United States President Donald Trump hosted the former leader of an al Qaeda branch yesterday, and afterward a crowd on Pennsylvania Avenue shouted “Allahu akbar!” This was the scene surrounding Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s visit to Washington, D.C., the first Syrian head of state to do so.

• “He’s a very strong leader,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “He comes from a very tough place, and he’s a tough guy. I like him. I want to get along with him—the president, the new president of Syria.” Trump specified: “We want to see Syria become a country that is very successful, and I think this leader can do it.”

U.S. and Syrian officials have announced that Syria will join the global coalition to defeat the Islamic State. From 2017 through January of this year, Sharaa led Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an al Qaeda affiliate and the main rebel force that toppled the dictatorship of President Bashar Assad in December. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has officially dissolved, and Sharaa, who was removed from the U.S. Specially Designated Global Terrorist list on Friday, has claimed that he wants to govern Syria as a secular republic.

However, thousands of foreign jihadists under Sharaa’s leadership remain in the country, and his regime has already persecuted religious minorities like Alawites and Druze. That Sharaa was greeted by a Syrian diasporic group outside the White House shouting “Allahu akbar!” is a telling sign of what his support base expects from him.

Al Qaeda rammed two planes into Trump’s hometown on Sept. 11, 2001. Sharaa has dedicated his life to slaughtering infidels in the name of Allah, and his men continue to persecute non-Muslims.

President Trump’s willingness to engage him is a spectacular example of what Stephen Flurry has called “peace derangement syndrome”—the idea that every conflict can be resolved through dialogue and deal-making.

The Trumpet forecasts that America’s cozying up to Syria will not end well. A prophecy in Psalm 83 predicts Syria, referred to by the ancient name “the Hagarenes” (verse 6), will be part of an alliance formed to attack America. Read more in Gerald Flurry’s article “Syria’s Fall: Another Key Prophecy Fulfilled.”