Speaking at the UN, Ahmad al-Sharaa tells an unfinished story 

NEW YORK CITY — For the first time in nearly 60 years, a Syrian president stood behind the speaker’s podium at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York. 

“Our story is one of the lessons of history,” Syria’s interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa said as he began his address on Wednesday. For a brief nine minutes, he told the UN General Assembly that story with the demeanor of a diplomat, in the culmination of his own metamorphosis from jihadist to statesman.

“For 60 years, Syria fell under the weight of an oppressive, tyrannical regime. Our people endured many years of oppression, subjugation and deprivation, until they rose up demanding their freedom and dignity,” he said.

The stakes were high for the new Syrian president, who seeks to build his reputation, mend ties with the West and attract the international support needed to rebuild his country.

Since landing in New York on Sunday, al-Sharaa had met with policymakers and analysts as well as notable members of the Syrian-American community. He even sat down for a talk with his former captor, retired General David Petraeus, who led American forces in Iraq where al-Sharaa was imprisoned between 2006 and 2011.

On the sidelines of the UN summit, al-Sharaa also met United States (US) President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan—one of his strongest backers. 

“This is a great opportunity for Ahmad al-Sharaa to present Syria to the rest of the world,” Karam Shaar, a Syrian political economist and the UN’s Chief Economic Consultant for Syria, told Syria Direct ahead of Wednesday’s address. “It is a forum that the Assad regime had not been utilizing, but Ahmad al-Sharaa views it with a completely different lens.”

The former regime had boycotted the yearly assembly since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, accusing the UN of siding with Israel.

Al-Sharaa’s speech and “the professionalism that he and his team will have during the trip—will have a significant impact on Syria’s presence in the international community and on Syria’s image,” Shaar said. 

The speech mattered for the president’s image, too. Under the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, al-Sharaa commanded the militant Islamist faction Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which the UN still labels a terrorist group. Members of HTS, which was formally dissolved in January, have a significant presence in the country’s new government. 

‘Raise your head high, you are a free Syrian!’

Hours before al-Sharaa spoke, hundreds of Syrians gathered outside the UN to support the interim president. The jubilant crowd danced, waving the Syrian flag—now officially the red and green banner of the revolution. 

A woman waves a Syrian-American flag at a rally for Ahmad al-Sharaa in New York, 24/09/25 (Hanna Davis/Syria Direct)

“Raise your head high, you are a free Syrian!” they chanted in unison, repeating a line from one of the most well-known songs of the revolution. 

“We’re here today to show our support to the new government of Syria, the Syrian Arab Republic, because we’ve all experienced all kinds of threats over the past 50 years, and finally, we’ve achieved victory,”  63-year-old Abdul Katerji, who came all the way from Florida for the rally, told Syria Direct. 

Katerji left his hometown of Aleppo in 1980 after he was imprisoned under Hafez al-Assad. He and his brother took part in an Islamist uprising against the ruling Baath regime between 1979 and 1982 that ended with the massacre of thousands of people in Hama city by government forces. 

On his way to the UN compound Wednesday morning, al-Sharaa stopped by the Syrians gathered outside. As he waved, the crowd erupted in applause. 

Syrians celebrate the arrival of Syrian interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa outside UN headquarters in New York, 24/09/25 (Hanna Davis/Syria Direct)

Across the street, the mood was darker. “Burn your soul, Jolani,” chanted a crowd gathered to protest al-Sharaa and his presence at the UN. There, attendees spoke of atrocities and condemned the president as a terrorist. 

Optimism about Syria’s political transition has been darkened in recent months by explosions of violence, with attacks against members of Syria’s minority communities leaving many fearful and deeply suspicious of al-Sharaa.

In March, while responding to an attempted insurrection by fighters loyal to the former regime, government forces massacred civilians in towns and villages in Syria’s Alawite-majority coastal region. In July, fighting between local Bedouin and Druze in Suwayda escalated when government forces intervened. Sectarian killings and atrocities, including by government forces, left hundreds dead and pushed many in the province to call for autonomy or foreign intervention.

Domestic response  

During his speech, al-Sharaa applauded the “unique Syrian achievement” of overthrowing the Assad regime. He spoke out to the Syrian people and commended their victory. The words came at an important political juncture, as Syria heads into its first parliamentary elections since Assad’s fall and grapples with a divided country. 

“The domestic response will be one important vector of his speech,” Steven Heydemann, a political scientist specialized in Syria, told Syria Direct. “The country has huge issues it’s wrestling with, and Syrians will be listening to the speech for some indicator of how al-Sharaa sees the transition unfolding and what his priorities are for Syria and the Syrian people.”

Many in Syria gathered to watch the speech from large screens, installed to televise the historic event. When it ended, fireworks were set off over Umayyad Square in Damascus.

“Syria today is rebuilding itself by founding a new state through institutions and regulatory laws that guarantee the rights of all, without exception,” al-Sharaa stated in his speech. 

