President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday to end decades-old economic sanctions on Syria in “an effort to promote and support the country’s path to stability and peace,” according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
“This order supports United States national security and foreign policy goals by directing additional actions, including the removal of sanctions on Syria, the issuance of waivers that permit the relaxation of export controls and other restrictions on Syria, and other actions,” the order reads.
The U.S. is lifting the sanctions because Syria is in a better place politically than it was just six months ago, according to the order, due to the regime change that took place just before Trump took office for the second time. The former president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, succeeded his father and ruled the country from 2000 until December of last year, when he left the country fleeing from rebel forces that had risen against his authoritarian regime.
The order also says there have been positive developments in the country in recent months under the president of its new interim government, Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former Al-Qaeda affiliate who was behind the forces that drove out Assad. Sharaa publicly cut ties with the terrorist organization in 2016 and has remained a dominant figure in both the Syrian Civil War, which is still ongoing, and the political dynamics of Syria for more than a decade. Trump and Sharaa’s meeting in May during Trump’s visit to the Middle East was the first of its kind between the two countries in 25 years.
The order does not remove all sanctions, however.
“The order will remove sanctions on Syria, while maintaining sanctions on the former President Assad, his associates, human rights abusers, drug traffickers, persons linked to chemical weapons activities, ISIS and their affiliates and Iranian proxies,” Leavitt told reporters Monday.
On Thursday, Leavitt said that the administration’s hope was to see Syria join the Abraham Accords, a series of agreements brokered under the first Trump administration normalizing relations between Israel, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Morocco.
