A Year Without Assad| Damascus and Cairo in the shadow of Al-Sharaa’s uneasy rise

Egyptian TV host Amr Adib on his program Al-Hekaya, questions why the world is rallying behind Ahmad Al-Sharaa, as Syria’s interim president arrived in Washington only days after USA removed his name from the terrorism list.

Al-Sharaa, once the emir of Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham/HTS, was now preparing to meet US President Donald Trump, becoming the first Syrian leader to walk into the White House since the country’s independence in 1946.

Adib, visibly bewildered by the scale of “unexplainable” support coalescing around the former HTS commander, was giving voice to Cairo’s unease at the sudden and precipitous rise of a man whose name sat on terror designations just a year earlier.

Egypt’s relationship with the new Syrian administration, he suggested, was “cold and reserved,” and Cairo appeared distinctly “unenthusiastic” about Al-Sharaa.

A year has passed since Al-Sharaa, previously known as Abu Mohammad Al-Joulani, assumed the reins of power after Bashar Al-Assad was deposed. In that year, regional and international attitudes have shifted; anxieties have eased, if only temporarily, toward the new face presiding over Damascus.

Cairo’s unease

 

Delegations have streamed into the Syrian capital. Al-Sharaa’s plane has touched down in multiple capitals. Yet the relationship with Egypt has remained strained, edged with caution and intermittent media sparring. Old suspicions linger, shadows cast by the ideological origins of the new Syrian administration.

Egypt treats Al-Sharaa’s government as a de facto authority born in the ruins of a collapsing state, a phrase used by Egypt’s foreign minister Badr Abdelatty, to describe the new leadership in Damascus.

That framing set the tone. Egypt was the last Arab state to initiate formal contact with Al-Sharaa’s administration, until President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi finally met him on the sidelines of an emergency Arab summit in Cairo last March convened to discuss the situation in Gaza.

Sadat, El-Sisi, and Al-Sharaa

“The sharpness of the media exchanges far exceeds the sharpness of the official disagreement,” says Hazem Khairat, Egypt’s former ambassador to Syria. The relationship between the two governments, he tells Al Manassa, remains “lukewarm and cautious,” with Cairo watching Syria’s daily developments closely, waiting to see whether a coherent political process and clear regional pathways will emerge for the country’s new rulers.

Khairat attributes Egypt’s discomfort with engaging fully to the fragility of Syria’s security landscape— the sectarian-tinged clashes, the protests, the Ministry of Defense’s reliance on foreign mercenaries who hold no Syrian citizenship, and the presence of militias tied to remnants of the old regime. All of these concerns are sharpened by Al-Sharaa’s own background in HTS, a former Al-Qaeda affiliate.

The rise of a radical force to the apex of power, Khairat and others warn, offers inspiration to similar currents inside Egypt; an unsettling prospect for Cairo’s security establishment.

From Egypt’s perspective, any authority unwilling to classify the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization is met with political and security suspicion. Syrian researcher Darwish Khalifa notes that Egypt’s recent openness towards Hamas during the latest negotiations with Israel was motivated strictly by security imperatives; an attempt to thwart a scenario in which Gaza’s population might be pushed toward Sinai. “No such overriding consideration exists in the Syrian case,” he says. Cairo’s long-standing discomfort with Islamic movements thus remains intact.

This view is echoed by regional security and terrorism researcher Ahmed Sultan, who argues that Al-Sharaa’s violent ascent to power risks emboldening similar radical groups inside Egypt; a prospect Cairo is determined to avoid.

Gulf support

In contrast to Egypt’s caution, Gulf states—led by Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar—moved swiftly to open diplomatic channels with Al-Sharaa, injecting investments and championing initiatives to lift international sanctions on Syria and reintegrate it into the global order. Ambassador Khairat interprets this as a Gulf desire to contain Syria and back its new experiment after the Assad era had left Damascus isolated from the Arab world.

