Trump to host Sharaa in 1st-ever visit by a Syrian president to White House — officials

Syrian source says US is pushing for a security agreement to be reached between Syria and Israel by the time Sharaa is set to visit DC on November 10

US President Donald Trump will host Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa for talks, a first-ever visit by a Syrian president to the White House, an administration official said Saturday, as US Special Envoy to Syria Tom Barrack confirmed on the record that Sharaa would visit Washington, DC.

The Trump administration official said that the meeting was expected to take place on November 10.

A Syrian source familiar with the matter said the visit was expected to take place within the next two weeks.

During the visit, Syria will “hopefully” join the US-led coalition to defeat the Islamic State group, known as ISIS, Barrack told reporters on the sidelines of the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain, an annual global security and geopolitical conference.

Trump met with Sharaa in Saudi Arabia in May in what was the first encounter between the two nations’ leaders in 25 years — since Hafez Assad met Bill Clinton in Geneva in 2000. Syria continues to struggle 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, was seen as a major turn of events for a Syria that is still adjusting to life after the over 50-year, iron-gripped rule of the Assad family.

Syria — whose longtime dictator, Bashar al-Assad, was deposed last year — is also in the midst of talks with Israel over a possible diplomatic accord, talks Barrack said were making progress.

According to the US State Department’s historical list of foreign leader visits, no previous Syrian president has paid an official visit to Washington. Sharaa addressed the UN General Assembly in New York in September.

Since seizing power from Assad last December, Sharaa has made a series of foreign trips as his transitional government seeks to reestablish Syria’s ties with world powers that had shunned Damascus during Assad’s rule. He has also received praise from Trump and other American officials.

Barrack earlier told the summit that Syria and Israel continued to hold de-escalation talks, which the US has been mediating. He told reporters that Syria and Israel had met several times and were close to reaching an agreement, but declined to say when exactly a deal could be reached.

Syria and Israel are in talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will secure a halt to Israeli airstrikes and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have been stationed in southern Syria. Israel says the deployment is a temporary and defensive measure following Assad’s ouster.

The Syrian source said the US is pushing for a security agreement to be reached with Israel by the time Sharaa visits Washington.

Israel and Syria have been adversaries for decades. Despite the overthrow of Assad last December, territorial disputes and deep-seated political mistrust between the two countries remain. A flare-up occurred over the summer when Israel conducted airstrikes on Syrian forces with the stated aim of protecting members of the Druze minority in Syria.

Barrack said Washington was aiming to recruit Syria to join the coalition Washington has led since 2014 to fight against ISIS, the terror group that controlled around a third of Syria and Iraq at its peak between 2014 and 2017.

“We are trying to get everybody to be a partner in this alliance, which is huge for them,” Barrack said.

Sharaa once had a $10 million US bounty on his head.

Under the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Julani, Sharaa led Syria’s offshoot of al-Qaeda and joined insurgents battling US forces in Iraq before entering the Syrian war. He was even imprisoned by US troops there for several years. But a decade ago, his anti-Assad rebel group broke away from the network founded by Osama bin Laden, and later clashed with ISIS. He has since sought to project a more moderate image.

The US-led coalition and its local partners drove Islamic State from its last stronghold in Syria in 2019. The group has been attempting to exploit the fall of the Assad regime to stage a comeback in Syria and neighboring Iraq, sources told Reuters in June.