President Donald Trump met on Wednesday with Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa, going face-to-face with the onetime insurgent leader who spent years imprisoned by US forces after being captured in Iraq.

The White House said Trump has agreed to “say hello” to Al-Sharaa before the US leader wraps up his stay in Saudi Arabia and heads to Qatar, where Trump is to be honored with a state visit. His Mideast tour also will take him to the United Arab Emirates.

Al-Sharaa was named president of Syria in January, a month after a stunning offensive by insurgent groups led by Al-Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, or HTS, stormed Damascus and ended the 54-year rule of the Assad family.

Trump said he agreed to meet with Al-Sharaa after being encouraged to do so by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The president also pledged to lift yearslong sanctions on Syria.

“There is a new government that will hopefully succeed in stabilizing the country and keeping peace,” Trump said in a wide-ranging foreign policy address Tuesday in which he announced he was lifting the sanctions that have been in place in Syria since 2011. “That’s what we want to see in Syria.”

Formerly known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed Al-Golani, Al-Sharaa joined the ranks of Al-Qaeda insurgents battling US forces in Iraq after the US-led invasion and still faces a warrant for his arrest on terrorism charges in Iraq. The US once offered $10 million for information about his whereabouts because of his links to Al-Qaeda.

Al-Sharaa came back to his home country of Syria after the conflict began in 2011 and led Al-Qaeda’s branch that used to be known as the Nusra Front. He later changed the name of his group to Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham and cut links with Al-Qaeda.

The sanctions go back to the rule of Bashar Assad, who was ousted in December, and were intended to inflict major pain on his economy.

Both the Biden and Trump administrations had left the sanctions in place after Assad’s fall as they sought to take the measure of Al-Sharaa, who has renounced his past affiliation with Al-Qaeda.

Trump is also set to attend a meeting Wednesday of the Gulf Cooperation Council, made up of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, before setting off for Qatar, the second stop in his Mideast tour.

Qatar served as host of the negotiations between the United States and the Taliban that led to America’s 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Qatar is home to Al-Udeid Air Base, a sprawling facility that hosts the forward headquarters of the US military’s Central Command.

AP