When President Donald Trump announced the lifting of US sanctions on Syria during his trip to the Middle East this week, it marked a major policy shift that could reshape the region and triggered a scramble across the US government to implement the decision, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
Trump administration officials had for months been carrying out quiet engagements to pave the way for sanctions relief and a potential high-level engagement with the former jihadist turned interim Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, but the announcement sanctions would swiftly be removed altogether took some officials by surprise, according to the sources.
“This was not an off-the-cuff decision by the president. The possibility had been discussed for months, but Trump barreled far beyond what was happening at the working level,” said a source familiar with the discussions.
The meeting would have been unimaginable until very recently. Syria had been engulfed by a brutal civil war that lasted more than a decade until al-Sharaa led forces that ousted Bashar al-Assad’s brutal government in December.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered some clarity on how the policy shift would work about 24 hours after Trump’s remarks: the US would issue waivers to Syria sanctions, which are currently required by law.
“If we make enough progress, we’d like to see the law repealed, because you’re going to struggle to find people to invest in a country when any in six months, sanctions could come back. We’re not there yet. That’s premature,” Rubio said.
The administration is now engaged in a complicated technical review of the sanctions, which is expected to take weeks, officials said. There are no limits on the administration’s authority to issue sanctions waivers, but the process will be time-consuming.
A Trump administration official explained Thursday that Treasury “will likely issue general licenses covering a broad range of the economy that is critical to rebuilding in the coming weeks.”
Trump ignored Israel’s concerns
Trump looked out into the crowd in Riyadh when he made his announcement on Tuesday and pointed to the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
“What I do for the crown prince,” Trump said as he made eye contact with bin Salman. “The sanctions were brutal and crippling and served as an important, really, an important function nevertheless at the time, but now it’s their time to shine. It’s their time to shine.”
The moment crystallized the major role that Saudi officials have played behind the scenes on the topic for months, making the case that removing sanctions would boost the Syrian economy and help to stabilize the entire region.
The Turkish government also had contacts with the US about Syria and knew about the work being done to see if the lifting of sanctions was possible, a source familiar with the matter said. The Turkish government expressed support for those efforts.
Trump said he made the decision to lift sanctions after speaking with the Saudi crown prince and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
When Trump’s major policy announcement came, both Turkey and Saudi Arabia were in the room. Bin Salman was there for the meeting with al-Sharaa and Erdogan joined virtually.
But not all US allies in the region were in favor of where Trump was headed: Israel had opposed the move and Trump ignored their objections.
An Israeli official told CNN that when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Trump in Washington in April, he asked the president not to remove sanctions on Syria, saying he feared it would lead to a repeat of the events of October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants attacked Israel.
On Friday, Trump acknowledged “I didn’t ask” Israel about the Syria sanctions relief.
“I thought it was the right thing to do,” he said as he wrapped up his tour of the Middle East.
Months of engagements
Trump’s meeting with al-Sharaa came after administration officials had been meeting with Syrians in his government for months as they worked on building a relationship with the incoming team and explored sanctions relief.
Syria’s Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani visited Washington for International Monetary Fund meetings in April where he had engagements with US officials with Syria’s finance minister, which followed a meeting between US and Syria officials in New York, said three sources familiar with engagements.
Both of those meetings drew on an initial engagement in March between US officials and al-Shaibani in Paris where the US laid out actions that would need to be taken to drive sanctions lifting, sources said. That framework included measures like cooperation on counterterrorism and work to destroy remaining chemical weapons.
Representatives for Syria also met with individuals outside of the US government as part of their “charm offensive” to push for the lifting of sanctions, said Jonathan Schanzer, the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank. Schanzer, who met with some of those representatives, said they sought to push the message that the new government is not the same as the Assad regime.
But State Department officials also cautioned members of Congress against visiting Syria earlier this year, said a Syrian American source familiar with the conversations.
“The State Department wanted to walk, not run, towards this outcome of working with al-Sharaa,” the source said.
As the steps were taken towards loosening sanctions and potentially working with al-Sharaa, two main figures have appeared to stand in opposition: the White House’s head of counterterrorism, Sebastian Gorka, and Joel Rayburn, who served as Trump’s Syria envoy during his first administration and has been nominated to head the Middle East portfolio for the State Department.
“I think there was a desire to create some space for the new government, but I think Gorka and team were reluctant to ‘normalize’ Sharaa,” said a former Trump administration official.
“Once a jihadi, always a jihadi,” was the feeling from Gorka, the former official said.
That sentiment was on display Thursday when Gorka said in an interview with Politico: “The fact remains: jihadis very rarely moderate after they win.”
He called the president’s meeting and message with al-Sharaa “absolute genius,” but emphasized the need for inclusion of minority groups in government and the combatting ISIS that the US expects of al-Sharaa.
“Now we will see whether the current acting head of state can deliver,” Gorka said skeptically, calling al-Sharaa by the nom-de-guerre he used as a jihadist fighter, “Jolani,” and calling his administration a “regime.”
Late last year, Rayburn also doubted that the world would support al-Sharaa as Syria’s new leader given his jihadist past, but during his confirmation hearing in the Senate on Thursday, he repeatedly promised to enact Trump and Rubio’s policies on Syria.
In a pointed question for Rayburn, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, asked about “rumors” of discussions about the possible assassination of al-Sharaa.
The concerns over the impact of al-Sharaa being killed was significant enough for Jordan’s King Abdullah to raise the issue when he met with senators on Capitol Hill earlier this month, Shaheen said.
“One of the things that was pointed out to us by King Abdullah was that a change in leadership of that kind would create an all-out civil war in Syria,” Shaheen said.
“I’m not familiar with efforts like that,” Rayburn responded, “but I think that’s clearly not in line with the president’s intention that he stated or his description of Mr. Sharaa in the past couple days.”
Complicated path ahead
As the Trump administration now barrels towards implementing the new policy, experts and groups supporting Syrian civil society say that the complexities are endless.
Some are making the case that lifting US export controls on Syria in order to allow US shipments into the country will be critical in addition to the sanctions relief for Syria to begin building its economy.
It is unclear if the interim Syrian government has agreed to all of the US demands, which came before Trump’s announcement.
Rubio said this week, however, that the al-Sharaa government had suggested they are committed to the principles outlined by the international community – inclusive government, peace with their neighbors including Israel, and driving out terrorists. He also said that Syria would make efforts to rid the country of chemical weapons with assistance from the US.
But Rubio also cautioned that driving towards a normalized relationship with the al-Sharaa government would not happen overnight.
“This is a new relationship. We’ve now known each other and known them for 24 hours,” Rubio told reporters. “Obviously, we want to see progress made, and we’ll take every step that they take, and it’ll be a long road, because it’s been a long time, so we recognize that, but this is a historic opportunity, and if it succeeds, we have a dramatic transformative effect on the region,” he said.
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