By ZEKE MILLER, JON GAMBRELL and AAMER MADHANI, Associated Press

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — President Donald Trump told Gulf leaders on Wednesday he urgently wants “to make a deal” with Iran to wind down its nuclear program but Tehran must end its support of proxy groups throughout the region as part of any potential agreement.

Iran “must stop sponsoring terror, halt its bloody proxy wars and permanently and verifiably cease pursuit of nuclear weapons,” Trump said in remarks at a meeting of leaders from the Gulf Cooperation Council hosted by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Saudi capital. “They cannot have a nuclear weapon.”

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The U.S. and Iran have engaged in four rounds of talks since early last month focused on Iran’s nuclear program. Trump has repeatedly said that he believes brokering a deal is possible but that the window is closing.

The Republican president’s strongly worded push on Iran to cease support of Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen come as its proxy network has faced significant setbacks in the 19 months since Hamas launched its Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel.

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

In Iran, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called Trump’s remarks “deceitful” but did not directly address the U.S. leader’s call on Iran to cease support of proxy groups.

Later, Trump, in an exchange with reporters aboard Air Force One, urged Iran “to make the right decision” about its nuclear program “because something’s going to happen one way or the other.”

“So we’ll either do it friendly or we’ll do it very unfriendly,” Trump warned. “And that won’t be pleasant.”

Trump said that he believed the moment was ripe “for a future free from the grip of Hezbollah terrorists.” Hezbollah is severely weakened after its war last year with Israel in which much of its top leadership was killed, and after losing a key ally with the fall of former Syrian President Bashar Assad, a conduit for Iran to send arms.

Lifting sanctions on Syria

Trump’s comments on Iran came after he met Wednesday with Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, a face-to-face engagement with the onetime insurgent leader who spent years imprisoned by U.S. forces after being captured in Iraq.

Trump agreed to meet al-Sharaa at the end of his stay in Saudi Arabia. He was headed next to Qatar, where he will be honored with a state visit. His Mideast tour also will take him to the United Arab Emirates.

In this photo released by the Saudi Royal Palace, President Donald Trump, centre, looks to Saudi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, right, shake hands with Syria’s interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (Bandar Aljaloud/Saudi Royal Palace via AP)

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, stormed Damascus and ended the 54-year rule of the Assad family.

Trump said he decided to meet with al-Sharaa after being encouraged to do so by Prince Mohammed and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He also pledged to lift yearslong sanctions on Syria.

“The sanctions were really crippling and very powerful,” Trump said. “It’s not going to be easy anyway, so it gives them a good, strong chance” to rebuild the country, he added.

Prince Mohammed joined Trump and al-Sharaa for the meeting, which lasted 33 minutes. Erdogan also took part in the talks via video conference.

The prince said Trump’s decision to engage with al-Sharaa and lift the sanctions will “alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people” and spur a “new chapter” for the nation.

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. He 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 returned to his home country of Syria after the conflict began in 2011 and led al-Qaida’s branch called the Nusra Front. He changed the name of his group to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and cut links with al-Qaida.

The sanctions go back to the rule of Assad, who was ousted in December, and were intended to inflict major pain on his economy.

Both the Biden and Trump administrations left the sanctions in place after Assad’s fall as they sought to take the measure of al-Sharaa.

State visit to Qatar

After meeting with members of the GCC — which includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — Trump headed to Qatar, the second stop in his Mideast tour.

Qatar, like the other Gulf Arab states, is an autocratic nation where political parties are banned and speech is tightly controlled. It is overseen by its ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. Sheikh Tamim took power in June 2013 when his father stepped down.

President Donald Trump speaks during the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Qatar has also played a central role in pay-to-play-style scandals around the globe.

In Israel, authorities are investigating allegations that Qatar hired close advisers to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to launch PR campaigns to improve the Gulf nation’s image among Israelis.

Two European Union lawmakers were accused of taking money from Doha in a scandal dubbed “Qatar-gate.” U.S. prosecutors in 2020 accused Qatar of bribing FIFA executive committee members to secure the tournament in the country in 2022.

In 2024, RTX Corp., the defense contractor formerly known as Raytheon, agreed to pay more than $950 million to resolve allegations that it defrauded the U.S. government and paid bribes to secure business with Qatar. Doha always has denied wrongdoing.

Qatar follows an ultraconservative form of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism born out of Saudi Arabia. However, Qatar struck a different tack in the Arab Spring by backing Islamists, including Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, as well as those who rose up against Assad.

Its support of Islamists, in part, led to a yearslong boycott of the country by Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. That boycott only ended as then-President Joe Biden prepared to enter the White House in 2021.

