Triumph

Washington – For the leaders of the Syrian Transition Government, President Trump’s announcement earlier this week that the United States would raise all sanctions to the country was a relief after months of intense lobbying for a relief.

“I will order the cessation of the sanctions against Syria to give them the opportunity to greatness,” Trump said in an investment forum in the capital of Saudi Arabia, Riad, on Tuesday.

But within the Department of the Treasury, which manages and enforces the sanctions policy, the announcement was a surprise for the senior officials, the sources tell News themezone.

The announcement was also short in details, including what measures they would turn back and what rhythm. The lack of clarity sent senior officials to the Treasury to understand what he meant.

Now, there are discussions within the Treasury to determine the speed and the degree to which the sanctions of decades, which restrict economic activity within Syria and their treatment with other countries, can be backward.

A treasure spokesman said Friday: “President Trump is the commander in chief and the Treasury department is at the time of executing his historical vision to bring peace and stability to the Middle East.”

The Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Besent, who was traveling with the president, was aware of the announcement and part of the decision -making process.

The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said Thursday at a meeting of NATO foreigners ministers who was with Trump when he decided to include the announcement to raise all the sanctions to Syria in his speech in Riyadh. Rubio did not say when the president made the decision.

“This is something that had been discussed, worked, options considered for many weeks prior to this announcement and that we will implement what the president has announced as administration,” said the vice president of the State Department, Tommy Pigott, in an informative session on Thursday.

Some work was carried out in the Treasury before the president’s announcement for an incremental lifting of the sanctions, some of which date from 1979.

In fact, the Syrian transition government, led by interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa, has pushed the Trump administration for the relief of sanctions in recent months.

The new government has blamed the sanctions, which include sanctions to third countries for doing business in Syria, for their inability to pay the salaries of the civil service, rebuild the considerable pieces of the cities that are full of war and rebuild a medical care system decimated by war.

Türkiye and Saudi Arabia, two American allies in the region, have supported normalizing relations with the new Government of Syria. Both countries have provided help to Syria, and Saudi Arabia has offered to pay some of the country’s debts, two activities that could conflict with the sanctions. The Saudi see the opportunity to win the new Syrian government by their side, after decades of the allied country with its main regional rival, Iran, while the Assad regime was in power.

Relief was a key issue in meetings between Syrian officials, including the governor of the Central Bank Abdelkadir Husrieh and other world leaders in the FMI spring meetings and the World Bank last month in Washington.

Some of the most punitive measures were imposed in the last two decades in the old Bashar Al-Assad regime for human rights abuse and support for groups designated by the United States as terrorist organizations. The Assad government collapsed in December when rebel groups, including combatants led by Sharaa, extended to Damascus, ending a 13 -year civil war.

In 2003, then President George W. Bush signed Syria’s responsibility law, which focused on Syria’s support for terrorist groups designated by the United States such as Hezbollah, Syria’s military presence in Lebanon, the alleged development of weapons of mass destruction, smuggling of oil and support of armed groups in Iraq after the invention of the United States.

In 2011, the Obama administration directed an international effort to isolate Syria, which culminated in multiple rounds of sanctions, since Assad’s army fought against a bloody civil war against the rebel forces that led to half a million dead Syrians.

Another penalty package was imposed in 2019 as part of the Civil Protection Law of César Syria, also known as the “César Law” that Trump signed. The bill imposed strong sanctions on the Government and the companies or governments of Assad that worked with it, even more paralyzed the economy already isolated from Syria.

Rubio indicated in his comments in Turkey that relief can come in the form of exemptions that give permission to do business in Syria without facing sanctions for evading the sanctions, that the administration can issue under the authorities in the “César Law”.

“I think we want to start with the initial exemption, which will allow foreign partners who wanted to flow in help to start doing it without running the risk of sanctions,” Rubio said. He also suggested that the Trump administration can be in a “soon” position to ask legislators to permanently repeal some sanctions.

In:
• Sanctions
• Trump administration
• Syria