During his visits to Saudi Arabia and UAE this year, Al-Sharaa lavished praise on both states’ development models, calling them nations “working twice as hard” and keeping pace with global technological change—in stark contrast, he said, to countries like Egypt and Iraq. His comments triggered a wave of media anger in Cairo, where many saw in them an attempt to curry favor with the Gulf at Egypt’s expense, further exposing the frost between the two capitals.

But pragmatism is never far beneath the surface. Khalifa interprets Gulf support as part of a broader effort to curtail Iran’s influence in the region after years in which Tehran shaped Syrian decision-making under Assad. Egypt, by contrast, remains deeply wary of a transitional government dominated by HTS-affiliated figures and factions with an Islamic orientation.

Attempts at reassurance

Seeking to disentangle himself from his past and court regional stakeholders, Al-Sharaa has repeatedly emphasized that he is not an extension of Islamist movements; neither jihadist groups nor the Muslim Brotherhood. He also rejected being cast as a continuation of the Arab Spring. Damascus formally signed a political cooperation declaration with the international coalition against ISIS.

In recent months, Al-Sharaa’s government has attempted to allay Egyptian fears. Syrian security forces arrested activist Ahmad Al-Mansour after he threatened Cairo from Damascus, urging Egyptians to take to the streets on the anniversary of the January 25 revolution. Syria also barred Mahmoud Fathi, who was sentenced to death for involvement in the assassination of Egypt’s former public prosecutor, from entering the country.

In September, the Syrian Foreign Ministry condemned anti-Egypt chants shouted by protesters in Damascus, stressing that such behavior does not reflect the Syrian people’s feelings toward Egypt or its leadership.

These moves suggest a government trying to shed its jihadist legacy, to remove the old cloak and secure its place among regimes deeply hostile to political Islam. But, as researcher Ahmed Sultan notes, this will require far more internal measures. Syria still provides fertile ground for jihadist activity, and its defense institutions remain dependent on individuals with active arrest warrants.

Darwish Khalifa believes Damascus could win Egypt’s confidence through concrete steps—most crucially, imposing clear restrictions on the Muslim Brotherhood’s activity and preventing it from organizing politically or spreading its ideology. Syria’s accession to the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum, he adds, could also serve as a strategic bridge, placing Damascus within an economic architecture led by Cairo and reconnecting two states central to the region’s security balance.

Israel enters the frame

Alongside these diplomatic maneuvers, Israel has played a pivotal role in shaping how Arab states, especially Egypt, view Al-Sharaa's administration. Since Assad’s fall, the Israeli military has repeatedly attacked southern Syria, asserting a mission to protect Druze communities in Sweida while entrenching its influence. Damascus, meanwhile, seeks a security deal that would allow it to reclaim the occupied Golan Heights and secure an Israeli withdrawal from Jabal Al-Sheikh, which Israel recently seized.

“Damascus’ silence toward repeated Israeli incursions in the south, and its failure to respond concretely, has fed a narrative in Egyptian media that Al-Sharaa rose to power with Western and Israeli backing,” says Khalifa. This perception intensifies Cairo’s unease, especially in the volatile regional climate that followed Oct. 7, 2023.

Still, former ambassador Hazem Khairat insists the onus ultimately lies on Al-Sharaa. Tense relations may ease, he says, once the transitional government proves capable of fostering stability, ensuring justice across sectarian lines, and taking unmistakable steps to defend sovereignty. Egypt, he adds, has no hidden ambitions in Syria. What matters above all is the country’s unity.

Today, in the alleys of Damascus, where posters of martyrs still stand under the sun, Al-Sharaa is attempting a political alchemy few leaders have survived: to rise from a militant movement into the architecture of a state.

Meanwhile, for Cairo’s administration, where memory of the Arab Spring lingers like the smell of tear gas from years long gone, Syria’s new leader is read not as a reformer but as a risk; a story unfolding too fast with too many blank pages.