Treasury officials are surprised by Trump's decision to lift Syria sanctions
Washington -For the leaders of Syria's transitional government, President Trump announced earlier this week that the United States would lift all sanctions on the country after months of fierce lobbying for probation.
“I will order the sanctions on Syria to give them a great opportunity,” Trump said at an investment forum in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday.
Sources told CBS News that the announcement surprised senior officials within the Treasury Department, which manages and enforces sanctions policies.
The announcement also lacks details, including what measures will be taken and at what pace. The lack of clarity has led senior officials of the Ministry of Finance to scramble to understand what he means.
Now, there are some discussions within the Ministry of Finance to determine the speed and extent of decades of sanctions (restricting Syria and its economic activity with other countries).
“President Trump is the commander-in-chief and the Treasury Department is working to implement his historic vision to bring peace and stability back to the Middle East,” a Treasury spokesman said Friday.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday at a meeting of NATO's foreign ministers that he was with Mr. Trump when he decided to announce that all sanctions against Syria would be included in his speech in Riyadh. Rubio did not say when the president would make a decision.
“This has been discussed, worked, and the option has been considered for weeks before this announcement, and we will implement the matter that the president declared as the government,” State Department Deputy Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott said in a briefing Thursday.
Before the news of the president's announcement of the lifting of sanctions, the Treasury Department was working on some work, some of which date back to 1979.
Indeed, Syria’s transitional government (led by interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa) has pushed for the Trump administration’s sanctions relief in recent months.
The new government accused sanctions (including penalties for third countries to conduct business in Syria) because it could not pay civil servants’ salaries, rebuilding a large number of wars that swept the cities and rebuilding the health care system that was destroyed by the war.
Türkiye and Saudi Arabia, two U.S. allies in the region, have supported normal relations with the new Syrian government. Both countries have provided assistance to Syria, and Saudi Arabia has offered to pay off some of the country's debts, both activities that could violate sanctions. The Saudis saw a chance to win the new Syrian government as the country has been allied with their highest regional rival, Iran, for decades, while the Assad regime is in power.
Reliefs are a key theme in the meeting between Syrian officials, including its central bank governor Abdelkadir Husrieh and other world leaders at the IMF and World Bank spring meetings held last month in Washington.
Over the past two decades, some of the most punitive measures have been imposed on the former regime of Bashar al-Assad to violate human rights and support groups designated by the United States as terrorist organizations. The Assad government collapsed in December, including rebellious groups, including fighter jets led by Sharaa, swept Damascus and ended a 13-year civil war.
In 2003, then-President George W. Bush signed the Syrian Responsibility Act as a law, which focused on Syria's support for Syrian terrorist groups such as Syria's military presence in Lebanon, allegedly developed weapons of mass killing, developed weapons of mass killing, and in our eradicated Iraqi armed groups, we supported the armed groups in Iraq.
In 2011, the Obama administration led an international effort to isolate Syria (eventually reaching multiple sanctions) as Assad's army engaged in a bloody civil war with the rebels, killing half a million people.
Another sanction was imposed in 2019 as part of the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, also known as the Caesar Act, signed into law by Mr. Trump. The bill imposed severe sanctions on Assad's government and the companies or governments they cooperate with, further weakening Syria's already isolated economy.
Rubio pointed out in his speech in Turkey that relief could come in the form of exemptions, allowing business in Syria without facing penalties for evading sanctions, and that the government could issue it under the authorities in the Caesar Act.
“I think we want to start with the initial exemption, which will allow foreign partners who want to start aid without taking sanctions risk,” Rubio said. He also suggested that the Trump administration could “quickly” ask lawmakers to permanently repeal some sanctions.
