Trump to sign executive order eliminating Syria sanctions program

Washington -President Trump will sign an executive decree on Monday afternoon to “end the United States sanctions program on Syria”, with the aim of supporting the country’s path to stability and peace, said the press secretary of the White House, Karoline Leavitt, during the press briefing on Monday.

The planned decree occurs after Mr. Trump announced in May During a trip to the Middle East, the United States would raise all sanctions in the country. In the Middle East, Trump met Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, who announced a transitional government in March. The Assad diet collapsed under the weight of an offensive of the opposition forces. Leavitt said the sanctions will remain on Bashar al-Assad, the former president of Syria.

“The ordinance will remove the sanctions against Syria while maintaining sanctions against the former president, Assad, his associates, human rights aggressors, drug traffickers, persons linked to chemical weapons, Islamic State and their affiliates, and Iranian proxies,” said Leavitt.

The transitional government of Syria has pushed the Trump administration for the relief of sanctions for months, and certain works have been underway to mitigate certain sanctions since before the president’s announcement.

Certain sanctions should still be officially revoked by the congress, and certain sanctions in place on Syria date back to 1979, when Syria was appointed sponsor of terrorism.

Last month, the Treasury Department published official guidelines refanting sanctions against banks, airlines and Al-Shaara. He also published directives for transactions approved in Syria, including infrastructure projects. The Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, said at the time that the measures were designed to encourage investment in Syria.

“As President Trump has promised, the Treasury Department and the State Department are implementing authorizations to encourage new investments in Syria,” said Bessent. “Syria must also continue to work to become a stable country which is at peace, and today’s actions will put, hope that the country will set the way to a brilliant, prosperous and stable future.”

The new transitional government blamed sanctions – which include penalties on third countries for having done business in Syria – for the country’s inability to pay the wages of the public service, to rebuild important pieces of cities ravaged by the war and to rebuild a health care system decimated by the war.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia, two American allies in the region, supported the standardization of relations with the new Syrian government. The two countries have provided aid to Syria and Saudi Arabia proposed to reimburse some of the country’s debts, two activities that may retain sanctions. The Saudis see the opportunity to win the new Syrian government alongside them, after decades of the country have combined with their first regional rival, Iran, while the Assad regime was in power.

Relief was a key subject in meetings between Syrian officials, including his governor of the central bank Abdelkadir Husrieh and other world leaders during SMI meetings and the World Bank last month in Washington.

Some of the most punitive measures have been imposed over the past two decades on the Assad regime for human rights violations and support for groups designated by the United States as terrorist organizations. The government of Assad collapsed in December while rebel groups, including fighters led by Sharaa, swept away Damascus, ending a 13 -year -old civil war.

In 2003, the president of the time, George W. Bush, signed the Syria’s responsibility law, which was focused on the support of Syria for terrorist groups designated by the United States such as Hezbollah, the Syrian military presence in Lebanon, as well as the alleged development of weapons of mass destruction, smoking oil and the support of armed groups in Iraq after the invasion of the United States 2003.

Kathryn Watson contributed to this report.