Syria’s president was filmed playing basketball with senior US officials in footage posted ahead of a crucial visit to Washington for a summit with Donald Trump.
Ahmed al-Sharaa laughed and applauded while “running a few plays on the court” with Admiral Brad Cooper and Brigadier General Kevin Lambert in video shared by his foreign minister, Assad Hassan Al-Shaibani, on Saturday.
The Syrian leader, who until last year had a $10m US bounty on his head, managed to score in a suit before shaking hands with his opponents.
The undated footage was shared on Instagram as Sharaa, 42, travelled to the US for a meeting with Donald Trump on Monday.
The summit rounds off an extraordinary 11 months since Sharaa’s military group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), swept into Damascus and deposed longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
Security is likely to be a top focus of the meeting on Monday, with the US brokering a security pact between Israel and Syria.
Multiple sources said earlier this week that the Trump administration is looking to establish a military presence at an airbase in Damascus to help bolster the proposed agreement with Israel.
Syria is also set to join a US-led coalition to fight a resurgent ISIS, which could be formally announced at the White House meeting on Monday.
The summit will be the first time a Syrian president has visited the White House, as part of a staggering repositioning of global alliances for the war-torn country.
Sharaa has already visited the US this year, addressing the UN General Assembly in September in an appeal for other nations to lift sanctions in step with the US, UK and EU.
The new government has sought rapprochement with the West while promising a new dawn for Syria, including pledges to protect minority groups from persecution and lifting the bind of economic sanctions.
The president has already encountered major challenges to these promises. In March, government-affiliated groups were blamed for the mass killings of Alawites on the coast. Sharaa blamed “outlaw groups” and vowed to hold anybody involved accountable.
In April and May, witnesses said that government forces had been involved in massacres against Druze in the south. Israel subsequently bombed Syria. Sharaa again vowed to hold perpetrators accountable, withdrawing the army and ultimately returning security responsibility to local authorities.
But in a bid to give the nascent Syrian experiment ‘a chance’, Donald Trump in June repealed sanctions against the country, while maintaining those in place against Assad. Britain and the EU soon followed suit.
“The sanctions were brutal and crippling and served as an important — really an important function — nevertheless, at the time. But now it’s their time to shine … So, I say, ‘Good luck, Syria.’ Show us something very special,” Trump said in May.
The toughest measures, known as the Caesar Sanctions Act, require a repeal from Congress.
Last week, the United Nations Security Council agreed to remove Sharaa and his interior minister from sanctions measures targeting members and supporters of terrorist groups ISIL and al-Qaeda.
HTS was affiliated with al-Qaeda until 2016, when Sharaa broke ties. He had fought for al-Qaeda in Iraq and was jailed by US forces.
Sharaa still has a balancing act to maintain with Russia, which backed the Assad regime through the Civil War but remains the key supplier of Syria’s oil.
At a meeting with Putin in Moscow last month, Sharaa suggested he would continue allowing Russia to use its military outposts in Syria. He also asked for Assad to be extradited.
Days later, data showed Russia was preparing to deliver around 750,000 barrels of oil and gas condensate to Syria.
