The word “terrorist” has been erased from his file, but not from memory. It’s simple on paper and hard in practice: money, legitimacy, and a path to normal life for 22 million Syrians.

3 Narratives News | November 10, 2025

Words travel with a man. For Ahmed al-Shara’a, they have been a caravan: jihadist, emir, strongman, president. Today, he steps into the White House for the first official visit by a Syrian president while carrying a slimmer vocabulary and heavier expectations. The U.S. has removed its former group’s terror designation; sanctions have been peeled back; doors once bolted are cracked open. The room is quiet. What does he want, and what can he actually deliver?

A label retires; the past does not

Context: A label retires; the past does not

Al-Shara’a for long known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani, led the al-Nusra Front and later Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Over the years, he tried to recast himself as a local power broker and, after Assad’s fall late last year, emerged as Syria’s transitional leader and then president. In July, Washington formally revoked HTS’s Foreign Terrorist Organization designation as part of a broader Syria policy reset that also terminated core U.S. Syria sanctions. The U.K. followed by deproscribing HTS in October, explicitly to enable closer engagement with the new Syrian government. At the multilateral level, the U.N.’s ISIL–al-Qaida Sanctions Committee updated its lists through October–November as entries were amended to reflect the changed landscape. The stated rationale across these moves is the same: Syria’s power has changed hands; HTS’s former designation no longer aligns with the present security architecture; and international actors want leverage over a reconstruction-first transition. Each step was extraordinary — and controversial.

Why delisting now? Officials in Washington and London pointed to “significant developments” since Assad’s ouster and notably that the man once associated with HTS led the coalition that ended the regime, now governs a national administration, and has committed to fighting ISIS and stabilizing liberated areas. In practice, delisting removes legal barriers that blocked banking, insurance, and aid pipelines into ministries now responsible for electricity, food imports, salaries and all the mechanics of rebuilding. Skeptics counter that rebranding should not erase past methods; supporters argue the legal map must match the political map if Syrians are to see lights, wages, and services.

Why the White House visit? Today’s meeting is designed to lock in that shift. Al-Shara’a’s Washington agenda centers on three asks: (1) a permanent, legislative path to replace or repeal remaining sanctions regimes (notably provisions of the Caesar Act) beyond executive waivers; (2) U.S. support for a sequenced reconstruction program focused on the grid, water, and housing; and (3) formalizing security coordination including Syria’s integration into the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS so foreign investment is not spooked by residual conflict risks. Multiple outlets describe the encounter as historic, noting the U.S. once posted a multimillion-dollar bounty for al-Shara’

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“Judge us by the electricity at night,” one adviser says, “not by the enemies we made surviving a war.”

Narrative One: Ahmed al-Shara’a, President and Liberator

Within this worldview, a dictatorship collapsed, and a survivor of the battlefield learned to govern. The rebel commander who once moved men now moves ministries: electricity first, then bread, then salaries; courts that arbitrate contracts instead of doctrine; border posts that stamp visas instead of smuggling diesel. The claim is pragmatic: if Syrians can safely earn and sleep, ideology evaporates in the noise of generators and school bells.

Here in Washington, al-Shara’a’s ask has three clauses. First, durable sanctions relief beyond executive orders, to pry open banking, insurance, and shipping. Second, a reconstruction pathway, not Baghdad-style cash dumps but sequenced financing tied to transformers, water plants, and housing stock. Third, recognition and guarantees: that foreign capitals will treat Damascus as a partner against ISIS remnants and cross-border militancy, not as a former pariah waiting to relapse. The case is that America’s pivot is already in motion, the FTO delisting is law, OFAC has cleared the lanes, and allies are aligning — and that Syrians will measure success in hours of power on the grid.

Advocates of this story point to the symbolism: an Oval Office meeting as an anchor for a new security architecture. They emphasize a U.S., UK and UN coordination, insisting that a rules-based unwind of penalties will control moral hazard. The argument folds in regional diplomacy that Riyadh’s mediation and European outreach make partnership safer than isolation. In this telling, the White House visit is not absolution but leverage: a way to trade steps on justice and minority protections for concrete investments and demobilization benchmarks.

