BEIRUT — Two decades ago, Ahmad al-Sharaa was held in a U.S.-run detention center in Iraq after joining al-Qaida militants fighting against American forces there.

Few would have predicted that he would go on to become the first Syrian president to visit Washington since the country’s independence in 1946.

Since rebel forces he led ousted former Syrian President Bashar Assad last December, al-Sharaa — who cut ties with al-Qaida years earlier — has gone on a largely successful charm offensive to establish new ties with countries that had shunned Assad’s government after its brutal crackdown on protesters in 2011 spiraled into a 14-year civil war.

Al-Sharaa met with U.S. President Donald Trump in Saudi Arabia in May, where Trump announced that he would lift decades of sanctions.

The two m

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