Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam arrived in Damascus on Saturday for a meeting with President Ahmad Al Shara, official media said, in the first such high-level visit by an official in the Beirut government for more than a year.
The Syrian state news agency said Mr Salam arrived by plane to Damascus on a visit aimed at "developing bilateral co-operation in all fields, especially in economy, transport, and energy".
The last time Mr Salam was in Damascus was in April last year, three months after President Ahmad Al Shara was declared Syria's leader. The current visit is taking place amid increased divisions in Lebanon's communitarian political system. The Sunni prime minister and the Maronite president have come out in favour of talks with US mediated talks with Israel, a process rejected by the Iranian-backed Shiite group Hezbollah.
Hezbollah is in a war of attrition with Israel despite a truce last month that curbed Israeli attacks on Beirut. The war started when Hezbollah fired missiles at Israel in support of Iran, after the death of Ayatollah Khamenei. The US declared a ceasefire shortly after mediating preparatory peace talks between Lebanon and Israel in Washington last week.
However, the Iran war has prompted a regional push to develop transport links between the Gulf and Europe through Syria, which could benefit Lebanon if its ports also become part of the network.
After the latest Israel-Hezbollah war began in early March, Mr Al Shara sent elite troops to parts of the border with Lebanon to prevent the smuggling of weapons to Hezbollah, which, together with Tehran, has had a strong influence on Lebanon’s foreign policy for decades. The intervention of Iran, Hezbollah and other Tehran proxies was crucial for former president Bashar Al Assad’s survival in the Syrian civil war from 2011 to 2024.
Although Syrian officials said the troop deployment was defensive, pro-Hezbollah politicians in Lebanon regard it as a possible preparation by Syria to enter areas controlled by the group. Hezbollah is the only militia to have kept its weapons after the end of Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war, despite a peace agreement based on the disbanding of all the country's militias.
In December 2024, forces led by Mr Al Shara ousted the Alawite-dominated regime of Mr Al Assad, ushering in the political ascendancy of Syria’s Sunni majority. Syria then left the orbit of Iran and Russia and quickly developed ties with the US.
However, many Lebanese Sunnis, especially in Tripoli and Sidon, see in Mr Al Shara an ally who could help redress the waning of Sunni political influence in the country since the assassination of former prime minister Rafic Hariri in 2005. Three years later, Hezbollah extended its dominance after a week of sectarian warfare that threatened to plunge Lebanon into a second civil war.
Lebanon was under Syrian control from the end of the civil war in 1990 until Mr Hariri's assassination in 2005. However, Lebanon acted as a business springboard for Syria, whose economy was relatively closed off, and Lebanese banks held billions of dollars of Syrian deposits. An undetermined part of these deposits evaporated after Lebanon’s 2019 financial meltdown.
