US President Donald Trump will hold a series of bilateral meetings and two high-profile summits next Tuesday on the sidelines of the G7 summit in the French city of Evian, in an intensive diplomatic move focused on the Middle East and the Ukraine crisis, senior administration officials said.
A senior U.S. official told Reuters that Trump "will hold a summit with Middle East leaders on Tuesday on the sidelines of the G7 summit," without specifying the names of Arab leaders who will attend the summit.
"We believe that we have reached a very strong agreement with Iran and Pakistan's statements today confirm this, and the agreement obliges Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz as a prerequisite and potentially open it without any fees," the US official said.
The official added: "The United States will end its naval blockade of Iran, in conjunction with the step of opening the Strait of Hormuz, and the phase after the opening of the Strait of Hormuz will witness an intensive and simultaneous operation to clear the sea mines
"Britain and France have discussed the formation of a naval alliance with military ships nearby, ready to participate in demining in the Strait of Hormuz, and the United States will participate heavily in demining operations in the Strait of Hormuz to quickly restore normalcy," he said.
President Al-Shara Participates in the G7 Summit
President Ahmed al-Sharaa is expected to participate in the G7 summit as a guest of honor, in a move that is the first of its kind since the group's founding in 1975, as previous reports said that the Syrian finance minister received the invitation by hand during his participation in the closed-door preliminary financial talks and meetings of the G7 finance ministers and central bank governors held in Paris on May 18.
Nine non-member countries are participating as guests at the summit along with Syria, after the French presidency issued official invitations to these countries to participate in the working sessions dedicated to development, artificial intelligence and global supply chains.
The list of invited countries extends to countries from the Middle East and the Arabian Gulf such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, in addition to emerging economic powers and prominent international partners such as India, Brazil, South Korea and Kenya, as well as Ukraine, which is attending in the context of international attention to the ongoing war on its territory.
According to Western reports, this broad participation reflects a French trend to open the summit discussions to the countries most influential in global economic and technological transformations, and to involve emerging regional powers in the formulation of the summit's outcomes, including files related to the reshaping of global supply chains and the development of regulatory frameworks for artificial intelligence.
The Syrian Agenda at the Evian Summit
During its participation in the summit, Syria is focusing on presenting a comprehensive vision of Syria's position in the next phase, as it seeks to highlight the country as a strategic logistics hub and an alternative corridor in global supply chains, in light of the turmoil that affected international navigation traffic following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
On the economic side, the participation aims to mobilize support for reconstruction plans and open new channels of trust with international financial institutions, especially the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, in addition to discussing mechanisms for reintegrating the Syrian economy into the global system after the lifting of previous Western sanctions.
Syria hopes that participation in the summit will be a practical step towards restoring Syria's position in the international economic system and expanding investment partnerships.
When was the G7 founded?
The G7 was officially established in 1975, before later becoming the G8 and returning to its current format after Russia's exclusion following its annexation of Crimea in 2014.
The G7 is an international political and economic forum that includes the world's 7 largest industrialized and developed countries, which have the largest share of global wealth and international trade, and the membership of the group includes the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan, while the European Union participates in all meetings as a permanent member not represented as an independent country.
The Group operates as an informal forum that does not have a fixed institutional structure or a secretariat, does not issue legally binding decisions, but is based on political and economic coordination among the leaders of member States. Each country holds the presidency of the group for a one-year term, during which time it oversees the organization of ministerial meetings and the hosting of the annual summit.
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