Syria trying to woo Washington for sanctions relief, engagement

12/5/2025 6:17

A Trump Tower in

Damascus, a detente with Israel and U.S. access to Syria's oil

and gas are part of Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa's strategic

pitch to try to get face time with U.S. President Donald Trump

during his trip to the Middle East, according to several sources

familiar with the push to woo Washington.



Jonathan Bass, an American pro-Trump activist, who on April

30 met Sharaa for four hours in Damascus, along with Syrian

activists and Gulf Arab states has been trying to arrange a

landmark - if highly unlikely - meeting between the two leaders

this week on the sidelines of Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia,

Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.



Syria has struggled to implement conditions set out by

Washington for relief from U.S. sanctions, which keep the

country cut off from the global financial system and make

economic recovery extremely challenging after 14 years of

grinding war.



Bass hopes that getting Trump into a room with Sharaa, who

still remains a U.S-designated terrorist over his al-Qaeda past,

could help soften the Republican President and his

administration's thinking on Damascus and cool an increasingly

tense relationship between Syria and Israel.



Part of the bet for the effort is based on Trump's history

of breaking with longstanding U.S. foreign policy taboos, such

as when he met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in the

demilitarized zone between North and South Korea in 2019.



"Sharaa wants a business deal for the future of his

country," Bass said, noting it could cover energy exploitation,

cooperation against Iran and engagement with Israel.



"He told me he wants a Trump Tower in Damascus. He wants

peace with his neighbours. What he told me is good for the

region, good for Israel," said Bass.



Sharaa also shared what he saw as a personal connection with

Trump: both have been shot at, narrowly surviving attempts on

their lives, Bass said.



Syrian officials and a presidency media official did not

respond to a request for comment.



Sharaa spoke with Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler Crown

Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Sunday, according to the Syrian

presidency.



A person close to Sharaa said afterwards a Trump-Sharaa

meeting remained possible in Saudi Arabia, but would not confirm

whether Sharaa had received an invitation.



"Whether or not the meeting takes place won't be known

until the last moment," the person said.







'PUSH UNDERWAY'



To be clear, a Trump-Sharaa meeting during the U.S.

president's visit to the region is widely seen as unlikely,

given Trump's packed schedule, his priorities and lack of

consensus within Trump's team on how to tackle Syria.



A source familiar with ongoing efforts said a high-level

Syria-U.S. meeting was set to take place in the region during

the week of Trump's visit, but that it would not be between

Trump and Sharaa.



"There is definitely a push underway," said Charles Lister,

head of the Syria Initiative at the Middle East Institute.



"The idea is that getting to Trump directly is the best

avenue because there are just too many ideologues within the

administration to get past."



Washington is yet to formulate and articulate a coherent

Syria policy, but the administration has increasingly been

viewing relations with Damascus from a perspective of

counterterrorism, three sources including a U.S. official

familiar with the policy-making said.



That approach was illustrated by the make-up of the U.S.

delegation in a meeting last month between Washington and Syrian

Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani in New York, which included a

senior counterterrorism official from the State Department, two

of the sources said.



U.S. officials conveyed to Shibani that Washington found

steps taken by Damascus to be insufficient, particularly on the

U.S. demand to remove foreign fighters from senior posts in the

army and expel as many of them as possible, the sources said.



The U.S. Treasury has since conveyed its own demands on the

Syrian government, bringing the number of conditions to more

than a dozen, one of the sources said.



The U.S. State Department declined to disclose who attended

the meeting from the U.S. side and said it does not comment on

private diplomatic discussions.



White House National Security Council spokesperson James

Hewitt said the actions of Syria's interim authorities would

determine the future U.S. support or possible sanctions relief.







'OLIVE BRANCH'



A key aim of Syria's overtures to Washington is

communicating that it poses no threat to Israel, which has

escalated airstrikes in Syria since the country's rebels-turned

rulers ousted former strongman Bashar al-Assad last year.



Israel's ground forces have occupied territory in

southwestern Syria while the government has lobbied the U.S. to

keep Syria decentralised and isolated.



Israel has said it aims to protect Syrian minority groups.

Syria has rejected the strikes as escalatory.



Sharaa last week confirmed indirect negotiations with Israel

aimed at calming tensions, after Reuters reported that such

talks had occurred via the UAE.



In a separate effort, Bass said Sharaa told him to pass

messages between Syria and Israel that may have led to a direct

meeting between Israeli and Syrian officials.



But Israel soon resumed strikes, including one near the

presidential palace, which it framed as a message to Syria's

rulers to protect the country's Druze minority amid clashes with

Sunni militants.



"Sharaa sent the Israelis an olive branch. Israel sent

missiles," Bass said.



"We need Trump to help sort this relationship out."