Qatar also has served as a key mediator, particularly with the militant group Hamas as the international community pursues a ceasefire for the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. Qatar also served as host of the negotiations between the United States and the Taliban that led to America’s 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Qatar is home to Al-Udeid Air Base, a sprawling facility that hosts the forward headquarters of the U.S. military’s Central Command.

The oil-and-gas rich country is also in the center of a controversy over its offer to provide Trump with the gift of a luxury Boeing 747-8 that the U.S. could use as Air Force One while new versions of the plane are under construction by Boeing.

The Qatari government has said a final decision hasn’t been made. But Trump has defended the idea even as critics argue it would amount to a president accepting an astonishingly valuable gift from a foreign government.

Trump has indicated he would refurbish the aircraft and it would later be donated to his post-White House presidential library. He says he would not use the plane once he leaves office.

AP writers Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv and Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran contributed.

By ZEKE MILLER, JON GAMBRELL and AAMER MADHANI, Associated Press

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump met with interim Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, the first encounter between the two nations’ leaders in 25 years and one that could mark a turning point for Syria as it struggles to emerge from decades of international isolation.

The meeting, on the sidelines of Trump’s get-together with the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council, marks a major turn of events for a Syria still adjusting to life after the over 50-year, iron-gripped rule of the Assad family.

Trump had announced the day before as he kicked off his three-nation Middle East tour in Riyadh that he would also move to lift U.S. sanctions imposed on Syria under the deposed autocrat Bashar Assad.

People across Syria cheered in the streets and set off fireworks on Tuesday night to celebrate, hopeful their nation — locked out of credit cards and global finance — might rejoin the world’s economy when they need investments the most.

Syrians wave Saudi and Syrian flags in celebration after U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans during his visit to Saudi Arabia to ease sanctions on Syria and normalize relations with its new government, in Homs, Syria, late Tuesday, May 13, 2025.(AP Photo/Omar Albam)

Wednesday’s meeting was also remarkable given al-Sharaa, under the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani, had ties to al-Qaida and joined insurgents battling U.S. forces in Iraq before entering the Syrian war. He was even imprisoned by U.S. troops there for several years.

And the meeting came even after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier asked Trump not to lift sanctions on Syria, again underscoring a growing discontent between the White House and the Israeli government as its war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip rages on.

I am “ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria to give them a fresh start,” Trump told the Gulf Cooperation Council after his meeting with al-Sharaa. “It gives them a chance for greatness. The sanctions were really crippling, very powerful.”

A historic closed-door meeting

Trump said on Tuesday that he would meet al-Sharaa, who had flown in to the Saudi capital for the face-to-face.

Even before its ruinous civil war that began in 2011, Syria struggled under a tightly controlled socialist economy and under sanctions by the U.S. as a state-sponsor of terror since 1979.

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The Trump-al-Sharaa meeting took place behind closed doors and reporters were not permitted to witness the engagement. The White House later said it ran for just over 30 minutes, making al-Sharaa the first Syrian leader to meet an American president since Hafez Assad met Bill Clinton in Geneva in 2000.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan joined the meeting between Trump, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and al-Sharaa via a phone call. Turkey was a main backer to al-Sharaa and his rebel faction.

“I felt very strongly that this would give them a chance,” Trump said of Syria. “It’s not going to be easy anyway, so gives them a good strong chance. And, it was my honor to do so.”

He added: “We made a speech last night and, that was the thing that got the biggest applause from the room.”

Trump cited the intervention of Saudi Prince Mohammed as key to his decision.

“We commend the decision made yesterday by President Trump to lift the sanctions on the brotherly Syrian Arab Republic, which will alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people,” he said in a speech to the GCC.

What happened in the meeting?

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that Trump urged al-Sharaa to diplomatically recognize Israel, “tell all foreign terrorists to leave Syria” and help the U.S. stop any resurgence of the Islamic State group.

Trump also asked for the Syrian government to “assume responsibility” for over a dozen detention centers holding some 9,000 suspected members of the Islamic State group, Leavitt added. The prisons are run by the U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led forces that spearheaded the military campaign against the extremists and controlled the last sliver of land they once held in March 2019.

As part of a deal reached in March between the Syrian government and the Kurdish-led forces, all border crossings with Iraq and Turkey, airports and oil fields in the northeast would be brought under the central government’s control by the end of the year.

Trump’s desire for Syria to take over the prisons also signal the potential of a full American military withdrawal from Syria.

Syria’s Foreign Ministry said Trump and al-Sharaa discussed the Syrian-U.S. partnership in fighting terror and armed groups such as IS standing in the way of stability.

