WASHINGTON — Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa made what officials portrayed as a symbolic first this week, using a Visa credit card inside Syria after the U.S. State Department removed the country from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.
The moment was captured in a government-released video showing al-Sharaa in Old Damascus alongside Syria’s central bank governor, Mohammed Safwat Raslan, as the president appeared to pay for coffee or tea by card.
“For more than fifteen years, this simple transaction was impossible,” Syria’s new rapid response account wrote Wednesday on X, sharing footage of the purchase. “Today, in the oldest continuously inhabited capital in the world, Syria’s return to the global financial system became a fact.”
Raslan praised the Trump administration’s move to remove Syria from the terrorism list, calling it “a historic step that restores the country to its natural place in the global economic system.”
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Syria had been on America’s state sponsor of terror list from the US since 1979, three years before al-Sharaa was even born.
Al-Sharaa, who rose to power after toppling the Bashar al-Assad regime in late 2024, has been working to mend Syria’s fraught relations with countries all over the world, particularly the West, as he focuses on reconstruction following 15 years of a brutal civil war.
Syria was officially taken off America’s state sponsor of terrorism list on Monday. President Trump had also worked over the past year and a half to wind down sanctions on Syria.
Trump had met al-Sharaa in Turkey, where he attended the NATO summit last month, and the two had discussed the prospects of getting Syria off that list.
It then took 45 days after Trump triggered a congressional review to officially end the designation.
The classification had cut Syria off from the US financial system and blacklisted the Middle Eastern country from military exports and critical foreign aid.
“This action unlocks new potential for Syria’s economic revitalization and progress,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said of the delisting on Monday.
“The Trump Administration continues to advance U.S. national security to achieve peace, prosperity, and security in the Middle East.”
