U.S. Legitimizing Al-Sharaa (Al-Joulani) Without Demanding Full Compliance With Conditions And While Ignoring His Constitutional Declaration

Memri

7 days ago

During the March 2025 donor conference for Syria, the U.S. presented the new Syrian regime, headed by Ahmed Al-Sharaa – formerly known as Abu Muhammad Al-Joulani, head of the Hay'at Tahrir Al-Sham organization (HTS)[1] – with eight conditions for easing the sanctions on Syria. An April report in the Saudi magazine Al-Majalla outlined these conditions, which were never officially disclosed, and also indicated that the Syrian regime had begun to address some but not all of them. The conditions include: allowing access to all Syrian chemical weapons sites and related infrastructure; assuming responsibility for detention centers holding ISIS prisoners and for camps in northeast Syria where their families are held, which are controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces, comprising largely Kurds supported by the U.S.; cooperating with the U.S.-led international coalition for fighting ISIS; investigating the fate of U.S. nationals missing in Syria; banning the activity of Palestinian factions in Syria and expelling their members from the country; preventing Iranian presence in Syria and designating Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), as well as the Lebanese Hizbullah, as terror organizations; allowing the U.S. to carry out military strikes in Syria against elements threatening its security, and refraining from appointing foreign fighters to senior command roles.[2]
Although Al-Sharaa had not fully complied with these demands, on May 13, 2025 U.S. President Donald Trump announced, during a visit to Saudi Arabia, that the U.S. sanctions on Syria would be lifted. Moreover, on the following day he met with Al-Sharaa in Riyadh – which was the first encounter between the heads of the two countries in 25 years and marked the renewal of diplomatic relations between them. The meeting was attended in person by Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman and remotely by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The Trump-Al-Sharaa meeting in Riyadh (Image: T.me/SyPresidency, May 14, 2025).
In accordance with Trump's announcement, on May 23 U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the easing of sanctions included a 180-day waiver of mandatory sanctions under the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019,[3] in order to allow investments in Syria and advance its recovery and reconstruction."[4] The same day, the U.S. Treasury Department issued immediate sanctions relief for Syria, and authorized transactions with the new Syrian government and with individuals who had previously been banned. Among these figures was Al-Sharaa,[5] who was under sanctions due to his past as the head of Hay'at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), an organization that had ties to ISIS and Al-Qaeda and was designated terrorist by a number of countries, including the U.S. On July 7, 2025 the U.S. removed HTS from its terror list.
In this process of legitimizing the Al-Sharaa regime, the U.S. was also not deterred by the Constitutional Declaration of the Syrian Arab Republic, a document ratified by Al-Sharaa on March 13, 2025 that serves as Syria's constitution for the transition period, which is to last at least five years.[6] This constitution concentrates control of the three branches of government in the hands of the president, who is responsible for appointing members of parliament, members of government, judges in the High Constitutional Court and members of the Syrian National Security council. Absent from the declaration are oversight apparatuses, checks and accountability requirements for the president, and it does not state that the people are the source of the government's power. Therefore it is perceived by many as a means of cementing Al-Sharaa's role as a dictator. Minority groups, especially Kurds and Druze, have stated that it does not reflect Syria's diversity and places decision-making in the hands of a single sector, namely the Sunnis.[7]