The United States on Tuesday prepared a draft resolution at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) that would lift sanctions against Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Interior Minister Anas Khattab ahead of their visit to the White House on November 10.
Sharaa is the interim president of Syria, and leader of the Islamist insurgent group called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) that forced dictator Bashar Assad out of power in December 2024.
HTS began as a franchise of al-Qaeda called the Nusra Front and Sharaa was a high-ranking al-Qaeda leader. As such, Sharaa and other HTS members have been under U.N. and U.S. sanctions for many years. Anas Hasan Khattab was sanctioned as a founding member of the Nusra Front by UNSC in 2014.
President Donald Trump was favorably impressed by Sharaa when they met in Saudi Arabia and was responsive to Sharaa’s pleas to aid postwar reconstruction by lifting sanctions against Syria. Trump lifted as many sanctions as he could by executive order in July, although some of the toughest sanctions will require approval from Congress to rescind. The Trump administration also lifted the designation of HTS as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) in July.
The U.N. sanctions against Sharaa and Khattab include travel bans. The U.N. has waived the ban several times to allow Sharaa to travel outside Syria after becoming its interim president, and would most likely do so again next week so he could visit the White House, even if the resolution to lift U.N. sanctions is not adopted.
The Associated Press (AP) quoted an unnamed source who said the draft resolution to lift sanctions against Syria could be submitted to a vote as early as Thursday. U.S. officials are reportedly hoping to get an expedited vote before Sharaa travels to the White House for a meeting with President Trump.
“While al-Sharaa is in Washington, Syria is expected to join the U.S.-led anti–Islamic State coalition, which includes some 80 countries working to prevent a resurgence of the extremist group,” the AP added.
U.N. sanctions monitors issued a report in July that found no “active ties” between HTS and al-Qaeda. The two groups ostensibly parted ways in 2016.
The report also found that many of the “tactical-level” members of HTS held “more extreme views” than their leaders Sharaa and Khattab. The sanctions monitors concluded that both of them were “more pragmatic than ideological.”
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