Al-Sharaa’s militant past sparks Israeli concern

Al-Sharaa was named interim 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.

Many Gulf Arab 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 decadelong civil war.

But longtime U.S. ally Israel has been deeply skeptical of al-Sharaa’s extremist past and cautioned against swift recognition of the new government. The request came during Netanyahu’s visit to Washington last month, according to an Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the subject.

Israel was concerned a cross-border attack similar to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, assault, could come from Syria. Israel also fears al-Sharaa and his Islamist past could pose a threat on its northern border.

Trump’s move draws cheers from Syrians

Syrians cheered the announcement by Trump that the U.S. will move to lift sanctions on the beleaguered Middle Eastern nation.

The state-run SANA news agency published video and photographs of Syrians cheering in Umayyad Square, the largest in the country’s capital, Damascus. Others honked their car horns or waved the new Syrian flag in celebration.

People whistled and cheered as fireworks lit the night sky.

A statement from Syria’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday night called the announcement “a pivotal turning point for the Syrian people as we seek to emerge from a long and painful chapter of war.”

“The removal of these sanctions offers a vital opportunity for Syria to pursue stability, self-sufficiency and meaningful national reconstruction, led by and for the Syrian people,” the statement added.

Madhani reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press photographer Alex Brandon and writers Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey; Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.

America’s mass transit agencies are teetering on the brink of collapse. The money they got from Congress to help them through COVID-19 is running out, but ridership remains below what it was before the pandemic.

Lower fare revenue plus higher wage costs equals a bigger deficit. Unless state governments fill that gap, agencies will need to dramatically curtail service. Yet service levels are one of the primary determinants of ridership. Hence the increasing risk of a “death spiral,” where revenue shortfalls lead to service cutbacks, which lead to lower revenue, which lead to service cuts, and so on.

State legislatures should try to avoid this doom cycle, even though finding the money may be difficult. But there is a deeper issue here, beyond the question of less funding versus more, or higher versus lower levels of service: the declining labor productivity of transit agencies. The tasks performed by transit workers have remained basically the same for decades even as wages have risen to keep up with economy-wide trends.

The agencies themselves deserve some blame for not finding ways to modernize operations and improve efficiency. But Congress itself is a major culprit — specifically, and sorry to wonk out here, Section 13(c) of the Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964. This provision, as Marc Scribner of the Reason Foundation points out, makes cost-saving reforms difficult if not impossible.

Some background: In the early 1960s, many private transit companies were being taken over by state or city governments. The rise of the automobile had reduced greatly the commercial viability of these networks, yet then as now they were seen as important public services. Private transit companies were widely unionized at the time, but public sector unions were rare. There was a (quaint-sounding by contemporary standards) concern that taking agencies public would serve as a form of union-busting.

So the law required that agencies which receive federal funding, which was essentially all of them, to protect collective bargaining rights, guarantee re-employment of workers who lost their jobs, and safeguard employees “against a worsening of their positions.”

The upshot is that not only do transit agencies face all the usual obstacles to making their workforce more efficient, they are in many respects prohibited from doing so.

For example, there are basically two ways that a transit agency can provide bus service. The standard way in the U.S. is that the transit agency owns and maintains the buses and employs the drivers. In the rest of the world, however, it is more common for the transit agency to act as a contractor: It draws up the service map and frequency it wants, and lets private companies bid on the job. As a striking paper published in 2017 notes, by fully switching to a contracting model, U.S. transit agencies could reduce bus operating costs by 30% with no reduction in service.

That sounds like an almost ridiculously large cost saving. Yet the result doesn’t stem from any magic privatization fairy dust — it’s simply that union contracts pay bus drivers (and other transit employees) above-market wages.

So transit agencies could privatize in order to avoid the union premium and save money. Or they could deprive workers of their collective bargaining rights and save money. Except that under federal law, they can’t actually do either of those things.

In the longer term, of course, there is incredible promise in autonomous driving. Right now in San Francisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles, it’s possible to ride in a driverless taxi. It will soon be possible in other cities. Creating a driverless car that works is a difficult engineering challenge.

A self-driving train, by contrast, is fairly trivial — it turns on tracks and does not need to steer around objects or even engage with other vehicles except to have an emergency stopping function. Precisely because the driverless train is a much simpler problem, the technology is neither new nor particularly exotic. The subway systems of Dubai and Copenhagen are fully automated, and the Paris Metro is partially so. Automated train systems are used in many U.S. airports.

Automated trains provide a kind of double dividend — they are both cheaper to operate and, since they can drive safely with less spacing between them, allow for more frequent service.