There is also the politics of memory: the label “terrorist” gone from the register, the man standing in a tie, the old footage archived. Supporters say the job now is to sequence normal life customs clearance before elections, grain imports before grand speeches because hungry countries don’t vote, they riot. If Washington wants fewer boats on the Mediterranean and fewer militias in the hills, they say, help Damascus turn on the lights and pay nurses on time.

Narrative Two: Ahmed al-Shara’a, the Terrorist

In this view, the record speaks. The man once known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani built power through bombings, fear, and a parallel justice system. His first banner, the al-Nusra Front, claimed deadly suicide attacks in Damascus in 2012 that ripped through civilian areas. Years later, his fighters shot dead Druze villagers in Qalb Loze, then tried to tidy the crime as a rogue act. These are not footnotes; they are the foundation stones.

When the logo changed to Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the methods did not. In Idlib and the northwest, HTS ran its own courts, prisons, and religious police. Activists, aid workers, and journalists were disappeared or forced to confess; families hunted for their sons from one detention office to the next. Survivors describe beatings, stress positions, the dulab tire torture, coffin-like cells, and deaths behind bars. That is not governance; it is rule by fear.

Minorities and dissenters felt the system first. Druze villagers learned it in 2015. Civil society groups learned it when “mixed” meetings were banned and offices raided. Those who challenged HTS’s authority met prosecutors in black robes and judges without oversight. The message was simple: obedience is piety; criticism is a crime.

From this vantage, delisting retires a word, not a practice. A White House photo does not erase car bombs, secret cells, or coerced verdicts. Engagement without credible accountability invites repetition. Until there is transparent justice for victims — the disappeared, the tortured, the families of the bombed and the shot — this story calls him what his record made him: a terrorist in a suit.

What Syrians need by nightfall

For most Syrians, the third narrative is not a debate over labels; it is the price of bread and the sound of the grid coming alive after sunset. The OFAC pages and federal notices matter only if they move wheat, spare parts, and medicine. Reconstruction is a municipal act: transformers on trucks, wells chlorinated, legal papers reissued without bribes. In that ledger, success is a bus line that returns, a clinic that restocks, a school that reopens with windows.

Peace, if it’s real, will be built from small honesty: transparent tenders; police who file reports instead of favours; judges who sign their names. And a test no summit can fake: whether families displaced to Gaziantep, Berlin, or Toronto feel safe to come home and not just from bombs but from the fear of vanishing into a cell. Transitional justice will be slow and uneven; memory will not be legislated. What can be legislated is a budget that buys warmth for winter, work for the idle, and time without fear.

Key Takeaways

• Al-Shara’a met U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House today — a first for a Syrian leader — after the U.S. revoked HTS’s terror designation and rolled back core sanctions.
• His Washington agenda: durable sanctions relief via Congress, bankable reconstruction pathways, and security cooperation that trades proof of reforms for money and legitimacy.
• Supporters frame him as the figure who can turn war’s rubble into wages; critics argue the delisting launders coercive power and risks entrenching a new security state.
• The silent story is practical: do the lights stay on, do salaries clear, and can displaced families return without fear?

Questions This Article Answers

• What, specifically, is al-Shara’a asking of the U.S. government and allies?
• How did the U.S., UK, and UN unwind the terror designation and sanctions, and why now?
• What are the strongest arguments that he is a liberator — and the strongest that he remains, functionally, a terrorist?
• What concrete measures would prove that reconstruction is reaching ordinary Syrians?
• How might today’s meeting reshape regional security and minority protections?

Sources & Further Reading

• Associated Press — Trump to host Syria’s al-Shara’a (background and schedule)
• Reuters — Syrian president to visit the White House, agenda and context
• U.S. State Department — Revoking HTS FTO designation (July 7, 2025)
• UK Parliament (Hansard) — Deproscription of HTS (Oct 22, 2025)
• Security Council Report — Update on UN 1267/1989/2253 lists (Nov 2025)
• Al Jazeera — First-ever visit by a Syrian president to the White House
• PBS NewsHour — Backgrounder on the planned visit
• The Guardian — Talks at the White House, reconstruction stakes
• France 24 — Arrival coverage