U.S. President Donald Trump has met with Syria’s interim leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, marking the first of such meeting in 25 years. TaiwanPlus speaks to geographical consultant Steven Turner to find out what this could mean for Syria and the region.
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00:00Stephen, what are the implications of the meeting between President Trump and the Syrian President
00:05Ahmad al-Sahra for the region? Well, Syria is kind of starting from the ground to rebuild itself.
00:12Lifting of sanctions is going to help that tremendously. It's quite an unexpected announcement,
00:18but President Trump said that Mohammed bin Salman had requested it and he'd agreed.
00:23You know, largely the reason that the Saudi Crown Prince asked for the American president to lift
00:31sanctions is because the Saudis are trying to compete with Iran for influence in Syria and in
00:37the region broadly. And allowing sanctions to be lifted will give the Saudis and the Emiratis as
00:44well, and of course the Americans, the ability to fund Syria's infrastructure rebuilding and build
00:51tremendous amount of influence in what had been an Iran-dominated country.
00:56Previously, China has attempted to influence Syria as well as other countries in the region.
01:02What is the future of potential Syria and Chinese relations?
01:07They were quite close actually to the al-Assad regime,
01:12pouring tens of millions of dollars into building infrastructure and into facilitating trade
01:19during the Syrian civil war. But as a result of that, the interim government is going to be quite
01:24weary, if not very frustrated with the Chinese government. And so we'll be quite hesitant to
01:30accept Chinese support, whether it's monetary or security or intelligence-wise or really at all,
01:37as they rebuild. But China again has significant interests in the region. The reason that they were
01:42supporting the Assad regime was because the Middle East is one of the roads, the southern route of the B.R.I.
01:48to Europe for them. So they would like eventually to regain a foothold and will probably try to make
01:54amends with the new interim Syrian government in order to do that.
01:57So in what other ways can China influence that region and the country's neighboring Syria?
02:03Well, China has been developing its relations with Turkey. So China's influence in Syria will actually
02:11depend on the ability of Turkey to regain influence in Syria. And it should actually happen relatively
02:18quickly and steadily for the for the Turks, because the Hatahir al-Sharam, which is the party of the
02:26interim president, Dakhmet al-Sharam, is close to Turkey's President Erdogan. So Turkey is starting off with
02:34probably the most influence regionally in Syria. And considering its trade relations and its diplomatic
02:41relations with China, the stronger the influence Turkey builds in Syria, the more influence China will have.