U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday lifted U.S. sanctions against Syria, signing an executive order to fulfill a promise he made in May.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters before the signing that Trump’s action was designed to “promote and support the country’s path toward stability and peace.”
When he met with the new president of Syria, Ahmad al-Sharaa, last month, Trump announced he would lift the devastating U.S. sanctions against Syria and asked al-Sharaa to meet certain conditions in hopes this would stabilize the country. These conditions included normalizing relations with Syria’s neighbors, including Israel, as well as the United States.
Ahmad al-Sharaa is a former Al-Qaeda insurgent who fought against U.S. forces in Iraq and served time in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison.
Targeted Sanctions Remain for Assad Regime
Senior officials from the Trump administration, who preceded the president’s action to suspend the sanctions program against Syria, stated that this would dismantle the executive branch’s sanctions architecture, while preserving provisions targeting Bashar Al-Assad, his associates, and other destabilizing forces still operating in the region.
The U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and the administration’s Special Envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack, described the executive order – which aims to work in conjunction with the general waiver significantly easing sanctions, issued by the U.S. in May – as an action by the president to “give these guys a chance,” referring to Syria’s interim government.
“You have a general who went from wartime to a position of being the leader of a newly reformulated country that needs everything, and that’s basically what has happened, but the vision and execution were limited by our imposition of sanctions. Syria needs to be given a chance, and that’s what has happened,” he said.
