Trump’s decision was taken to lift the sanctions of Syria, the treasury employees

Washington For the leaders of the transitional government in Syria, President Trump’s announcement earlier this week that the United States will raise all sanctions on the country as relief after months of severe pressure to re -postpone it.

“I will ask sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance of greatness,” Mr. Trump said in an investment forum in the capital of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.

But within the Treasury, which runs and imposes the sanctions policy, the announcement was a surprise for senior officials.

The advertisement was also short in detail, including measures to be deported, quickly. Send the lack of clarity with senior cabinet officials scrambling to understand what it means.

Now, there are discussions within the Ministry of Treasury to determine the speed and the extent that the sanctions that date back to contracts-which restrict economic activity inside Syria and deal with other countries will decrease.

At the time of publication, a cabinet spokesman did not respond to the comment.

Foreign Minister Marco Rubio said on Thursday at a meeting of ministers abroad in NATO that he was with Mr. Trump when he decided to include the announcement of the lifting of all sanctions on Syria in his speech in Riyadh. Rubio did not say when the president made the decision.

“This is something that has been discussed and worked on, and the options that were considered for several weeks before this announcement and that we will implement what the president announced as an administration,” said the deputy spokesman for the Director of the Foreign Ministry, Tommy Begut, told a press conference on Thursday.

Some of the works were underway in the Treasury before the president announced the lifting of the increasing sanctions, some of which dates back to 1979.

In fact, the Syrian transitional government-the leadership of interim President Ahmed Al-Shara-has pushed the Trump administration to relief sanctions in recent months.

The new government blames sanctions-which includes sanctions on the third countries to do business in Syria-because of its inability to pay civil service salaries, rebuild large parts of the cities overpowered by the war and rebuild the health care system analyzed by the war.

Türkiye and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, two American allies in the region, have supported the normalization of relations with the new government in Syria. Both countries have provided assistance to Syria and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia I offered to bear fruit Some of the country’s debts, two activities that can be opposed with sanctions. The Saudis see an opportunity to win the new Syrian government alongside them, after decades from the country allied with their supreme regional rival, Iran, while the Assad regime was in power.

Relief was a major topic in the meetings between Syrian officials, including the governor of the Central Bank, Abd al -Kaddar Hausre, and other world leaders in the meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank last month in Washington.

Some of the most punitive measures over the past two decades have been imposed on the former regime of Al -Assad’s interests due to human rights violations and the support of groups set by the United States as terrorist organizations. The Assad government collapsed in December when the rebel groups, including the fighters led by Shara, Damascus, were swept, where it ended a 13 -year civil war.

In 2003, then President George W. Bush signed the Accountability Law in Syria in the law, which focuses on Syria’s support for terrorist groups designed in Syria and the presence of Syria’s military in Lebanon, on the development of weapons from mass destruction, oil smuggling and support of armed groups in Arq after the American invasion.

In 2011, the Obama administration led an international effort to isolate Syria – its climax in multiple rounds of sanctions – as the Assad Army fought a bloody civil war against the rebel forces that led to half a million dead Syrians.

Another package of sanctions was imposed in 2019 as part of the Syrian Civil Protection Law, also known as the “Caesar Law”, which was signed by Mr. Trump in the law. The draft law imposed severe sanctions on the Assad government, companies or governments that it worked with, which increases the already isolated economy in Syria.

In his statements in Türkiye, Rubio indicated that relief may come in the form of exemptions that grant permission to carry out business in Syria without facing sanctions on evading sanctions, which the administration can issue under the authorities in the “Caesar Law”.

“I think we want to start with the initial concession, which will allow foreign partners who want to flow to help to start doing this without the risk of sanctions,” said Rubio. He also suggested that the Trump administration be in a “soon” position to ask legislators to permanently cancel some sanctions.