He also addressed the recent waves of sectarian violence on the coast and in Suwayda, pledging to “bring all those whose hands were stained with the blood of innocents to justice.”

Hanadi Abdul Wahid, 50, holds two signs protesting sanctions on Syria at the rally outside UN headquarters, 24/09/25 (Hanna Davis/Syria Direct)

A ‘complete removal’ of sanctions 

Lifting remaining international sanctions has topped al-Sharaa’s agenda for his visit. “We demand the complete removal [of sanctions], so that they are not used as a tool to shackle the Syrian people and confiscate their freedom,” he said at the UN. 

At the support rally outside, 50-year-old Hanadi Abdul Wahid held two signs, both calling for an end to sanctions. “We are asking today that all the sanctions imposed on Syria be lifted, so the Syrian people can live again,” she told Syria Direct. 

Abdul Wahid, from Damascus, left Syria when she married in 2001. She now lives in Pennsylvania, but said her relatives in Syria continue to suffer from the effects of sanctions. “There’s little energy, little water, and we need to rebuild our hospitals, schools, factories,” she said. “When the sanctions are lifted, we will be able to rebuild.”

Al-Sharaa, as well as Interior Minister Anas Hasan Khattab, remains listed under the UN’s counter-terrorism sanctions targeting Al Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS).  The listing means al-Sharaa is under an asset freeze, travel ban and arms embargo, and faces other financial restrictions from dealing with member states. 

The most likely path to repeal UN sanctions would be a vote in the Security Council, political economist Shaar said. This would require al-Sharaa to charm its five permanent members: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the US.

‘Deep reservations’ 

Heydemann noted that many international governments “have quite deep reservations about al-Sharaa and about the direction of the transition.” 

He cited a host of concerns, including al-Sharaa’s inability to integrate the security sector, threats to forcibly integrate the Kurdish-majority northeast into the state and a lack of adequate accountability for killings on the coast and in Suwayda. 

And, while US President Donald Trump has repealed a slew of Syria sanctions, debate over the repeal of the stringent and all-encompassing Caesar Act continues in Congress. 

The sweeping sanctions, imposed in 2019, are currently suspended under a six-month waiver issued in May. Unless a repeal is passed, the waiver would need to be renewed every six months, extending economic uncertainty and complicating long-term foreign investment in Syria’s recovery. 

In mid-September, proposed amendments to legislation repealing the Caesar Act were introduced in the US Senate. They mandate that the sanctions would remain suspended if Syria met six specified conditions, including “eliminating the threat posed by ISIS” and providing “security for religious and ethnic minorities,” subject to review every six months. 

“We are with lifting sanctions, because it hurts the Syrian people,” Ayman Abdel Nour, a Syrian-Christian activist based in Washington, told Syria Direct. “But this shouldn’t be a green [light] for the Syrian regime to misuse it,” he stated. 

Israeli violations 

Under US pressure, Syria has accelerated talks with Israel for a security agreement. One of the conditions for Syria to maintain the suspension of the Caesar Act is for the country to “maintain peace relations with other states in the region, including Israel.” Syria’s security discussions with the US often also involve sanctions relief. 

US Special Envoy for Syria Tom Barrack said on Tuesday that the expected agreement would see Israel stopping attacks, while Syria would agree to keep any machinery or heavy equipment away from its border.

Israeli forces have been occupying parts of southern Syria since the fall of Assad and have carried out a range of abuses against residents, according to Human Rights Watch. Tel Aviv has also conducted hundreds of airstrikes inside Syrian territory. 

“Israeli policies are being pursued in violation of the international position supporting Syria and its people, in an attempt to exploit the transitional phase—exposing the region to the risk of new cycles of conflict, the end of which no one knows,” al-Sharaa stated in his address. 

He reiterated Syria’s commitment to the Disengagement Agreement of 1974, which created a UN-patrolled buffer zone separating the two countries. 

“Syria needs to use the US to convince Israel to stop its actions in Syria, they need to convince the US to put the necessary pressure on the Israeli authorities,” Radwan Ziadeh, a Syrian analyst with the Arab Center Washington DC (ACW) think tank, told Syria Direct. 

‘Writing a new chapter’ 

Heydemann pointed out that, despite US pressure and its sanctions leverage, Syria is unwilling to accept some of Israel’s “maximalist demands” as part of the security agreement. 

Al-Sharaa has been “intensely pragmatic” in his orientation toward Israel, Heydemann said, doing what “no Syrian government previously had done” by negotiating with and even expressing a willingness to compromise with his hostile neighbor. “But there are real limits to how far he is willing or able to go,” he added.

Al-Sharaa ended his address by calling for an end to Israel’s nearly two-year war in Gaza, which a UN Commission has concluded constitutes genocide. 

“We are among the people most deeply aware of the horrors of war and destruction,” he said. “For this reason we stand firmly with the people of Gaza—its children, its women and all people facing violations and aggression.”

Turning back to his own country, al-Sharaa concluded: “The Syrian story has not come to an end. It continues to write a new chapter, entitled: peace, prosperity and development.”