Why al-Sharaa is Trump’s new BFF

Rebranding can be hard. Just ask Swaziland, which got tired of all the Switzerland mix-ups so rebranded as Eswatini (can someone pls also have a word with Australia and Austria).

But with a few weeks of 2026 still left, we’re hereby officially declaring the year’s best image makeover goes to… Syria’s president, Ahmed al-Sharaa.

Just think about it: around this time last year, his HTS (Levant Liberation Group) suddenly burst out from a decade of civil war to topple long-time dictator and nepo-baby Bashar al-Assad, literally the same day a certain celebrity analyst was publishing an article assuring everyone it’d never happen.

So now al-Sharaa has gone from dodging a $10M US bounty as the leader of Al Qaeda’s Syria branch, to strolling through the doors of the White House for a handshake with Donald Trump in the first such visit by a Syrian president in history. 

But any White House visit is traditionally an enormous injection of international legitimacy, so it’s worth asking… what does Trump want in return?

Like that ending in Men in Black, let’s first zoom way out to the big picture: the US wants to disentangle itself from the Middle East, fix its finances, and focus its strength on countering what it sees as the #1 challenge today — a more assertive, authoritarian China.

Now down in the medium picture is where al-Sharaa’s Syria then comes in. For the US to eventually re-balance its footprint away from the Middle East, it needs a region…

• capable of preventing the return of ISIS
• willing to live side-by-side with US ally Israel, and
• determined to avoid domination by Iran or anyone else.

And Syria sits right in the middle of that particular geopolitical Venn Diagram.

First, Al-Sharaa just used his DC visit to sign Syria up as the 90th member of the US-led anti-ISIS coalition, which should help normalise ties between al-Sharaa’s forces and Syria’s various US-backed anti-ISIS groups (particularly the Kurds).

Second, al-Sharaa just appeared on Fox News (wild in itself), noting that while Israel’s Golan occupation rules out direct Abraham Accord talks for now, “maybe President Trump will help us reach this kind of negotiation” (ie, go push Israel on Golan first).

And third, Israel argues its Syria moves are to back Syria’s Druze minority and counter Iran. So if the US helps stabilise and unify Syria’s factions against both ISIS and Iran, maybe there’s a shot not just at Syria-Israel peace, but eventually a US military drawdown.

But what does al-Sharaa want from this trip?

The World Bank says Syria needs $216B+ to rebuild after years of civil war. And realistically, that’s not happening unless Syria gets a) international legitimacy, and b) access to capital.

Yet realistically, that’s what Trump has now delivered — you don’t get much more legit than a White House visit, and Syria’s biggest hurdle to capital was always US sanctions, which Trump just suspended for another 180 days.

But why only suspended? It’s up to Congress to repeal them outright, and several US lawmakers are still wary of al-Sharaa after recent bouts of sectarian violence in Syria. But after meeting the guy in-person (and seeing him shoot a few hoops with US military personnel) many on the Hill now seem to be changing their tune.

Intrigue’s Take

Bear with us here, but diplomacy is sometimes like building an igloo: you need each block to lean into a shared vision. It’s that mutual reliance that makes the structure stand.

And right now the US needs several rival blocks to lean in, whether it’s factions like al-Sharaa’s movement and the Kurds, regional powers like Israel and Turkey, or broader partners like the EU and the Saudis. It only takes one wobble for this project to collapse back into civil war, destabilising more allies while creating more space for Iran and ISIS.

But speaking of ISIS, al-Sharaa’s military triumph over the Assad regime was also an ideological victory over ISIS: as he cut ties with Al Qaeda and rebranded as a more local, nationalist, and governance-focused movement, he was undermining not just the devolved jihadist worldview of Al Qaeda, but also the apocalyptic worldview of ISIS.

Ultimately, however, all the blocks in this particular igloo still rest on the same core question: whether this one guy (al-Sharaa) is really now who he says he is.

Sound even smarter:

• We wrote here about Turkey’s play in Syria after securing the disbanding of key Kurdish foes, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
• We also wrote here about Russia’s play in Syria, culminating in last month’s meeting in Moscow between al-Sharaa and Putin.