Jasmine and Tarek Naemo, a couple trying to lift Syria sanctions

A historic meeting between Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa and Donald Trump at the White House on Monday was preceded by intense lobbying efforts to get stringent US sanctions on the country lifted, including the vital work of a little-known Syrian-American couple.

In 2020, the US Congress passed the Caesar Act, imposing a series of sanctions targeting key sectors of the Syrian economy, when the regime of President Bashar al-Assad was still in power.

Following the Assad regime’s downfall in December 2024, the US government temporarily suspended sanctions, but only Congress can grant a final repeal. This has negatively affected Syria’s efforts to attract foreign investment and rebuild after 14 years of war, which has destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure.

Behind the scenes, one married couple has been working hard to get the Caesar Act sanctions removed.

Tarek Naemo and Jasmine Naamou, who live in Daytona Beach, Florida, have been meeting frequently with US senators and congressmen to push for this ever since the Assad regime fell.

They reportedly facilitated a meeting between Sharaa and two Republican US Congressmen, Cory Mills of Florida and Marlin Stutzman of Indiana, in Damascus last March.

On Monday, the pair were pictured side by side with Sharaa and US Republican Congressman Brian Mast, who has opposed removing sanctions on Syria.

Sharaa met with Mast to try and convince him to support the lifting of sanctions, and the meeting was described as “positive and constructive”, although there was no confirmation that the US politician, one of Israel’s staunchest supporters in Congress, had changed his position.

Jasmine Naamou told Al-Sharq TV that Mast was “hesitant” to lift the sanctions and is “a very tough person” and asked Sharaa “some very tough questions”.

However, Sharaa had handled these “diplomatically with such great answers”, according to Naamou, and Mast’s body language changed, becoming more friendly towards the Syrian president.

She said this was “history in the making” and that such a meeting wouldn’t have been possible just a few weeks before.

“This is such a small shift that will make such a big impact,” she told Al-Sharq TV.

Shifting Syria towards the West

Naamou said that she and her husband were of Syrian Kurdish and had previously advocated for Kurdish causes.

She describes herself on the social media platform X as a “political strategist”, while Tarek Naemo has an investment and information technology background and has 2.2 million followers on Instagram.

They both also work in real estate and have ties to Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, according to Jewish Insider.

In one Instagram video, Tarek praises Trump, saying that the US president “wants to stop war”, while accusing his predecessor, Biden, of encouraging conflict in the Middle East.

In another, he says that the overthrow of the Assad regime is “a great opportunity for the entire world”.

“If we’re able to flip Syria from the Russian and the Iranian camp into the Western camp, Syria is going to play a vital role in today’s world.”

He added that he wanted to turn Syria into a “prosperous country” and had ambitions for it to become “a major hub for AI – for innovation, for technology, for education”.

More controversially, Jasmine told Jewish Insider in an interview that she wanted to see a normalisation of ties between Syria and Israel.

“We want regional stability. Israel’s a neighbour. They’re a friend of America. We want them to be friends of Syria. We want to normalise relations,” she said.

Sharaa, however, has ruled out any normalisation of ties with Israel, which has exploited Assad’s fall to seize more territory in Syria beyond the occupied Golan Heights and launched frequent airstrikes on the country, including on ministry buildings in Damascus.

He has instead proposed a security deal which would see Israel return to the 1974 disengagement line in exchange for guarantees from Syria.