Member State of the Arab League Farouk al-Sharaa[a] (born 10 December 1938) is a Syrian politician and diplomat.

[8] He served as regional manager of the state-run Syrian Arab Airlines in London from 1968 to 1972 and as commercial director in Damascus from 1972 to 1976.

Sharaa maintains that Israel should give back all of the Golan Heights, the territory it took from Syria in the 1967 War.

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.

Some saw his appointment as vice president as a demotion, since he was expected to have less of a public role in Syrian politics and to lose contact with many diplomats and world leaders.

In the event, Sharaa engaged in high-profile foreign travel as vice president, indicating that his role is envisaged as an active one on the international scene.

[1] After that, he disappeared from sight for a long period, whether politically or on a personal level, with the emergence of rumors of his defection, only to return and appear in October 2018 with the Syrian poet residing in Tunisia Hadi Daniel.

[citation needed] After the outbreak of the Syrian revolution in 2011, Sharaa was seen as a possible replacement for Assad during a transitional period.

[5] Sharaa's absence from a July 2012 meeting between Bashar al-Assad and Annan led to reports he was under house arrest or had fled to Jordan.