Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa said in an interview with Fox News that President Trump didn’t bring up his past as an al-Qaeda fighter and commander during their meeting at the White House on Monday.
“I think this is a matter of the past now,” Sharaa said through a translator when asked if Trump raised his al-Qaeda history. “We did not discuss this actively. We talked about the present and the future. We talked about the investment opportunities in the future, so that Syria is no longer looked at as a security threat, but it is now looked at as a geopolitical ally and a place where the United States can have great investments, especially extracting gas.”
When asked if he had “regrets” that al-Qaeda carried out the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, Sharaa said he wasn’t involved with the group at the time.
“I was only 19 years old, I was a very young person, and didn’t have any decision-making power at that time, and I didn’t have anything to do with it. Al-Qaeda wasn’t present then in my area, so you’re speaking to the wrong person about this subject,” he said.
“We mourn for every civilian that got killed, and we know that people suffer from the war, especially civilians who paid a price, a hefty price, for the war,” Sharaa added.
The US fought the “war on terror” for more than 20 years — it’s ongoing. It not only cost trillions of dollars and more than a million lives, but radically and permanently eroded core civil liberties for Americans.
Now, someone the DOJ called an Al Qaeda terrorist less than a… https://t.co/efxKy1YqJ3
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 11, 2025
Sharaa first joined al-Qaeda after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 to fight US troops, and was imprisoned by the US military from 2006 to 2011. After that, he traveled to Syria, where he founded the al-Qaeda affiliate in the country, known as the al-Nusra Front.
At the time, he was allied with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the founder of ISIS. Sharaa rebranded in 2016, claiming he cut ties with al-Qaeda, and merged his jihadist group with other factions to form Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which took power in Damascus in December 2024.
Sorry but it’s very funny they’ve not deleted this https://t.co/tqzbTlSECF
— Congolesa Rice (@judeinlondon) November 11, 2025
Now, the US is working to build a military alliance with the HTS-led Syrian government. Syrian Information Minister Hamza al-Mustafa announced that Syria has joined the US-led anti-ISIS coalition, and Reuters reported last week that the US is planning to establish a military base in Damascus.
* * *
Meanwhile, the absurdity of this scene…
US President Donald Trump applied perfume to Syria’s interim leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, known by his nom de guerre al-Julani, and his foreign minister at the White House. pic.twitter.com/g634I8IgNe
— IRNA News Agency (@IrnaEnglish) November 12, 2025
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