Farouk al-Sharaa

Farouk al-Sharaa (born 10 December 1938) is a Syrian politician and diplomat. He was one of the most prominent officials in the government of Ba'athist Syria and served as foreign minister from 1984 to 2006, then as vice president until 2013. on 10 December 1938 to a Sunni Muslim He studied English language at the University of Damascus in the 1960s, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature in 1963. In 1971 and 1972 he took courses in international law at the University of London.

Early career (1963–1989) Mahmoud Al-Zoubi in the middle between Nizar Daoudi and Farouk al-Sharaa, in Tehran condoling the death of Imam Khomeini, 1989. In 1963, Sharaa became a member of the Ba'ath Party’s central committee.

He was involved in two attempts to negotiate a reconciliation with Israel in December 1999, when he held a meeting with Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton in White House, with the goal of resuming Israeli–Syrian peace negotiations that were stalled since early 1996. The peace talks summit continued until January 2000 in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, but never materialized.

Under Bashar al-Assad (2000–2011) Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa meeting with President of Russia Vladimir Putin in Kremlin in 2001.

After Hafez al-Assad's death in June 2000, his son Bashar al-Assad reshuffled his cabinet several times to remove several long-time members. Sharaa, however, remained in office, and became one of the longest-serving foreign ministers in the world. It was believed that Sharaa might be forced to resign when, in October 2005, he was accused of misleading international investigators in letters about the investigation of possible Syrian involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. Along with President Bashar al-Assad, Sharaa was interviewed in April 2006 during the course of a UN investigation into the death in February 2005 of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

He finally did leave his post as foreign minister on 11 February 2006, when he became vice president of Syria in charge of foreign affairs.

Sharaa met with Pope Benedict XVI in September 2007 to discuss the plight of Iraqi Christian refugees in Syria, the Mideast peace processes, and the role and status of the Church in Syria. After 2011, Sharaa was the chairman of the "national dialogue" committee in Syria. In 2000 Sharaa was also appointed to the Ba'ath party's leadership and his term ended in July 2013. On 19 July 2014, his term in the Vice President office ended. However, Sharaa represented Bashar al-Assad at the funerals of three senior officials assassinated on 18 July 2012 in Damascus.

After the fall of the Assad regime Following the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024 and the establishment of the Syrian transitional government under former Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, Farouk accepted an invitation from al-Sharaa to attend a forthcoming national dialogue conference in Damascus. However, he ultimately did not appear among those who took part in the Syrian National Dialogue Conference in February 2025.

Personal life While some reports said that Hussein al-Sharaa and Farouk al-Sharaa are related, this fact is denied by MENA Research Center. In August 2025, Hussein said on SyriaTV that the Al-Sharaa family in Daraa, to which former Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa belongs, has no direct kinship ties, but he pointed to an ancient lineage dating back to the 1930s.

Works In 2015, al-Sharaa published in Arabic his memoirs, titled The Missing Account.