The United States Ambassador to Syria is the official representative of the President of the United States to the President of Syria. From the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire in 1922 until 1944, Syria had been under the control of France as a part of the League of Nations French Mandate of Syria and Lebanon. The United States appointed George Wadsworth as Agent and Consul General to Syria and Lebanon on October 9, 1942, to provide a quasi-diplomatic presence in Damascus until the United States determined that Syria achieved effective independence in 1944. The United States recognized Syria as an independent state on September 8, 1944, when the Syrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jamil Mardam Bey, informed the United States that Syria fully recognized and would protect existing rights of