US President Donald Trump on Monday hosted Syria's President Ahmad Al Shara at the White House, as Washington announced the temporary lifting of the Caesar Act sanctions on Damascus.
Mr Al Shara is the first Syrian head of state to visit Washington since the nation's independence.
"We want to see Syria become a country that's very successful. And I think this leader can do it," Mr Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, in response to a question from The National.
"People said he's had a rough past. We all have rough pasts but he has had a rough past. And I think, frankly, if you didn't have a rough past, you wouldn't have a chance."
Soon after the two leaders met, the State Department announced the partial suspension of the so-called Caesar Act sanctions for 180 days, with exceptions for sanctionable transactions with Russia and Iran. The Caesar Act, which contains most of the US sanctions on Syria, can only be lifted permanently by congressional action, however. The White House had previously waived sanctions in May.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the meeting "very good".
"He signed the D-ISIS [Defeat ISIS] agreement," Ms Leavitt told The National. "That was the tangible action item the President was hoping for out of the meeting and that's what we got."
A senior US official said on background that the US will allow Syria to resume operations at its embassy in Washington.
Syria's Minister of Information Hamza Al Mostafa confirmed that Damascus had signed on to the agreement and that the embassy would be reopened, saying in a post on X that the meeting was "warm, candid and forward-looking".
Mr Al Mostafa said Mr Trump and Mr Al Shara had also discussed integrating the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces into the army.
The two leaders also spoke about a possible security arrangement with Israel, he added.
Mr Trump said Mr Al Shara, who until this year was a Specially Designated Global Terrorist and had a bounty on his head, is getting along well with Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
"Everyone's a great leader and very much in favour of what's happening in Syria," Mr Trump said. "We have to make Syria work. Syria is a big part of the Middle East and I will tell you, I think it is working really well."
He added that Syria was "getting along with everybody", including Israel.
After his closed-door meeting with Mr Trump, Mr Al Shara went outside the White House to Lafayette Square, where a crowd of Syrian Americans had gathered to greet him, waving Syrian flags. He briefly got out of the car and waved to the crowd before returning to his vehicle and being driven away.
Maha Al Khatib, a Syrian American who lives in California, said she flew in to Washington at the invitation of the Syrian Foreign Ministry and met Mr Al Shara on Sunday night.
She said unifying Syria is going to be his biggest challenge. "Through his wit and wisdom, he has been able to bring Syrians together and opened up the country without shedding one drop of blood," she told The National. "We are so proud of him."
The historic visit is the culmination of the unlikely rise of Mr Al Shara, who two decades ago was held in a US-run detention centre in Iraq. The leader of the Syrian offshoot of Al Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, had a $10 million bounty on his head.
Mr Al Shara arrived late in Washington on Saturday and was joined by Syria's Foreign Minister, Asaad Al Shibani. At the weekend, Mr Al Shibani shared a video on social media showing Mr Al Shara playing basketball with Centcom commander Admiral Brad Cooper and Brig Gen Kevin Lambert, the head of the international anti-ISIS coalition. The caption read: “Work hard, play harder.” He did not disclose the location.
The breakthrough in US-Syrian diplomatic relations started in May during Mr Trump's visit to the Gulf, where he met Mr Al Shara in Riyadh. Before the visit on Saturday, Syrian security forces conducted wide-scale raids in Damascus and several other provinces, killing an ISIS member and arresting scores of others.
William Roebuck, a former US ambassador to Bahrain, said the expected agreement for Syria to join the anti-ISIS coalition will formally align Mr Al Shara’s government with the Trump administration.
“Al Shara’s and his commanders’ [extremist] roots – and their previous, sometimes violent feuding with ISIS – are thought to equip them well to engage in the counter-ISIS effort as well, in areas where ISIS has sought refuge outside the Syrian Democratic Forces' control,” Mr Roebuck wrote in an analysis.
He added that it was unlikely the Syrian government would be able to control the thousands of ISIS fighters detained in makeshift camps in the north-east of the country. “This agreement should serve as a useful building block for strengthening the bilateral relationship,” he said.
Michael Jacobson, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute who previously served in the State Department's counter-terrorism bureau, said the lifting of sanctions and designations against Syria was moving more quickly, in some cases, than the situation in the country.
"Al Shara is doing a lot of the a lot of the right things … but it is all moving pretty rapidly," Mr Jacobson told The National.
He said the US should maintain some influence over Syria and not just take Damascus's word "that they are doing great".
In May, Mr Trump lifted sanctions on Syria through an executive order, paving the way for some reconstruction there after 14 years of civil war that devastated the economy and the nation's infrastructure, but lifting the Caesar Act requires an act of Congress.
“These sanctions are still preventing the international financial system, particularly US banks, from engaging with the Syrian economy, and that's absolutely needed for Syria to recover,” said Wael AlZayat, senior adviser to the Syrian Forum USA.
“All in all, this is a historic visit. These are exciting times,” he said in a video published on X. “Many of us never imagined we would live to see them.”
Last month the World Bank estimated that Syria's reconstruction would cost $216 billion, although the group said in a report that that figure is “conservative”.
On Thursday, Washington led a UN Security Council vote to remove Mr Al Shara from the world body’s sanctions list. China, which wields veto power, abstained. A day after, the US State Department formally removed Mr Al Shara from a terrorism blacklist.
Thomas Watkins contributed to this report
