Syrian President Ahmad Al Shara on Tuesday said he had not decided whether to run in a future election but would do so if he believed he needed to stay in office to carry out his plans.
Asked by The National during an Atlantic Council event on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly whether he would stand for re-election after Syria’s transitional period, Ahmad Al Shara said he had three years left in office and was focused on governing.
“I haven’t thought about being elected,” he said. “Right now, we are focusing on serving people.” But if remaining in office was necessary to complete that work, he said, “I will nominate myself".
Ahmad Al Shara said he would prefer to return to a normal life because governing was “really tiresome”. “If I believe that I need to remain in power, I will stay there," he said.
He also laid out his terms for talks with Israel, saying Israeli forces must withdraw from a security zone they have established inside Syria before the two countries negotiate new arrangements. He said a “lasting peace” was possible, but only after that first step.
“Then we get into discussions on security arrangements,” he said. “If those arrangements succeed, then we can get into lasting peace.”
The Golan Heights was not a matter for negotiation, he said. “The Golan Heights is Syrian territory under recognition of the United Nations,” he said. “So there is no discussion.”
Israeli troops entered a United Nations-monitored buffer zone after the government of Bashar al-Assad fell in December 2024. Israel described the deployment as a temporary measure to secure its border during Syria’s political transition.
Since then, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on Syrian military sites and taken positions farther inside the country. Syria’s government and the United Nations say the troop deployment violates Syrian sovereignty and a 1974 agreement separating Israeli and Syrian forces after the 1973 war.
Mr Al Shara recounted joking with President Donald Trump during a White House visit about the United States’ recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights in 2019.
If Mr Trump wanted to give Israel territory, he said he had suggested, he could give it New Jersey instead: The United States owned that state, and its residents had not voted for him.
“But President Trump doesn’t own the Golan Heights,” he said. “The Golan Heights is owned by its own people. It’s neither for the Syrian President nor the American President nor any other person to abandon them or give them up to others.”
On Lebanon, Mr Al Shara said Syria wanted to strengthen the government and its institutions, including by bringing all weapons under state control.
“The Syrian ideas that we have are to empower the Lebanese government to have better institutions ... to have the state taking control over all the weapons in the Lebanese state,” he said.