The problem, of course, is that there is an upfront capital cost associated with automation. In a sane world, given the large transit investments the federal government has made in the last half-decade, some priority would have been given to spending on things like automation. It wasn’t. But that doesn’t mean state and local governments can’t do it themselves. The obstacle, again, is that six-decade-old federal law, under which workers can only be replaced over a very long time horizon through attrition.

This also helps explain why no transit agency is currently partnering with driverless car companies despite the clear benefits of doing so. An automated bus is a harder technical problem than an automated train, but a more bounded one than a driverless car; it follows a fixed route, for example. A driverless bus would also allow agencies to maintain service during late-night hours, when demand is lower but staffing costs aren’t.

Neither of these steps is a panacea for transit’s challenges in a post-pandemic world. But they are alternatives to a death spiral in service or an ever-growing succession of subsidies.

Of course it sounds naïve, or even outlandish, to call for a last dose of bridge funding paired with a reform of the Urban Mass Transportation Act and a mandate to cut operating costs. But in the hypothetical world where Republicans actually cared about the efficiency of government and Democrats actually cared about the quality of public services, that’s what Congress would do.

Matthew Yglesias is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A co-founder of and former columnist for Vox, he writes the Slow Boring blog and newsletter. He is author of “One Billion Americans.”

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One way to hasten a long-delayed home renovation is to set the house on fire. Having helped torch much of the federal bureaucracy, Elon Musk says he plans to move on from his work at the Department of Government Efficiency. Here’s hoping a sounder reform of the civil service can now begin.

DOGE began with much hype. It promised some $2 trillion in savings. Staffers vowed to quickly root out fraud and inefficiencies. Often wielding a chainsaw, Musk set about firing federal workers, canceling contracts, gutting programs and dispatching a corps of technology experts without government experience to root around in critical systems.

Almost all of it backfired. Sweeping cuts of crucial employees, such as nuclear-weapons experts, had to be reversed. Courts and cabinet secretaries raised objections. Chaos and confusion reigned across the government. Public opinion soured on DOGE, and Musk said he’d step back “significantly” to spend more time on his businesses.

As for the savings? DOGE’s own estimates — now whittled down to some $160 billion — have proved to be error-ridden and wildly inflated. One analysis found that the group’s chaos will impose costs of some $135 billion this year, or more than 80% of the supposed savings. Another study found that cuts to the Internal Revenue Service would result in at least $350 billion in forgone revenue over a decade. It’s likely, in other words, that this whole exercise has been a net negative for taxpayers.

The shame of it is that Musk & Co. had identified real shortcomings. An overhaul of government technology is badly needed. Agencies really do waste a lot of money. Some fail in their most basic functions. Taxpayers can’t help but notice when astronauts are stranded in space, faulty planes are cleared to fly and the student-loan system becomes all but unworkable. Not least, current government spending is completely unsustainable.

Yet Musk misdiagnosed the problems. Out-of-control spending is primarily driven not by fraud but by entitlement programs, which DOGE hasn’t touched. Addressing this crisis-in-the-making is a job for lawmakers.

Likewise, most of the bureaucracy’s failures are due not to laziness but to rules and procedures mandated by Congress. Extensive research has described the basic reforms needed: flexibility to upgrade the workforce, better access to the technology and data that workers need to accomplish their goals, fewer burdensome compliance tasks, and more incentives to think creatively.

As Musk’s involvement wanes, the priority for policymakers should be focusing on such workaday improvements. The president has said he wants to “keep the best and most productive people.” Appointing Scott Kupor to lead the Office of Personnel Management is a good start. Kupor, managing partner at Andreessen Horowitz, says that he prefers a “surgical” approach to cutting jobs and wants to redesign the recruitment, development and management systems for federal workers.

Next, Congress needs to update the Civil Service Reform Act to build a workforce suited to the digital era. That means rewarding federal workers for showing initiative and producing measurable results rather than for box-ticking. Staffers who deal directly with the public are often in the best position to see how and why government programs are falling short; they should be empowered to do something about it.

Lawmakers also need to cut down on busywork. Agencies are required to submit thousands of labor-intensive reports annually, many of which are completely ignored. The well-meaning Paperwork Reduction Act has paralyzed efforts to design better government services and should be rescinded. The 2,000-page Federal Acquisition Regulation could (let’s say) use some simplifying.

Such problems have persisted for decades, despite innumerable efforts at reform. If policymakers are interested in durable changes, they need to start doing things differently. Musk’s exit is a good opportunity to get serious.

— The Bloomberg Opinion Editorial Board

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