Alwaght- The White House is set to roll out a red carpet to Abu Mohammad al-Jolani (officially Ahmad al-Sharaa) who just months ago was an internationally wanted terrorist. He, as the Syrian interim president, is to meet the US President Donald Trump in Washington on Monday.
But while things have gone well for al-Jolani and his orbit throughout Syria’s upheaval, they have delivered little to the Syrian people, only empty promises and a future darkened by the boot of extremist militant groups.
Amid this reality, al-Jolani has now traveled a long way to the White House, hoping to find a master key to the many challenges facing his fledgling administration. Yet Washington is not inclined to readily accommodate his demands. This visit could well outline the future course of Damascus–Washington relations.
According to US officials, al-Jolani’s talks at the White House will center on security and economic issues. Tom Barrack , the US Special Representative for Syria, suggested that al-Jolani’s visit likely aims to finalize an agreement for Damascus to join the global coalition against ISIS terrorist group. Lifting sanctions, especially those under the Caesar Act, also ranks high among al-Jolani’s priorities. Media reports indicate he also plans to request financial support for Syria’s reconstruction.
Beating home challenges
Over the past year, al-Jolani has tried to, through moving closer to the Western-Arab camp and displaying a pragmatic face of himself, send this message that he can manage things by taking into account the Israeli and Western strategic interests in Syria and in the region. Now he is seeking the reward of his service to the Americans and that is why he is focusing on business and sanctions relief.
Al-Jolani knows all too well that without foreign investment, which itself depends on lifting punishing economic sanctions, there is almost no way out of Syria's current deadlock. Until Western and Arab nations take concrete steps in this direction, there will be no relief for Syria's economic and humanitarian crisis.
Although the Caesar Act sanctions have been ostensibly lifted on paper, they remain in effect in practice. Moreover, a deeper problem persists: foreign investors' deep-seated distrust of armed factions and the lack of lasting stability continue to block capital from entering Syria.
According to World Bank estimates, rebuilding Syria after thirteen years of civil war will require more than $216 billion, a figure far beyond the Damascus government's financial capacity. The widespread destruction of infrastructure and service networks has made attracting foreign aid and investment more urgent than ever. So, al-Jolani is now pressing Washington to take tangible steps toward Syria's reconstruction and economic revival. Through this, he also aims to secure his own political standing in the country’s future landscape.
Halt of Israeli attacks
In addition to economic challenges, security problems are among the most important obsessions of al-Jolani’s rule.
In recent months, repeated Israeli incursions into Syria and also airstrikes have caused waves of concerns among new Syria rulers. Al-Jolani, lacking military power and effective weapons to push back against the Israeli regime, tries to sign a security deal through closeness to Washington for Israel to stop the attacks. He is hopeful that with the US help, he can establish a security framework that restores at least relative peace to his areas of control.
Al-Jolani thinks that continued Israeli airstrikes pose a dual threat: they destabilize his own hold on power in Syria and paralyze efforts for reconstruction and foreign investment. Simply put, no country will invest in an insecure territory. Consequently, securing political and security backing from Washington has become a key part of al-Jolani's strategy to navigate the current crisis and restore a degree of stability to Syria.
Furthermore, the Kurdish issue remains one of Syria's most complex internal challenges, one for which al-Jolani is looking to American support for a solution.
The significant presence and influence of Kurdish forces in northern and northeastern Syria threaten his authority in areas controlled by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS). Al-Jolani aims to win Washington approval and align his political stance with American interests to broker a temporary understanding with the Kurds, thereby preventing internal clashes that would weaken his position. However, achieving such an agreement is fraught with difficulty, given deep-seated historical grievances, mutual distrust, conflicting interests, and the hardline stance of Turkey against the Syrian Kurds.
Is al-Jolani Washington's favorable and permanent choice?
Despite his push for closenss to the West, a serious question remains in place about the degree of Western willingness to work with his government. Though ostensibly Washington, through lifting part of sanctions and removing his name from its terror blacklist, tries to pretend that al-Jolani can meet Western interests in the present conditions, the reality on the ground is more complicated. The gaps in views of Washington and Tel Aviv to the future of Syria and way of dealing with the new Syrian government has given rise to serious doubts about if West should continue its support to al-Jolani.
