Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said Tues­day that he will ease sanc­tions on Syr­ia and move to nor­malise re­la­tions with its new gov­ern­ment to give the coun­try “a chance at peace.”

Trump made the an­nounce­ment short­ly be­fore he was set to meet Wednes­day in Sau­di Ara­bia with Syr­i­an Pres­i­dent Ah­mad al-Sharaa, the one­time in­sur­gent who last year led the over­throw of long­time leader Bashar As­sad. Trump said the ef­fort at rap­proche­ment came at the urg­ing of Crown Prince Mo­hammed bin Salman, the Sau­di de fac­to ruler, and Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Re­cep Tayyip Er­do­gan.

“There is a new gov­ern­ment that will hope­ful­ly suc­ceed,” Trump said of Syr­ia, adding, “I say, good luck, Syr­ia. Show us some­thing spe­cial.”

The de­vel­op­ments were a ma­jor boost for the Syr­i­an pres­i­dent, who had been im­pris­oned in Iraq for his role in the in­sur­gency fol­low­ing the 2003 U.S.-led in­va­sion of the Arab coun­try. 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, that stormed Dam­as­cus, end­ing the 54-year rule of the As­sad fam­i­ly.

The U.S. has been weigh­ing how to han­dle al-Sharaa since he took pow­er in De­cem­ber. Gulf lead­ers have ral­lied be­hind the new gov­ern­ment in Dam­as­cus and want Trump to fol­low, be­liev­ing it is a bul­wark against Iran’s re­turn to in­flu­ence in Syr­ia, where it had helped prop up As­sad’s gov­ern­ment dur­ing a decade-long civ­il war.

Then-Pres­i­dent Joe Biden left the de­ci­sion to Trump, whose ad­min­is­tra­tion has yet to for­mal­ly rec­og­nize the new Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment. Sanc­tions im­posed on Dam­as­cus un­der As­sad al­so re­main in place.

Be­fore Trump spoke, the White House said he had “agreed to say hel­lo” to the Syr­i­an pres­i­dent while in Sau­di Ara­bia.

The com­ments marked a strik­ing change in tone from Trump and put him at odds with long­time U.S. al­ly Is­rael, which has been deeply skep­ti­cal of al-Sharaa’s ex­trem­ist past and cau­tioned against swift recog­ni­tion of the new gov­ern­ment.

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

Al-Sharaa came back to his home coun­try af­ter the con­flict be­gan in 2011 and led al-Qai­da’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-Qai­da.

He is set to be­come the first Syr­i­an leader to meet an Amer­i­can pres­i­dent since Hafez As­sad met Bill Clin­ton in Gene­va in 2000.

Syr­ia has his­tor­i­cal­ly had fraught re­la­tions with Wash­ing­ton since the days of the Cold War, when Dam­as­cus had close links with the So­vi­et Union and lat­er when Syr­ia be­came Iran’s clos­est al­ly in the Arab world. The re­moval of the As­sad fam­i­ly could change the track.

Ibrahim Hami­di, a Lon­don-based Syr­i­an an­a­lyst, said Trump’s planned meet­ing with al-Sharaa marks a “strate­gic shift” for the coun­try.

“The Syr­i­an-Amer­i­can meet­ings in Riyadh open the gate for the two sides to start dis­cussing is­sues of dis­agree­ment be­tween them in a pos­i­tive at­mos­phere,” said Hami­di, ed­i­tor-in-chief of the Arab mag­a­zine Al Ma­jal­la. “This is im­por­tant.”

RIYADH, Sau­di Ara­bia (AP) —