Trump signs the order to remove sanctions against Syria under a new direction

President Donald Trump Signed a decree to officially raise all sanctions against Syria on Monday afternoon.

“The United States is determined to support a stable, unified and peaceful Syria with itself and its neighbors,” said the order, while directing the Secretaries of State, Trade and Treasury to relieve sanctions and renounce export controls.

“This is in an effort to promote and support the country’s path to stability and peace. Order will remove sanctions against Syria while maintaining sanctions against former President Assad or his associates, human rights aggressors, drug traffickers, people related to chemical weapons, Isis and their affiliates and Iranian proxies,” said Karoline Leavitt of the White House press, Leavitt.

Trump is “determined to support a stable, unified and peaceful Syria with herself and her neighbors,” said Leavitt.

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Trump met the Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa last month in Saudi Arabia. (AP)

Ambassador Tom Barrack, Trump’s envoy to Syria, described the new order of “tedious, detailed and excruciating process” to disentangle the sanctions that have been in place for decades on the regime of Bashar al-Assad, which had supervised a nation in the civil war for more than a decade.

Brad Smith, the under-secretary of the Treasury Department for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said that the sanctions would remain “if necessary”, including on Assad and its associates and any other destabilizing regional player.

Smith said that Assad’s fall was a “new start” for the Syrian people and that Trump had decided that American sanctions “would not obstruct what could be a better future for the country”.

But he warned: “The United States will always remain vigilant when our interests and security are threatened, and the Treasury will not hesitate to use our authorities to protect us and international financial systems.”

Some sanctions will still have to be raised by the Congress, and others date from 1979, when Syria was designated sponsor of state of terrorism. The administration has not yet lifted this designation.

Trump met last month with the new interim chief of Syria, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, during a visit to the Middle East.

Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa meets President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in this document released on May 14, 2025. (Saudi agency / press document via Reuters)

From the bonus of $ 10 million on the head to sit with the American president, the Syrian chief’s recovery was remarkable.

The Al-Sharaa group, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a Syrian militant organization founded as alcolarization of Al-Qaeda, overthrew Assad in March.

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The United States has imposed sanctions on Syria for years under the regime of Bashar al-Assad. (Reuters)

Al-Sharaa had campaigned hard for a relationship with Washington and sanctioned relief: he proposed to build a Trump tower in Damascus, relaxation with Israel and access to the United States for Syria oil and gas. He worked to soften the image of HTS and promised an inclusive governance structure.

US sanctions have included financial sanctions on any foreign person or company that has provided significant support for the Syrian government and has prohibited anyone in the United States from dealing in any Syrian entity, including oil and gas. Syrian banks were also actually cut off from global financial systems.

The new order comes as Israeli and Syrians officials are engaged in rear channel talks on a potential security and standardization agreement.

Israel and Syria have long been enemies, and some Israeli officials fear that raising all sanctions against Syria means abandoning “lever” to put them on an agreement to normalize links with Israel.

At this point, a senior administration official retaliated: “We have always said that we are not part of the nation. It is for the benefit of Syria to look towards Israel.”

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“The president has snatched the sanctions without any prerequisite,” said the official. “The lever effect is not what we want to do.”

The war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza complicated any movement on the standardization agreements between Israel and its neighbors. But the manager predicted: “There will be peace in Gaza.”