Cnn
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When President Donald Trump announced the Lifting American sanctions against Syria During his trip to the Middle East this week, he marked a major policy change that could reshape the region And triggered a rush through the US government to implement the decision, according to three familiar sources with the issue.
Trump administration officials have had silent commitments for months to open the way to sanctions relief and high -level potential commitment with the former jihadist who has become an interim Syrian President Ahmed Al-SharaaBut the sanctions of the advertisement would be quickly deleted took civil servants by surprise, according to sources.
“It was not a offbeat decision of the president. The possibility was discussed for months, but Trump exceeded what was going on in terms of work,” said a familiar source with discussions.
The meeting would have been unimaginable until very recently. Syria had been engulfed by a brutal civil war which lasted more than a decade until Al-Sharaa runs forces that ousted the brutal government of Bashar al-Assad in December.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave a certain clarity on the functioning of the policy change about 24 hours after Trump’s remarks: the United States made renunciations of sanctions in Syria, which are currently required by law.
“If we make enough progress, we would like to see the law repealed, because you are going to find it difficult to find people to invest in a country when it is all in six months, sanctions could return. We are not yet premature,” said Rubio.
The administration is now engaged in a complicated technical examination of sanctions, which is expected to take weeks, officials said. There is no limit to the authority of the administration to issue derogations from the sanctions, but the process takes time.
A Trump administration official explained Thursday that the Treasury “will probably deliver general licenses covering a wide range of the economy which is essential for reconstruction in the coming weeks”.
Trump watched the crowd in Riyadh when he made his announcement on Tuesday and underlined the Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman.
“What I do for the Crown Prince,” said Trump by establishing visual contact with Bin Salman. “The sanctions were brutal and paralyzing and served as an important function, really, an important function at the time, but now it’s time to shine. It’s time to shine.”
The moment has crystallized the major role that Saudi officials played behind the scenes on the subject for months, arguing that the abolition of sanctions would stimulate the Syrian economy and help to stabilize the whole region.
The Turkish government has also had contact with the United States on Syria and experienced the work carried out to see if the lifting of the sanctions was possible, said a familiar source with the case. The Turkish government has expressed its support for these efforts.
Trump said he made the decision to raise sanctions after talking to the Saudi crown prince and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
When Trump’s major political announcement came, Turkey and Saudi Arabia were in the room. Bin Salman was there for the meeting with Al-Sharaa and Erdogan joined virtually.
But all the American allies in the region were not in favor of the place where Trump was heading: Israel had opposed this decision and Trump ignored their objections.
An Israeli official told CNN that when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had met Trump in Washington in April, he asked the president not to remove the sanctions against Syria, saying that he feared that this will lead to a repetition of the events of October 7, 2023, when activists led by Hamas attacked Israel.
Trump on Friday, “I did not ask” I did not ask Israel to repair sanctions in Syria.
“I thought it was the right thing to do,” he said by finishing his visit to the Middle East.
Trump’s meeting with Al-Sharaa came after the administration officials met with the Syrians in his government for months when they worked on building a relationship with the incoming team and explored the sanctions.
Syrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Asaad Hassan Al-Shaibani, visited Washington for meetings of international monetary funds in April where he had engagement with American officials with the Minister of Syrian finance, who followed a meeting between the United States and Syria officials in New York, said three sources close to commitments.
These two meetings made an initial commitment in March between American officials and Al-Shaibani in Paris where the United States has carried out actions which should be taken to carry out sanctions, according to sources. This framework included measures such as cooperation on the fight against terrorism and work to destroy the remaining chemical weapons.
Representatives of Syria have also met individuals outside the American government in the context of their “charming offensive” to put pressure on for the lifting of sanctions, said Jonathan Schanzer, executive director of the For Defense of Democracies Think Tank. Schanzer, who met some of these representatives, said they had sought to push the message that the new government is not the same as the Assad regime.
But officials of the State Department also warned the members of the Congress against the visit of Syria earlier this year, said an American Syrian source familiar with conversations.
“The State Department wanted to walk, not to run, towards this work result with Al-Sharaa,” said the source.
While the steps were taken to loosen the sanctions and potentially work with Al-Sharaa, two main characters seemed to stand in the opposition: the chief of counter-terrorism of the White House, Sebastian Gorka, and Joel Rayburn, who served as the sending of the Syria de Trump during his first administration and was appointed to direct the portfolio of the Middle East for the State Department.
“I think there was a desire to create a little space for the new government, but I think that Gorka and the team were reluctant to” normalize “Sharaa,” said a former Trump administration official.
“Once Djihadi, still a jihadi,” was the feeling of Gorka, said the former official.
This feeling was exposed Thursday when Gorka said in an interview with Politico: “The fact remains: the jihadists very rarely moderate after winning.”
He called the meeting and a message from the president with the Al-Sharaa “absolute genius”, but underlined the need to include minority groups in the government and the fight against the Islamic State that the United States expects from Al-Sharaa.
“Now we will see if the current acting head of state can deliver,” said Gorka skeptically, calling Al-Sharaa by the name he used as a jihadist fighter, “Jolani”, and qualifying his administration as a “diet”.
At the end of last year, Rayburn also doubted that the world would support Al-Sharaa as a new chief of Syria given his jihadist past, but during his confirmation audience in the Senate on Thursday, he promised on several occasions to promulgate Trump and Rubio’s policies on Syria.
In a sharp question for Rayburn, senator Jeanne Shaheen, the best democrat of the foreign relations committee, asked questions about the “rumors” of discussions on the possible assassination of Al-Sharaa.
The concerns about the impact of the death of Al-Sharaa were important enough for King Jordan Abdullah to raise the question when he met the senators on Capitol Hill earlier this month, said Shaheen.
“One of the things that was highlighted to us by King Abdullah was that a change of leadership of this type would create a total civil war in Syria,” said Shaheen.
“I do not know efforts like that,” replied Rayburn, “but I think it is clearly not in line with the president he declared or his description of Mr. Sharaa in recent days.”
While the Trump administration is now presenting the implementation of the new policy, experts and groups supporting Syrian civil society say that the complexities are endless.
Some argue that the lifting of American export controls on Syria in order to allow American expeditions to the country is essential in addition to the reduction of sanctions to Syria to start building its economy.
It is not clear if the temporary Syrian government has accepted all American requests, which were preceded before Trump’s announcement.
Rubio, however, said this week that the Al -Sharaa government had suggested that they were attached to the principles described by the international community – the inclusive government, peace with their neighbors, including Israel and the conduct of terrorists. He also said that Syria would make efforts to get rid of the country with chemical weapons with the help of the United States.
But Rubio also warned that driving to a normalized relationship with the Al-Sharaa government would not take place overnight.
“This is a new relationship. We have known each other now and have known them for 24 hours,” Rubio told journalists. “Obviously, we want to see the progress made, and we will take every step that they will take, and it will be a long road, because it’s been a long time, so we recognize it, but it is a historical opportunity, and if it succeeds, we have a dramatic transformative effect on the region,” he said.