WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's administration on Friday granted Syria a temporary waiver from one crippling set of sanctions and eased restrictions on businesses as a first step in his pledge to end a half-century of penalties.
The moves follow Trump’s announcement last week that the U.S. would ease heavy financial penalties targeting Syria’s former autocratic rulers — in a bid to give the new interim government a better chance of survival after a 13-year civil war.
Friday’s measures by the State and Treasury departments waive a tough set of sanctions imposed by Congress in 2019 and expand U.S. rules for what foreign businesses can do in Syria. The administration did not say how long it would waive the congressional sanctions, but the law limits any presidential waiver to six months.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the relief from sanctions is meant “to encourage new investment into Syria. Syria must also continue to work towards becoming a stable country that is at peace, and today’s actions will hopefully put the country on a path to a bright, prosperous, and stable future.”
For more permanent relief, administration officials are debating the extent to which Syria’s transitional government should be required to meet tough conditions.
Syria is now led by Ahmad al-Sharaa, a former militant leader in charge of the overthrow of longtime leader Bashar Assad late last year. The U.S. and other allies hope al-Sharaa can stabilize Syria after a conflict that has left millions dead or displaced, the economy in ruins and thousands of foreign fighters still in the country.
“This is just one part of a broader U.S. government effort to remove the full architecture of sanctions imposed on Syria due to the abuses of the Bashar al-Assad regime,” the Trump administration said in a statement Friday.
U.S. presidents have piled up penalties against Syria's former leaders over the decades because of their support for Iranian-backed militias, a chemical weapons program and abuses of civilians. While those can be quickly lifted or waived through executive action like that taken Friday, Congress imposed some of the strictest measures and would have to permanently remove those.
Some Trump administration officials are pushing for relief as fast as possible without demanding tough conditions first. Others have proposed a phased approach, giving short-term waivers right away on some sanctions then tying extensions or a wider executive order to Syria meeting conditions. Doing so could substantially slow — or even permanently prevent — longer-term relief.
That would impede the interim government’s ability to attract investment and rebuild Syria after the war, critics say.
A welcome US announcement in Syria
People danced in the streets of Damascus after Trump announced in Saudi Arabia last week that he would be ordering a “cessation” of sanctions against Syria.
“We're taking them all off,” Trump said a day before meeting the country’s new leader. “Good luck, Syria. Show us something special.”
In testimony before U.S. lawmakers this week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio pushed for sanctions relief to start quickly, saying Syria’s transition government could be weeks from “collapse and a full-scale civil war of epic proportions.”
But asked what sanctions relief should look like overall, Rubio gave a one-word explanation: “Incremental.”
The sanctions include penalties for outside companies or investors doing business there. Syria needs tens of billions of dollars in investment to restore its battered infrastructure and help the estimated 90% of the population living in poverty.
Syria’s interim leaders “didn’t pass their background check with the FBI,” Rubio acknowledged to lawmakers this week. The group that al-Sharaa led, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, was originally affiliated with al-Qaida, although it later renounced ties and took a more moderate tone. It is still listed by the U.S. as a terrorist organization.
But al-Sharaa's government could be the best chance for rebuilding the country and avoiding a power vacuum that could allow a resurgence of the Islamic State and other extremist groups.
“If we engage them, it may work out, it may not work out. If we do not engage them, it was guaranteed to not work out,” Rubio said.
Debate within the Trump administration
Proposals were circulating among administration officials, including one shared this week that broadly emphasized taking all the action possible, as fast as possible, to help Syria rebuild, according to one of the U.S. officials familiar with the plan.
Another proposal — from State Department staff — that circulated last week proposes a three-phase road map, starting with short-term waivers then laying out sweeping requirements for future phases of relief or permanent lifting of sanctions, the official said.
Removing “Palestinian terror groups” from Syria is first on the list of conditions to get to the second phase. Supporters of sanctions relief say that particular condition might be impossible, given the subjectivity of determining which groups meet that definition and at what point they can be declared removed.
Other conditions for moving to the second phase are for the new government to take custody of detention facilities housing Islamic State fighters and to move forward on absorbing a U.S.-backed Kurdish force into the Syrian army.
To get to phase three, Syria would be required to join the Abraham Accords — normalized relations with Israel — and to prove that it had destroyed the previous government’s chemical weapons.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu previously pushed for the Trump administration not to lift sanctions on Syria. Israel has been suspicious of the new government, although Syrian officials have said publicly that they do not want a conflict with Israel.
Since Assad fell, Israel has launched hundreds of airstrikes and seized a U.N.-patrolled buffer zone in Syria.
Congressional sanctions on Syria will take much longer to lift
One of the most difficult penalties to lift could be the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, a wide-reaching set of sanctions passed by Congress in response to alleged war crimes by Assad’s government.
It specifically blocks post-war reconstruction, and although it can be waived for 180 days by executive order, investors are likely to be wary of reconstruction projects when sanctions could be reinstated after six months.
In a meeting last week in Turkey with Syria’s foreign minister, Rubio and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said permanent relief would require action by the Syrian government to meet conditions that the president laid out, according to other U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
“We have a moment here to provide some capability to this new government that should be conditions-based,” Graham said this week. “And I don’t want that moment to pass.”
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Sewell reported from Beirut. AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
Abby Sewell And Ellen Knickmeyer, The Associated Press
