President Trump’s Plans for the Middle East – With Syria in Focus
President Trump’s deal-making trip to the Middle East, more precisely at the US-Saudi Investment Forum in Riyadh in mid-May 2025, was a multi-purpose trip. First, Saudi Arabia signed a $142 billion arms deal with the US and pledged an additional $600 billion in American investments. That’s deal-making at its best.
Second, during his Saudi stay, Mr. Trump unexpectedly announced lifting all sanctions on Syria.
This is the first time in close to 50 years that Washington leaves Syria free of sanctions. US sanctions in Syria began in 1979. It looks like a monumental shift in US policy in the Middle East. A shift towards Middle East stability?
On the same occasion, President Trump shakes hand with Syria’s Interim President, Ahmad al-Sharaa, initiating one of the most “controversial” policy moves the US have made in the past decades.
Who is Syria’s Interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa?
Born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to a Syrian Sunni Muslim family from the Golan Heights, he grew up in Syria’s capital, Damascus. Al-Sharaa joined al-Qaeda in Iraq shortly before the 2003 invasion of Iraq and fought for three years in the Iraqi insurgency.
So, Mr. Ahmad al-Sharaa, is an al-Qaeda fighter. Al-Qaeda was created by the US in 1988 in Peshawar, Pakistan. Al-Qaeda was founded as a pan-Islamist militant terrorist organization led by
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