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2025-05-13 Syria-Lebanon-Iran
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Trump Tower Damascus? Syria seeks to charm US president for sanctions relief
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Very pragmatic, and clearly determined to ensure that his caliphate will be permanent, unlike those feckless ISIS losers. [IsraelTimes] With Gulf help, Sharaa launches bid to get face time with Trump during his Mideast visit, with a pitch that includes a detente with Israel and US access to Syria’s oil and gas
A Trump Tower in Damascus, a detente with Israel and US 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 US President Donald Trump
...The man who was so stupid he beat fourteen professional politicians, a former tech CEO, and a brain surgeon for the Republican nomination in 2016, then beat The Smartest Woman in the World in the general election. Then he beat Kamala while dodging bullets...
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
 ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula, largely made up of sand and oil rigs. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual haj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. Formerly dictatorial and steeped in Olde Tyme Religion, deferring to Salafist holy men on all issues, it has now done a 180 and is making a serious effort to modernize, so as not to be left in the sand by its Gulf Arab neighbors. The holy men have been shoved to the background and the nation is now still dictatorial but somewhat rational. That doesn't make them trustworthy, but it's a start...
, Qatar
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...
and the United Arab Emirates.
Syria has struggled to implement conditions set out by Washington for relief from US 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 US-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 US foreign policy taboos, such as when he met with North Korea
...hereditary Communist monarchy distinguished by its truculence and periodic acts of violence. Distinguishing features include Songun (Army First) policy, which involves feeding the army before anyone but the Dear Leadership, and Juche, which is Kim Jong Il's personal interpretation of Marxism-Leninism, which he told everybody was brilliant. In 1950 the industrialized North invaded agrarian South Korea. Twenty-one countries of the United Nations eventually contributed to the UN force opposing the invasion, with the United States providing around 90% of the military personnel. Seventy years later the economic results are in and it doesn't look good for Juche...
n leader Kim Pudge Jong-un
...the overweight, pouty-looking hereditary potentate of North Korea. Pudge appears to believe in his own divinity, but has yet to produce any loaves and fishes, so his subjects remain malnourished...
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
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate Jews Zionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
and engagement with Israel.
"He told me he wants a Trump Tower in Damascus. He wants peace with his neighbors. 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
...Crown Prince and modernizer of Saudi Arabia as of 2016. The Turks hate him, so he must be all right, despite the occasional brutal murder of Qatar-owned journalists...
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 US 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-US 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 US official familiar with the policy-making said.
That approach was illustrated by the make-up of the US 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.
US officials conveyed to Shibani that Washington found steps taken by Damascus to be insufficient, particularly on the US demand to remove imported muscle from senior posts in the army and expel as many of them as possible, the sources said.
The US 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 US State Department declined to disclose who attended the meeting from the US 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 US 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 Arclight airstrike
...KABOOM! ...
s in Syria since the country’s rebels-turned rulers ousted former strongman Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad
Supressor of the Damascenes...
last year.
Israel says the strikes were largely aimed at destroying Syria’s military and chemical arsenal to stop them falling into the hands of the new regime.
Israel’s ground forces have also occupied a buffer zone in southwestern Syria along the border, while the government has lobbied the US to keep Syria decentralized and isolated.
The IDF described its presence in southern Syria’s buffer zone as a temporary and defensive measure, though Defense Minister Israel Katz has said that troops will remain deployed to nine army posts in the area "indefinitely."
Israel has also said it aims to protect Syrian minority groups. Sectarian violence in Syria has escalated in recent weeks, as Islamist supporters of the country’s new regime have targeted Druze communities in festivities in southern Syria. Reports have put the corpse count from the fighting at around 100.
Israel has vowed to protect the Syrian Druze community from threats, and the IDF has struck targets in the country as a "warning" to the new regime.
Syria’s government has condemned Israel’s strikes as escalatory and as foreign interference, and says the new government in Damascus is working to unify the country after 14 years of civil war.
Sharaa last week confirmed indirect negotiations with Israel aimed at calming tensions, after Rooters 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 festivities with Sunni holy warriors.
"Sharaa sent the Israelis an olive branch. Israel sent missiles," Bass said.
"We need Trump to help sort this relationship out."
Trump says US ‘may very well’ lift sanctions on Syria, give them a ‘fresh start’
| But what must HTS agree to, to get such a thing? President Trump is transactional… |
[IsraelTimes] US President Donald Trump hails Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and thanks him for hosting direct talks between Russia and Ukraine on Thursday.
He tells reporters during a White House press conference that he may even fly to Turkey to join those talks. He is flying to Saudi Arabia later today, and will be in Qatar and the UAE on Thursday.
Trump says Erdogan and others have asked him to lift US sanctions on Syria.
“We have to make a decision on the sanctions, which we may very well relieve. We may take them off of Syria because we want to give them a fresh start,” Trump says.
Turkey is the largest foreign backer of the new Islamist regime in Syria led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, who led the overthrow of dictator Bashar Assad.
Israel has cautioned the US against warming up to Erdogan and the new regime in Syria.
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Posted by trailing wife 2025-05-13 2025-05-13 02:09||
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