Trump's pledge to lift Syrian sanctions faces a complex road

U.S. President Donald Trump says he’s ready to ease sanctions on Syria. He won’t be able to do it quickly.

The American leader sat down with Syrian counterpart Ahmad al-Sharaa in Riyadh on Wednesday — the first meeting between heads of the two countries in 25 years — after unexpectedly saying he would drop all sanctions against the war-ravaged country and even look to normalize relations.

The move was seen as a highlight of Trump’s trip to the Arabian Peninsula this week, but actual implementation will be a protracted and thorny challenge. The White House also made clear it’s not a one-way street, saying the president urged al-Sharaa to take steps in return, including helping to fight terrorism and agreeing to ties with Israel.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will have to wade through layers of strict restrictions imposed on Syria over the past 45 years — covering everything from finance to energy — and met his counterpart Asaad al-Shaibani on Thursday in Turkey.

For starters, Trump plans to seek a 180-day waiver to sanctions imposed by Congress, with the longer-term goal of removing the restrictions entirely, Rubio told reporters on Thursday. Just before Syria’s longtime leader, Bashar al-Assad, was overthrown in December, the U.S. renewed the 2019 Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, which penalizes almost anyone who does business with Syria.

“Ultimately, if we make enough progress, we’d like to see the law repealed,” Rubio said. “We’re not there yet. That’s premature. We want to start with the initial waiver, which will allow foreign partners who wanted to flow in aid to begin to do so without running the risk of sanctions.”

The Treasury Department also plans to issue general licenses covering a broad swath of the economy in the coming weeks, according to a Treasury official who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations. General licenses allow for certain types of business transactions without requiring companies to apply for explicit permission.

Trump can lift sanctions issued by executive order but some, like the Caesar Act, will need a vote in Congress to be repealed, according to Caroline Rose, a Syria expert and research director at the Washington-based New Lines Institute.

“The road ahead with sanctions relief will be long and complicated,” she said. “There are still many skeptics to Syria normalization and sanctions relief, particularly among Republican Party members.”

Another issue is that al-Sharaa, al-Shaibani and many other members of the present Syrian government are former commanders of an Al-Qaeda-affiliated group implicated by the United Nations Security Council in war atrocities. Al-Sharaa, who previously ran an Islamist protostate in northwest Syria, overthrew Assad in December after a rebel offensive.

“There’s a lot that needs to be done, including by the Syrian administration,” Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan told reporters Wednesday. “Syria won’t be alone — the kingdom and the rest of our international partners will be at the forefront of those supporting this effort and economic rebirth.”

One immediate boost for al-Sharaa’s government will come from supporter Qatar, which has U.S. backing to begin dispersing almost $30 million a month for civil servant salaries, according to two people involved in finalizing the arrangement and two others with knowledge of the matter.

That will provide at least a start for the new Syrian administration, which is faced with an economy devastated by more than a decade of war and in need of as much as $400 billion for rebuilding costs, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International peace.

“We welcome all investors: children of the nation inside and outside, our Arab and Turkish brothers and friends from around the world,” al-Sharaa said in a speech on Wednesday night.

Supporters of al-Sharaa inside and out of Syria, including Saudi Arabia, see Trump’s move as a brave decision that isolates extremists within the Syrian leader’s Islamist-dominated administration. The move also excludes Iran, Assad’s main patron, and helps ensure China doesn’t make significant inroads.

Investment opportunities will instead fall to regional powers friendly to the U.S., like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

“The main concern in the business community has been that we don’t want to be seen working with what has been designated as a terrorist government by the West,” said Majd Abbar, a Dubai-based Syrian-American information-technology executive, who has lobbied officials in Washington to lift sanctions and met with al-Sharaa multiple times.

“Now that these sanctions will be lifted, everyone is going to jump on board to invest in Syria,” he said. “It’s practically a white canvas — there’s nothing there.”

Syria, which is technically still at war with Israel, has been under myriad U.S. sanctions since its 1979 designation by Washington as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Relations thawed in the 1990s when Damascus joined the U.S.-led coalition that ousted Saddam Hussein from Kuwait and engaged in peace talks with Israel. But after replacing his father in 2000, Assad deepened ties with Iran and was accused by the U.S. of supporting the insurgency in Iraq following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

That triggered additional sanctions by Washington, and further rounds followed from 2011 when Assad mounted a brutal crackdown against his opponents, spawning a decade-long conflict that killed almost 500,000 people and displaced millions more.

Before Trump’s announcement, many in his administration, such as Sebastian Gorka, were strongly opposed to removing sanctions or dealing with al-Sharaa, seeing him as a committed jihadist who is masking his real intentions. The State Department had demanded al-Sharaa’s government show progress on a number of critical issues as a precondition for the lifting of sanctions.

At their meeting in Riyadh, Trump urged al-Sharaa to take certain steps, according to a White House readout of the conversation, which was attended by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Those include the deportation of Palestinian militants and other foreign fighters from Syria, helping with the effort to prevent the resurgence of Islamic State and normalizing relations with Israel.

Israel was quick to intervene militarily after Assad’s ouster, launching a series of airstrikes on arms-storage sites and extending its occupied land in Syria’s southwest. It also stepped in to defend the Druze community after violent clashes between the minority group and government forces.

The country’s attitude toward Syria “is more skeptical, we are approaching matters in a slower manner,” Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, told Army Radio on Thursday. “We want to see that there really is stability in Syria, that this regime doesn’t only talk, it also takes action.”

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(With assistance from Dan Williams, Jordan Fabian, Fiona MacDonald, Julius Domoney and Natalia Drozdiak.)

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