In reality, Washington views today's Syria as an opportunity for economic and military gain. US's engagement with Syria is driven not by trust, but by a calculation to advance its own strategic interests in the region. Consequently, any current support for Syria's interim government is tactical, not strategic, and could easily be reversed if the situation on the ground or Western priorities shift.
Al-Jolani's position regarding a deal with Tel Aviv is even more precarious. Israeli leaders view him with deep distrust, labeling him a "religious extremist and terrorist" whose rise to power poses a direct threat to their security. They have repeatedly and explicitly warned that they are closely monitoring his regime's moves and will show zero tolerance for any provocation.
Therefore, even if the US attempts to broker a security agreement, al-Jolani would find himself trapped in a endless cycle of addressing Israel's bottomless security concerns. He would be forced to make continuous concessions in negotiations with the Israelis, all without any guaranteed returns, in the mere hope that Tel Aviv might one day accept him as a manageable asset for Hebrew-Western interests. This is a path that is likely unacceptable to the Syrian people and could even fracture his own support base.
This reality demonstrates that even if al-Jolani were willing to join security frameworks like the Arab-Israeli normalization, officially dubbed "Abraham Accords," his ability to extract direct concessions from Israel is severely limited. His success is wholly contingent upon winning the full trust and satisfaction of Tel Aviv's leadership. Therefore, al-Jolani is being cast as a tool, not an independent actor, and the future of any security or economic arrangement in southern Syria hinges entirely on his acceptance by Tel Aviv and the West.
To play aligned with Washington’s regional policies, al-Jolani has launched a military campaign against ISIS as he is visiting the US. He wants to project himself as a part of the largely demonstrative anti-ISIS Western military coalition to win relative legitimacy with the West and its allies. However, US is certain that al-Jolani, with a long history of membership to the terrorist group and once on the US blacklist, cannot hold the power in Syria for a long time. So, Washington is seeing him as a temporary pawn in Syria's transition from the current crisis.
The US strategy is to capitalize on al-Jolani government's weakness to extract maximum concessions, including establishing military bases in Damascus and securing economic privileges. This approach is designed to lock in these gains, ensuring that even a future, quasi-democratic government in Syria would be unable to revoke these pre-negotiated agreements. In this context, the new Syrian leader serves as a temporary pawn for advancing US's strategic objectives in Syria, with his influence and authority entirely contingent on Washington's interests.
Furthermore, the West's inability to fully embrace al-Jolani as a long-term pawn stems directly from his government's track record over the past year, which has sparked international condemnation for human rights abuses.
According to reports from human rights organizations and UN, elements of HTS have killed thousands of Alawites and Druze minorities over the past 11 months, with approximately 100 more abducted or forcibly disappeared. These figures confirm that the terrorist and violent structures within the Damascus governance remain firmly in place, indicating no significant shift in the behavior of the interim government under al-Jolani's leadership.
Given this reality, continued long-term cooperation with such a government is impossible to the West, since Western public opinion react strongly to their governments supporting the criminals in power. After wresting concessions from him, Washington will seek to present a national and favorable figure of al-Jolani to all of the sects and minorities in a bid to facilitate reconstruction and stability and placate public anger with his government.
Beyond the distrust from the West and Israel, al-Jolani faces a critical internal threat: the risk of insurrection and defiance by the various factions within the HTS. Estimates suggest that roughly 20,000 foreign militant fighters operate within the militant alliance's subordinate groups, many of whom have retained their radical takfiri ideology. His weak performance politically could prove destabilizing, potentially re-energizing sleeper ISIS cells.
These elements can bypass al-Jolani’s rule to realize their ideological ideals, including the Islamic caliphate, and join ISIS and re-sink Syria in instability and violence.
In general, as long as deep distrust of Tel Aviv in new Damascus rulers holds on, any Syrian hope in the US for economic and security progress in Syria is no more than illusion.
