Syria's New President Has an Offer For Trump

Ahmad al-Sharaa wants to meet Trump, and offer U.S. companies the chance to rebuild Syria.

On April 11, Syrian Interim President Ahmed al-Shara attended the Antalya Diplomacy Forum on April 11, 2025 in Antalya, Turkey. (Photo by Mert Gokhan Koc/ dia images via Getty Images)

Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa has authorized envoys to make a groundbreaking series of concessions to President Donald Trump in the hopes of normalizing relations with the United States. The offer looks to avert a looming financial catastrophe that could disintegrate the state. In a meeting on April 30 in Damascus, al-Sharaa sat down with a delegation led by American businessman Jonathan Bass and Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force. Bass has said that Saudi officials were working to broker the next meeting with Trump.

Since taking power in December in a surprise military offensive that overthrew the regime of Bashar al-Assad, Sharaa, formerly known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, has been engaged in a public relations campaign aimed at winning over Western capitals skeptical of the new regime, particularly due its former ties to al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Fresh off a visit to Paris, where he was welcomed by French President Emmanuel Macron.

So far, Sharaa has not crossed paths with Trump, but that may soon change. Both leaders are expected to be in the Saudi capital of Riyadh next week, where Trump is arriving as part of a U.S. delegation expected to sign major trade, arms, and energy deals with Saudi leaders. According to Bass, who said he has been in touch with Saudi officials, Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman has been working to set up a direct meeting between the Syrian leader and Trump while they are in Riyadh, in what would be a watershed for the new government.

Moustafa, speaking to reporters Friday morning in Washington, said al-Sharaa explicitly authorized the delegation to offer a sweeping deal to Trump, whom he said al-Sharaa believes is a “God-sent man of peace.” Al-Sharaa hopes to meet with Trump in the coming days when both men will be in Riyadh. Moustafa said the generous deal for the United States would require a meeting of no more than five minutes.

The potential deal, Moustafa said, is being made public because some of Trump’s pro-Israel advisers—including ousted National Security Advisor Michael Waltz—had deliberately blocked Trump from learning about the concessions Syria is willing to make.

Syria was largely destroyed during its fourteen year civil war. The World Bank estimates the price tag to rebuild the country is between $250 to $400 billion dollars, whose suffering has been compounded by a crushing U.S.-led sanctions regime. Both China and Russia have been making aggressive entreaties to get reconstruction contracts in the country, offering to develop oil and gas reserves, including building telecommunications infrastructure through the Chinese company Huawei, Al-Sharaa said. The new Syrian president, nevertheless, has expressed a preference for working with the West as a partner.

If the U.S. is willing to do so, al-Sharaa said, Syria would invite American companies to exploit the nation's oil and gas resources, and would work with American companies on reconstruction projects. Bass said that AT&T was explicitly mentioned as a preferred partner over Huawei.

As part of the potential deal, Syria would continue fighting groups like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. Moustafa said there would be increased intelligence-sharing opportunities within the U.S.-Syrian rapprochement. The deal could also include limiting the ability of Palestinian militant groups said to be aligned with Iran to operate in Syria. Moustafa noted that the Syrian government has recently jailed officials from Palestinian Islamic Jihad, in what he described as a sign of the new government’s willingness to take on Iran and its allies. “We share the same enemies as the United States,” Bass said, summarizing what al-Sharaa told the group: “We share the same potential allies as the United States.”

Sharaa has said that Syria is open to normalizing its relationship with Israel under the right circumstances, stating that he respects the 1974 “disengagement of forces agreement.” Since he took power, Israel has been relentlessly bombing Syria, sending troops to occupy more territory inside the country, including inside the demilitarized UN buffer zone in the Golan Heights in violation of the 1974 agreement, and killing dozens of Syrians. The Israeli Air Force also launched a strike on the grounds of his presidential palace in early May. That attack came just 24 hours after the U.S. delegation had been in the palace meeting with al-Sharaa. Israeli officials suggested this may have been a trial run for attacking the Syrian leader directly in future.

According to former U.S. officials who mediated between the two countries, Syria and Israel considered normalizing relations under the former regime of Bashar al-Assad, before the 2011 uprising in Syria. The two countries face an outstanding issue over the disputed Golan Heights region, a major national grievance inside Syria, which Israel has occupied since 1967.

Charm Offensive

To get to a deal, Syria would need U.S. sanctions currently in place on the country to be lifted. Syria is currently subject to sanctions under the Caesar Act of 2019, which placed crushing economic restrictions on the former Assad regime, ostensibly due to human rights violations committed by that government. The new government and its supporters say that the sanctions, which were intended to punish Assad, are now punishing his presumed victims, and should be lifted on that grounds. But they would also need to be removed for Sharaa’s own vision of a “Deal of the Century” with Trump to come to pass.

This week, the U.S. announced a sanctions exemption that would allow Qatar to pay for Syria’s public sector salaries of $29 million for the next three months, allowing Damascus to hold together some of its shattered institutions and to send government employees back to work. The move came after previous limited sanctions waivers were issued by Washington to allow aid groups to operate in the country after Assad’s fall. Saudi Arabia and Qatar had previously announced that they would pay off Syria’s $15 million dollar debt to the World Bank—a relatively small sum that Damascus could not afford itself—in a sign of how impoverished the country has become after over a decade of conflict.

Syria remains wracked by internal chaos, including sectarian violence, criminality, widespread poverty, and lack of basic services. Militias linked to the government carried out a large-scale massacre of Alawite civilians following an aborted coup in coastal Syria earlier this year. In an effort to hold together the fragile situation, exacerbated by external attacks, Sharaa has also reportedly engaged in indirect talks with Israel, mediated by the United Arab Emirates. These talks have reportedly focused on Syria’s demand that Israel stop its airstrikes on the country, withdraw from occupied territories in the south, and cease efforts to promote ethnic separatism aimed at causing the dissolution of Syria—a stated goal of some current Israeli cabinet ministers. The Syrian government has also been conducting aggressive outreach to Jewish Syrian-Americans, facilitating trips to historic sites in the country and vowing to restore and protect Jewish heritage in the country.

It remains to be seen whether Sharaa can pull off the delicate balancing act of placating the U.S. enough to lift sanctions and permit the rebuilding of Syria. But his attempt to reach out to Trump by offering a lucrative business opportunity for American companies may afford him a chance. Moustafa said that the U.S. had a “golden opportunity” with the new government, which is now marketing itself as open for business to Washington.