Al-Sharaa’s visit, scheduled for November 10, will be the first visit by a Syrian president to the White House.
Published on November 2, 2025
US President Donald Trump will host Syria’s interim president for talks this month in what may mark the first visit by a Syrian president to the US capital.
Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani said in a speech on Sunday that the visit would help open a “new chapter” in relations between Damascus and Washington.
Recommended stories
List of 4 itemsEnd of list
Al-Shaibani said in his speech in Bahrain that President Ahmed Al-Sharaa will be in the White House at the beginning of next November. He added: “Of course, this is a historic visit, and it is the first visit by a Syrian president to the White House in more than 80 years.
“There will be many issues on the table, starting with lifting sanctions and opening a new chapter between the United States and Syria. We want to establish a very strong partnership between the two countries.”
Earlier, the American news website Axios quoted Tom Barrack, the American envoy to Syria, as saying that Al-Sharaa is expected to sign an agreement during his visit to join the international coalition led by the United States against ISIS.
Meeting with Trump
Al-Sharaa, who seized power from Bashar al-Assad last December, seeks to restore Syria’s relations with world powers that avoided Damascus during al-Assad’s rule.
He met Trump in Saudi Arabia last May in the first meeting between the leaders of the two countries in 25 years.
The meeting, which was held on the sidelines of Trump’s meeting with the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council, was considered a major turn of events for Syria, which is still adjusting to life after more than 50 years of Assad family rule.
Al-Sharaa also delivered a speech before the United Nations General Assembly in New York last September.
He once led Al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria. A decade ago, his anti-Assad group broke away from the network and later clashed with ISIS. Al-Sharaa also once received a US $10 million bounty on his head.
The Syrian President had joined the fighters fighting American forces in Iraq before entering the Syrian war. He was even imprisoned by American forces there for several years.
The US-led coalition and its local partners expelled ISIS from its last strongholds in Syria in 2019.
Al-Shara’s scheduled visit to Washington, D.C., comes as Trump urges Middle East allies to seize the opportunity to build lasting peace in the turbulent region after Israel and Hamas last month began implementing a ceasefire and prisoner exchange. This agreement aims to reach a permanent end to the two-year-old Israeli war in Gaza.
The fragile ceasefire is still holding, but the situation remains precarious.
Syria and Israel are holding talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will ensure the cessation of Israeli air strikes on its territory and the withdrawal of Israeli forces that have penetrated into southern Syria.
