Syria sanctions: Officials in the entire US government try to implement Trump's surprise announcement

Cnn
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When President Donald Trump announced the lifting of US sanctions on Syria during his trip to the Middle East this week, this was an important political change that redesigned the region and triggered a scramble in the US government in order to suspend the decision after three sources.

The Trump management officers had carried out calm commitments for months to pave the way for sanctions, and a potential high commitment with the former jihadist, who has changed the provisional Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa,, according to the sources, the announcement rates would quickly become surprising.

“This was not a decision by the President outside of the shadow. The opportunity had been discussed for months, but Trump drove far beyond what happened at work level,” said a source familiar with the discussions.

The meeting would have been unimaginable until recently. Syria was enlarged by a brutal civil war that lasted for more than a decade for al-Sharaa forces that breeded BASHAR al-Assad's brutal government in December.

Foreign Minister Marco Rubio made a clarity about how the political shift would work about 24 hours after Trump's comments: The United States would issue exceptional regulations against Syrian sanctions that are currently required by law.

“If we make enough progress, we would like to see the law abolished because they have difficulty finding people who invest in a country when sanctions come back in six months. We are not there yet. That is premature,” said Rubio.

The administration is now involved in a complicated technical review of the sanctions, which is expected to take weeks, said officials. The administration's authority does not give any limits to issue sanction exceptions, but the process will be time -consuming.

An official of the Trump Administration said on Thursday that the Ministry of Finance “will probably issue general licenses for a broad economic range that is of crucial importance for reconstruction in the coming weeks”.

Trump looked into the crowd in Riyadh when he made his announcement on Tuesday and pointed to the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.

“What I do for the crown prince,” said Trump when he took eye contact with Bin Salman. “The sanctions were brutal and crippled and served as an important function at this time, but now it is time to shine. It is your time to shine.”

At that moment, the most important role that Saudi civil servants had played behind the scenes on this topic had crystallized and made the case that the removal of sanctions would increase the Syrian economy and contribute to stabilizing the entire region.

The Turkish government also had contacts with the United States via Syria and knew that the work was done to determine whether sanctions were canceled, according to a source familiar with the matter. The Turkish government expressed 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 important political announcement came, both Turkey and Saudi Arabia were in the room. Bin Salman was practically joined for the meeting with Al-Sharaa and Erdogan.

But not all US allies in the region were in favor of where Trump was led: Israel had opposed the move and Trump ignored their objections.

An Israeli civil servant announced CNN when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Trump met in Washington in April, he asked the President to remove no sanctions on Syria, and feared that this would lead to a repeating of events from October 7, 2023, as a Hamas-led militant Israel.

On Friday, Trump admitted that I asked Israel about facilitating the sanctions in Syria.

“I thought it was the right thing,” he said when he put his tour through the Middle East.

Trump's meetings with Al-Sharaa took place after the administrative officials had met Syrians in his government for months when they worked on building a relationship with the arriving team and explored sanction aid.

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani visited Washington in April for International Monetary Fund meetings, where he was obliged with the US Minister of Finance Syria, who pursued a meeting between US and Syrian officials in New York, said three with the commitments.

In March, both meetings met between US officials and Al-Shaibani in Paris to an initial commitment where the United States took measures that would have to be taken at the level of sanctions, said sources. This framework included measures such as the combination of combining terrorism and work to destroy remaining chemical weapons.

The representatives of Syria also met with people outside the US government as part of their “charm offensive” to abolish the lifting of sanctions, said Jonathan Schanzer, the executive director of the foundation for the defense of the thought factory for democracies. Schanzer, who met with some of these representatives, said they tried to pass on the message that the new government was not the same as the Assad regime.

However, officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also warned the members of the congress against the visit of Syria at the beginning of this year, said a Syrian -American source who is familiar with the conversations.

“The Foreign Ministry did not want to run for this result of working with Al-Sharaa,” said the source.

When the steps to relax sanctions and to work with al-Sharaa were taken, two main characters seemed to be in opposition: the head of the fight against terrorism of the White House, Sebastian Gorka and Joel Rayburn, who served as a Trump-Syria-sent manner during his first administration and was nominated for the Middle East portfolio for the Ministry of the Ministry.

“I think there was the desire to make room for the new government, but I think Gorka and team hesitated to” normalize “Sharaa, said a former Trump administration official.

“Once a jihadi, always a jihadi,” said the former official.

This feeling was issued on Thursday when Gorka said in an interview with politico: “The fact remains: Dschihadis very rarely moderately moderate after the victory.”

He called the meeting and message of the president with al-Sharaa “Absolute Genius”, but emphasized the need to admit minority groups to the government and the struggle that the USA expect from al-Sharaa.

“Now we will see whether the current head of acting of the state can deliver,” said Gorka skeptically and called al-Sharaa from the Nom-de-Guerre, which he used as a jihadist fighter “Jolani” and described his administration as “regime”.

At the end of last year, Rayburn also doubted that the world would support Al-Sharaa as Syria's new leader in view of his Jihadist past, but during his hearing to confirm the Senate on Thursday, he repeated that Trump and Rubio's politics in Syria.

In a top question to Rayburn, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the highest democrat of the committee for foreign relations, asked about “rumors” about discussions about the possible murder of al-Sharaa.

The concerns about the effects of al-Sharaa, which was killed, was important for Jordan's king Abdullah to raise the problem when he met with senators on Capitol Hill in the early this month, said Shaheen.

“One of the things we pointed out by King Abdullah was that such a change of management would create a comprehensive civil war in Syria,” said Shaheen.

“I am not familiar with such efforts,” Rayburn replied.

Since the Trump administration now takes the implementation of new politics, experts and groups say that Syrian civil society support that complexity is endless.

Some make the case that the cancellation of US export controls for Syria will be critical in addition to the sanctions for Syria in order to build its economy.

It is unclear whether the provisional Syrian government has agreed to all US demands, which came before Trump's announcement.

Rubio said this week, however, that the Al-Sharaa government proposed to get involved with the principles published by the international community-inclusive government-inclusive government, including Israel and terrorists. He also said that Syria would make efforts to free the country of chemical weapons with the support of the United States.

Rubio also warned that driving to a normalized relationship with the alsharaa government would not happen overnight.

“This is a new relationship. We have known each other for 24 hours now and have known them for 24 hours,” Rubio told reporters. “Obviously we want to make progress and we will take every step you take and it will be a long way because it was a long time ago, so we recognize that, but this is a historical opportunity, and if it is successful, we have a dramatic transformer effect on the region,” he said.