On the menu today: It’s early, and it’s just one conversation with one Florida GOP representative. But raise your hand if you ever foresaw a former member of al-Qaeda and ISIS, who set up his own Islamist fighting force, running the country of Syria and telling an American elected official he’s open to joining the Abraham Accords and normalizing his country’s relationship with Israel.
A Surprise from Syria’s New Leaders
In the May issue of National Review, I concluded my article about my travels through Syria by saying that while it’s entirely reasonable for Americans and the rest of the West to be wary of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, we ought to look for areas where we can cooperate with the new anti-Assad, anti-ISIS regime:
Westerners may look at the recent history of the disaster area that is Syria and conclude that its primary export was trouble. It’s hard to begrudge people the instinct to recoil and avoid interacting with Syria at all. But a large portion of the 25 million people still living there have endured just about the worst that modern (and not so modern) warfare can throw at a population. Somehow, they keep getting up every morning and going about their business, determined that tomorrow will be better. If they can still find hope in this place, and keep looking for opportunities to build something decent and stable out of a country that’s lived through hell, why shouldn’t we cooperate in that work when it aligns with our interests?
You didn’t have to look too far to find a reader who dismissed that stance as “pimping for another nation building project.”
Well, don’t take it from me, take it from Florida Representative Cory Mills, a staunch ally of President Trump. Mills is a 44-year-old former U.S. army sniper who earned a Bronze Star in Iraq, who cofounded a defense contracting company, and who has represented Florida’s seventh congressional district, which encompasses the suburbs between Orlando and Daytona Beach, since his election in 2022.
This week, Mills told Bloomberg News that he traveled to Damascus and held talks with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on conditions for the removal of economic sanctions and peace between the war-ravaged nation and Israel:
The Florida Republican travelled to Damascus last week on an unofficial fact-finding mission organized by a group of influential Syrian Americans, Mills told Bloomberg by phone, adding that he plans to brief U.S. President Donald Trump — with whom he is close — and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz when he returns from his trip.
Mills will deliver a letter from Sharaa to Trump, the lawmaker said, without giving details of its contents. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Syrian American collective are lobbying the US government to lift crippling sanctions imposed on the administration of former Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, who was toppled in December in a rebel offensive led by Sharaa.
Mills’s talk with al-Sharaa is the most serious communication between the U.S. government and the new Syrian government since . . . well, ever. As for talks with the old regime, we shut down the embassy in 2012 and haven’t had an ambassador to Syria since February 2014; we’ve had a “special envoy” for stretches until 2021.
The world isn’t noticing much, but Israel is still periodically launching airstrikes against sites in Syria. After the Assad regime fell, the Israeli Defense Forces also moved into new territories in the Golan Heights, and now runs hiking tours through “a buffer-zone area that was previously “off limits” to both Syria and Israel under a 1974 ceasefire agreement.”
And yet, Mills says the new Syrian president told him he’s interested in reaching a stable and peaceful relationship with Israel:
Mills said Sharaa is open to addressing U.S. concerns and told him Syria was interested under the right conditions in joining the Abraham Accords — which saw the United Arab Emirates and other Arab countries normalize ties with Israel during Trump’s first term.
Mills traveled with fellow GOP Representative Marlin Stutzman of Indiana; Stutzman’s Instagram features a sign in English and Arabic, “Make Syria Great Again.”
Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina, who serves on the House Foreign Relations Committee, also recently (and separately) met with California Democratic Representative Jimmy Panetta and senior rabbis after their trip to Damascus. Wilson has warned that “broad restrictions imposed more than a decade ago — targeting a regime that no longer exists — now risk undermining U.S. national security objectives and impeding Syria’s reconstruction.”
(How popular is Wilson among the Syrian-American community? Here’s video of them hoisting him on their shoulders and carrying him into a room in the U.S. Capitol and singing in February.)
Regarding the desire to see U.S. sanctions lifted, as I noted, if we’re going to have sanctions on Syria, we probably ought to have them in place because of our view of the current government, not the crimes and outrages of the old regime. The long-necked brute who used to run the place is still waiting for spring in Moscow; the Syrians asked for him back, but Vladimir Putin’s regime refused.
Syria got wrapped up in the short-lived announcement of “Liberation Day,” getting hit with a new 41 percent tariff, on top of all existing trade sanctions. (A tariff is a tax on an imported good; a sanction is a ban with criminal penalties for violating it.) As you would imagine, U.S. trade with Syria is minimal; in January 2025, the U.S. exported $11,000 worth of goods to Syria — no, I did not leave off a couple zeroes — and the U.S. imported $565,000 worth of goods to Syria. We imported spice seeds and pickled foods, and we exported “other ceramic articles” and “commodities not elsewhere specified.” That new 41 percent tariff was suspended for the 90-day period began at midnight April 9, and unless extended, will expire July 8. Goods from Syria now have a 10 percent tariff.
Some of our allies — to the extent we still have allies — are loosening their previous restrictions on the Syrian government.
In March, the United Kingdom “lifted asset freezes on 24 Syrian bodies previously used by the Assad regime to fund the oppression of civilians, including the Central Bank of Syria, Syrian Arab Airlines and energy companies,” and this week announced the lifting of asset freezes on the Syrian Ministry of Defense, Ministry of the Interior, and General Intelligence Directorate.
It’s worth keeping in mind that whether the U.S. government chooses to talk and build relationships with the new Syrian government, other countries are building new relationships. In an interview with the New York Times, Al-Sharaa said the new government is in the process of negotiating new military alliances:
“Turkey has a military presence in Syria and Russia also has a military presence. We’ve nullified past agreements between Syria and other countries, and are in the process of developing new ones,” he said. Mr. al-Shara appeared open to procuring additional weapons from Russia and other countries.
On my trip in late February and early March, I visited the Khmeimim Air Base in Latakia, home of what remains of the Russian air force in Syria. “The Syrian guards outside were surprisingly chatty, telling us that about 2,000 to 3,000 Russian troops were still at the base and that they were confined to their part of it, allowed to go only to the Russian naval base and back, escorted by Syrian forces.”
Mills’s 90-minute meeting with al-Sharaa is part of a slew of moves of the new Syrian government reestablishing connections to the rest of the world. Today, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani is scheduled to raise his country’s new flag at the United Nations headquarters in New York and to attend a U.N. Security Council briefing. A separate delegation of Syrian officials travelled to the U.S. this week to attend World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington.
And Sharaa issued a statement mourning Pope Francis, stating the pope “supported the Syrian people in their darkest moments, constantly raising his voice against the violence and injustice they faced.”
Whether the United States wants to engage with al-Sharaa or not, Turkey is always going to be to Syria’s north, and Israel and Lebanon are always going to be to Syria’s southwest. Iraq is always going to be to its east and Jordan to the south, meaning that Syria is strategically placed at the crossroads of a lot of big players in the region. If we can build a good working relationship with the new regime and help prevent that long-suffering country from becoming a battlefield for proxy wars again, we’ll have taken a big step toward a more stable Middle East.
And if President Trump wants a Nobel Peace Prize, negotiating a stable normalization of relations between Damascus and Jerusalem would — or at least should — make him a stone-cold lock for one.
ADDENDUM: In the best news for the Georgia Republican Party in a while, Stacey Abrams is thinking of making a third bid for governor.