The two men—the older one from glitzy Manhattan, the younger upstart from fashionably upmarket Brooklyn—have built formidable fanbases by championing diametrically opposed visions of America.
The US 28-point plan, which favoured Russia, was seen in Moscow as a potential starting point, but the revised, Western-aligned version has been dismissed as “entirely unconstructive.”
The reconciliation culminated in Al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House last week, the first by a Syrian president, and the announcement that Syria had become the 90th member of the US-led Global Coalition Against Daesh.