The rockstar welcome on the streets of the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli started in the late afternoon on Thursday, July 2, and continued well after sundown, with flares and bonfires illuminating the night sky as the crowds roared. Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani was visiting, and his motorcade could barely make its way through the packed streets of Lebanon’s second-largest city. When it finally reached the gates of Dar al-Fatwa, Lebanon’s highest Sunni religious institution, Syria’s top diplomat, dressed in his now de rigueur dark suit, emerged from the car – and was promptly carried aloft on the shoulders of his supporters.
Syria's Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani greets supporters in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on July 2, 2026. © Fathi al-Masri, AFP
Two days later, Shaibani was in Doha, meeting his Qatari counterpart. Next, he was on the tarmac of the Damascus International Airport, welcoming French President Emmanuel Macron, the first major Western leader to visit Syria since the fall of the Assad regime. On Wednesday, the Syrian foreign minister was in the room as his boss, President Ahmed al-Sharaa, met US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Turkey. By the end of a long day, Shaibani had finally shed his coat and tie to pose with Sharaa inside a plane with a diplomatic prize: a letter from Trump initiating the process of removing Syria from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism.
