Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa made his first trip overseas since his formal appointment as head of state on Sunday, receiving a warm welcome in Saudi Arabia.
Sharaa, formerly known as “Abu Mohammed al-Jolani,” is a wanted terrorist and leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an al-Qaeda offshoot. HTS won the Syrian Civil War, which lasted nearly a decade and a half, in December after longtime dictator Bashar Assad fled the country. Assad received political asylum in Russia, leaving HTS in charge of the country.
Sharaa has spent much of his time in power promising Syria’s many minority groups, including Christians and Kurds, that he would build an “inclusive” government and urging global powers to invest in his regime. To comfort concerned free nations, Sharaa has abandoned his jihadi nom de guerre and now wears Western-style suits, but he has repeatedly defended…
