The first Syrian-Emirati Investment Forum, which took place at the Presidential Palace in Damascus this week, saw a number of headlines made. Mohamed Alabbar, founder of the Emirati real estate firm Emaar, confirmed the company was studying projects in Damascus worth up to $12 billion and on Syria’s coast worth up to $7 billion. Etihad Airways had already confirmed the resumption of Abu Dhabi–Damascus flights for mid-June, ending a 14-year absence.
Thani Al Zeyoudi, the UAE Minister of State for Foreign Trade, told the assembled delegates that the forum aimed to “crystallise joint projects based on mutual interests,” and reported that non-oil trade between the two countries reached $1.4 billion in 2025, up 132% from the previous year, describing the result as evidence of expanding economic opportunity.
Syria, which the World Bank estimates will need around $216 billion to rebuild, roughly ten times its 2024 gross domestic product, stands open for investment, and the UAE had already arrived at the door long before Damascus put the welcome mat out.
Abu Dhabi Saw Syria’s Worth Early
The arc of Emirati engagement with Syria stretches back considerably further than the current government in Damascus. The UAE reopened its embassy in Damascus in late 2018, when Bashar al-Assad still governed the country, reasoning, as Abu Dhabi’s own diplomats made clear, that Syria occupied too central a position in Arab security and regional energy equations to leave unattended.
One European foreign policy analysis from that period noted that the move was about securing a “first-mover advantage” before regional rivals could do the same.
When Assad fell in late 2024, that calculation simply redirected. The UAE moved with greater caution than Saudi Arabia and Qatar in the weeks after the transition, given longstanding reservations about President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s earlier associations, but the warming gathered pace once the Iran war brought the UAE under attack and al-Sharaa expressed repeated solidarity with Abu Dhabi.
In April, Anwar Gargash, the diplomatic adviser to the UAE president, put the warmth on the record, noting that Syria was among the most prominent Arab countries that “held a positive stance towards the UAE.”
Türkiye, the Gulf, and One Trade Route
Growing policy circles treat Syria as a potential transit hub for energy, transport and digital connectivity linking the Gulf, Turkey and Europe, a corridor that no regional actor with sizeable interests can easily leave uncontested.
Turkey has moved assertively on the security and economic front, becoming Damascus’s principal external interlocutor since the transition, and that posture has in turn pushed Gulf states to speed up their own engagement.
The interplay is fundamentally competitive, and competition here produces investment. DP World signed a 30-year agreement to manage the port of Tartous, pledging $800 million in modernisation. Sharjah’s Dana Gas signed a preliminary deal with the Syrian Petroleum Company to redevelop gasfields near Homs.
Before its civil war, Syria produced 380,000 barrels of oil per day and was the Mediterranean’s sole active crude producer; its Ministry of Energy now estimates more than $30 billion in rehabilitation costs for the oil, gas, electricity and water sectors.
Having left the oil cartel with clear ambitions to expand production and market share, the UAE has an evident interest in a Syria that can serve as both logistics corridor and downstream partner for Emirati capital.
Brussels Shows Up a Measure Late
Last year, the European Union lifted all economic sanctions on Syria. A day before the Damascus forum opened, the Partnership Coordination Forum in Brussels produced the formal end of the partial suspension of the European Union’s cooperation agreement with Syria, alongside European pledges of new financial support packages, with a package of €620 million confirmed this and next year.
Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani told the Brussels gathering that Syria “does not ask the world to manage its future on its behalf,” framing the terms as a partnership built on mutual interest, with long-term stability as the shared foundation.
Syria has reconnected with the IMF and World Bank, reactivated its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, rejoined the Swift network, and watched Visa and Mastercard resume card processing after 15 years away.
A Corridor Cornerpiece
The ambition to integrate Syria into the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, using the country as a transit point for energy, goods and digital infrastructure, turns reconstruction into something with the durability aid rarely achieves. It turns it into geography, which is the one argument that tends to survive changes of government and the receding attention spans of donor cycles.
Syrian Economy Minister Nidal al-Shaar framed the partnership ambition at the Damascus forum in terms that leave no room for modesty: “when the UAE meets Syrian capabilities, a project is not created, but a future is built.”
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