Trump's pledge to lift Syrian sanctions faces a complex road

Miami Herald

16-05-2025

U.S. President Donald Trump says he's ready to ease sanctions on Syria. He won't be able to do it quickly.
The American leader sat down with Syrian counterpart Ahmed Al-Sharaa in Riyadh on Wednesday - the first meeting between heads of the two countries in 25 years - after unexpectedly saying he would drop all sanctions against the war-ravaged country and even look to normalize relations.
The move was seen as a highlight of Trump's trip to the Arabian Peninsula this week, but actual implementation will be a protracted and thorny challenge. The White House made clear it's not a one-way street, saying the president urged Sharaa to take steps in return, including cooperation in combating terrorism and getting rid of all foreign fighters in Syria, and agreeing to ties with Israel.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will have to wade through layers of strict restrictions imposed on Syria over the past 45 years, covering everything from finance to energy. He met with his counterpart Asaad Al-Shaibani on Thursday in the Turkish coastal city of Antalya on the sidelines of a North Atlantic Council gathering.
Turkey's Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and his aides sat in on the meeting, according to video released by Syria's official news agency. Ankara, which shares the longest border with Syria and maintains troops in the country, is a crucial backer and partner of the current government in Damascus. It supported the rebels who fought the previous regime.
For starters, Trump plans to seek a 180-day waiver to sanctions imposed by Congress, with the longer-term goal being to remove the restrictions entirely, Rubio told reporters right after the Antalya meeting. Just before Syria's longtime leader, Bashar Assad, was overthrown in December, the U.S. renewed the 2019 Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, which penalizes almost anyone who does business with Syria.
"Ultimately, if we make enough progress, we'd like to see the law repealed," Rubio said. "We're not there yet. That's premature. We want to start with the initial waiver, which will allow foreign partners who wanted to flow in aid to begin to do so without running the risk of sanctions."
Earlier this year, the State Department demanded Sharaa's government show progress on a list of critical issues as a precondition for lifting sanctions. They included the items shared by Trump with Sharaa in Riyadh.
In tandem and as a stopgap measure, the U.S. plans to issue general licenses covering a broad swath of the economy in the coming weeks, according to a Treasury official who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations. General licenses allow for certain types of business transactions without requiring companies to apply for explicit permission.
Trump can lift sanctions issued by executive order but some, like the Caesar Act, will need a vote in Congress to be repealed, according to Caroline Rose, a Syria expert and research director at the Washington-based New Lines Institute.
"The road ahead with sanctions relief will be long and complicated," she said. "There are still many skeptics to Syria normalization and sanctions relief, particularly among Republican Party members."
Another issue is that Sharaa, Shaibani and many other members of the present Syrian government are former commanders of an Al-Qaeda-affiliated group implicated by the United Nations Security Council in war atrocities. Sharaa, who previously ran an Islamist protostate in northwest Syria, overthrew Assad in December after a rebel offensive.
"There's a lot that needs to be done, including by the Syrian administration," Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan told reporters Wednesday. "Syria won't be alone - the kingdom and the rest of our international partners will be at the forefront of those supporting this effort and economic rebirth."
One immediate boost for Sharaa's government will come from Qatar, which has U.S. backing to begin dispersing almost $30 million a month for civil servant salaries, according to two people involved in finalizing the arrangement.
That will provide at least a start for the new Syrian administration, which is faced with an economy devastated by more than a decade of war and in need of as much as $400 billion for rebuilding costs, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International peace.
"We welcome all investors: children of the nation inside and outside, our Arab and Turkish brothers and friends from around the world," Sharaa said in a speech on Wednesday night.
Supporters of Sharaa inside and out of Syria, including Saudi Arabia, see Trump's move as a brave decision that isolates extremists within the Syrian leader's Sunni Islamist-dominated administration. Some were involved in massacring hundreds of civilians from a minority sect in March in the country's coastal region following an attack on Sharaa's forces, according to Mazen Darwish, one of Syria's most prominent human rights activists.
The move by Trump also helps further exclude Iran, Assad's main patron, and ensure China doesn't make significant inroads. Investment opportunities will instead fall to regional powers friendly to the U.S. such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
"The main concern in the business community has been that we don't want to be seen working with what has been designated as a terrorist government by the West," said Majd Abbar, a Dubai-based Syrian-American information-technology executive, who has lobbied officials in Washington to lift sanctions and met with Sharaa multiple times.
"Now that these sanctions will be lifted, everyone is going to jump on board to invest in Syria," he said. "It's practically a white canvas - there's nothing there."
Syria, which is technically still at war with Israel, has been under myriad U.S. sanctions since its 1979 designation by Washington as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Relations thawed in the 1990s when Damascus joined the U.S.-led coalition that ousted Saddam Hussein from Kuwait and engaged in peace talks with Israel. But after replacing his father in 2000, Assad deepened ties with Iran and was accused by the U.S. of supporting the insurgency in Iraq following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
That triggered additional sanctions by Washington, and further rounds followed from 2011 when Assad mounted a brutal crackdown against his opponents, spawning a decade-long conflict that killed almost 500,000 people and displaced millions more.
Before Trump's announcement, many in his administration, such as Sebastian Gorka, were strongly opposed to removing sanctions or dealing with Sharaa, seeing him as a committed jihadist who is masking his real intentions. Gorka and others point to the fact Sharaa joined Al-Qaeda in Iraq after Hussein's toppling to fight and kill Americans as well as Iraqis associated with the post-Hussein order.
At their meeting in Riyadh, Trump urged Sharaa to take certain steps, according to a White House readout of the conversation, which was attended by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Those include the deportation of Palestinian militants and other extremists from Syria, and helping with the effort to prevent the resurgence of Islamic State.
Israel was quick to intervene militarily in Syria after Assad's ouster, launching a series of airstrikes on arms-storage sites and extending its occupied land in Syria's southwest. It also stepped in to defend the Druze community after violent clashes between the minority group and government forces.
The country's attitude toward Syria "is more skeptical, we are approaching matters in a slower manner," Danny Danon, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, told Army Radio on Thursday. "We want to see that there really is stability in Syria, that this regime doesn't only talk, it also takes action."
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-With assistance from Dan Williams, Jordan Fabian, Fiona MacDonald, Julius Domoney and Natalia Drozdiak.
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