also said that after the fall of Damascus, the HTS will be disbanded and formed into a new army for Syria, but elections will be held for at least four years due to reasons including the large number of refugees scattered around the globe. said it would not take place. – So Sharaa and his HTS minions will effectively rule the country for at least that amount of time.
As part of its charm offensive with the West, Schaller hosted a U.S. delegation led by Barbara Leaf, then assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, in the final days of former President Joe Biden's administration. Mr. Leaf said his meeting with Mr. Sharaa was “very good, very productive, very in-depth,” resulting in Mr. has increased the $10 million bounty it had imposed on Mr. Sharaa.
Biden's Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has vowed that Biden will “recognize and fully support” the new administration after the fall of Assad, as long as it emerges from an “inclusive and transparent process.”
President Trump has been tight-lipped about how he will address developments in Syria and has not offered any assurances like Blinken's. However, the current president has emphasized that he has no interest in the long-term presence of US troops in the country.
In a message posted on his social media platform Truth Social shortly before Assad fled the country, President Trump wrote that the Syrian conflict was “not our fight.”
President Trump asserted, “Syria is in turmoil, but it is not our friend. The United States should have nothing to do with Syria.'' “This is not our fight. Let's play. Don't get involved!”
President Trump also criticized his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, for drawing a “red line that must not be crossed'' by explicitly calling for U.S. intervention if President Assad used chemical weapons. After widespread coverage of the use of chemical weapons, President Obama ultimately did not escalate the conflict with President Bashar al-Assad, but ordered an ill-fated plan to arm Syria's “moderate” rebels, and This ultimately resulted in the handing over of weapons to Shara'a and his al-Nusra Front. It was ordered by Al Qaeda.
In a rare interview in 2015, Shaller admitted that he did not order attacks on Western countries simply because al-Qaeda leadership prevented them.
“The order from Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri (current al-Qaeda leader) is that we should not attack Western countries from Syria, because it will not help us and could complicate the situation. “Abu Mohammad al-Golani'' told UPI. “We remain focused on Damascus and the overthrow of this regime. We assure you that it will not take long for the Assad regime to fall.”
Following Shara'a's success a decade later, President Trump made comments to reporters describing HTS's victory over Assad as an “unfriendly takeover” by Turkey's Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. I put it out. President Erdoğan openly supported the HTS to overthrow Assad, even though his government supports another jihadist militia, the Syrian National Army (SNA), currently engaged in a campaign to annihilate the Kurdish population in northern Syria.
“No one really knows who the opponent in the final is, but I believe it will be Turkey. And I think Turkey is very smart. We occupied the country,” Trump told reporters in December.
President Trump added that President Assad was a “butcher” and that President Obama did not act to maintain the “red line” on chemical weapons, but did during his first term. pointed out.
In 2017, President Trump ordered a cruise missile attack on Assad Air Base in response to reports of a massacre of civilians in a chemical attack.
“This was in response to the Syrian chemical weapons attack in Khan Sheikhoun on April 4th…which left hundreds of innocent Syrian civilians dead and injured, including women and children,” the Pentagon said. Spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis said at the time.
Trump himself called the attack “a horrible, horrible thing. I've seen it all my life, and I've never seen anything worse than this.”
The bombing sparked widespread alarm that President Trump would escalate U.S. military involvement in Syria; Most of it was removed.
