Amman and Damascus Sign a 21-Sector Bilateral Bundle, Sixteen Months After Assad's Fall

King Abdullah II hosts the second Higher Coordination Council session with President al-Sharaa's foreign minister; the agenda covers border security, Yarmouk water rights, gas, electricity, the Hejaz Railway, and a trilateral trade corridor with Turkey.

Jordan and Syria signed approximately ten agreements and memoranda of understanding on Saturday at the second session of the Syrian-Jordanian Higher Coordination Council in Amman, the largest single bilateral package between the two countries since the December 2024 collapse of the Assad regime. King Abdullah II personally attended the session and described the bilateral as moving toward "comprehensive strategic relations." Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi co-chaired with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani, who characterised the meeting as "a distinctly Jordanian-Syrian day" and as the institutional consolidation of the post-Assad rapprochement. The agenda covered cooperation across approximately twenty-one sectors, structurally exceeding the substantive engagement Jordan had pursued through the abortive 2018-2024 Assad-era normalisation attempts.¹

The most consequential single element of the package is the joint security committee covering the 375-kilometre Jordan-Syria border. Established in principle by an agreement between Safadi and al-Shaibani in January 2025 — the first visit by an al-Sharaa-government foreign minister to Amman after the December 2024 collapse — the committee addresses the drug-and-arms-smuggling networks that intensified during the Syrian civil war and that Jordan had borne the security burden of containing largely alone. Jordan's 2023 airstrikes on Syrian narcotics-production sites were the most visible expression of the unilateral-enforcement posture the post-2025 cooperation framework supersedes.² The agreements also reactivate the Joint Water Committee on the Yarmouk Basin: the al-Sharaa government has committed to restoring Jordanian water rights that Foreign Minister Safadi characterised as "curtailed by the former Syrian authorities for around four decades." A follow-up technical meeting on April 18 with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation initiated the updating of the reference hydro-political study of the basin, including joint cloud-seeding projects.³

The energy and infrastructure components are similarly structural. A January 26, 2026 natural-gas agreement between the two countries, reactivated in this package, was expected to begin Egyptian-gas-via-Jordan deliveries to Syria within days of the council session pending technical-procedure completion. The agreements review the planned electricity interconnection between the Syrian and Jordanian grids and trilateral digital-economy initiatives with Saudi Arabia. The most ambitious infrastructure component is the revival of the Hejaz Railway: an April 9, 2026 trilateral deal among Turkey, Syria, and Jordan launched a regional trade corridor prioritising the railway sector, with the stated objective of linking southern Europe to Aqaba on the Red Sea within five years; Turkish Transport Minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu confirmed Turkey is helping replace approximately thirty kilometres of Syrian track lost during the civil war.⁴ New trade-facilitation measures take effect May 1, 2026 on a reciprocity basis, with the al-Shaibani-Safadi framework explicitly aiming to resume transit-trade flows and to improve port access for goods movement between the two countries.

The bilateral sits within a transformed regional architecture. The December 2024 Assad collapse and the subsequent al-Sharaa transitional government — formally consolidated through the January 29, 2025 Syrian Revolution Victory Conference and the March 11, 2025 SDF-integration agreement with commander Mazloum Abdi — opened the political space the Assad-era frozen relations had foreclosed. Turkey has emerged as the structural anchor of post-Assad Syria; al-Sharaa's first two foreign visits were to Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Atlantic Council analysis describes Turkey as having "converted its mentorship of the Assad-government replacement into major strategic benefits" and as serving as "intermediary to help Syria's new rulers develop their relations with Gulf countries."⁵ The February 12, 2026 US withdrawal from the al-Tanf base in southeastern Syria, handing the position to Syrian government forces, removed the principal external strategic-position from the tri-border area and substantially shifted the security architecture in which the Jordan-Syria cooperation now operates. The late-February 2026 US-Israeli strikes on Iran further weakened the Iranian regional position the Assad regime had partly anchored.

Two questions are unresolved. First, implementation. Jordan's 2018-2024 Assad-era normalisation attempts produced sustained disappointment despite high-level engagement; the substantive question is whether the al-Sharaa government can deliver on the structural cooperation across the twenty-one sectors given the substantial state-capacity degradation that thirteen years of civil war produced. The Yarmouk water restoration in particular requires substantial infrastructure investment and sustained technical cooperation; the Hejaz Railway revival is a five-year project on an ambitious timeline. Second, the position of southern Syrian minorities — particularly the Druze of Suwayda governorate, where July 2025 clashes with Bedouin groups produced a transitional-government military deployment, where Druze leader Hikmat al-Hijri declared a "temporary autonomous government" in August 2025, and where the broader Druze relationship with the central Syrian state remains contested. The April 12 agreements consolidate Damascus-Amman state-to-state cooperation that, in the southern-Syrian peripheries, the central state's authority is not uniformly recognised.

1. 01 /
   Jordan and Syria sign 10 agreements on strategic partnership and regional connectivity at Higher Coordination Council session — Anadolu Agency / SANA / Asharq Al-Awsat
   April 12, 2026
2. 02 /
   Jordan-Syria joint security committee announcement: 375-kilometre border, drug and arms smuggling, ISIS-resurgence prevention — Reuters
   January 7, 2025
3. 03 /
   Yarmouk Basin water-rights restoration; Joint Water Committee reactivation; Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation hydro-political study update — SANA / Petra News Agency
   April 12-18, 2026
4. 04 /
   Turkey-Syria-Jordan trilateral trade-and-railway corridor, Hejaz Railway revival, southern Europe-Aqaba five-year objective — The New Arab / Anadolu Agency
   April 9-16, 2026
5. 05 /
   Turkey as structural anchor of post-Assad Syria; intermediary role with Gulf countries — Atlantic Council MENASource
   February 19, 2025
6. 06 /
   US withdrawal from al-Tanf base in southeastern Syria; handover to Syrian government forces — Reuters
   February 12, 2026
7. 07 /
   March 2025 SDF-Damascus integration agreement; Mazloum Abdi-al-Sharaa framework — Reuters / SANA
   March 11, 2025
8. 08 /
   July 2025 Suwayda clashes; August 2025 al-Hijri autonomous-government declaration — Carnegie Middle East Center
   January 20, 2026
9. 09 /
   December 2024 Assad regime collapse; al-Sharaa transitional government formation — Reuters / NYT / Atlantic Council
   December 8, 2024 - January 29, 2025
10. 10 /
    Jordan-Syria post-collapse rapid normalization: January 2025 first al-Shaibani Amman visit through April 2026 Higher Coordination Council — Petra News Agency / SANA
    January 2025 - April 2026
11. 11 /
    Jordan 2023 airstrikes on Syrian narcotics-production sites; unilateral border-enforcement posture pre-2025 — Reuters / Times of Israel
    2023
12. 12 /
    UNHCR Syrian refugee returns from Jordan: 281,501 by March 5, 2026 — UNHCR Comprehensive Overview of Refugee Returnees
    March 5, 2026