Trump's decision to raise Syria's sanctions

Washington – For the leaders of the Transitional Government of Syria, President Trump's announcement began at the beginning of this week that the United States would increase all sanctions to the country, as a relief after months of intensive lobbying.

“I will order the attitude of sanctions against Syria to give them a chance of size,” Trump said on Tuesday in an investment forum in the capital of Saudi -Arabia, Riad.

In the finance department, which manages and interspersed sanction guidelines, the announcement for high -ranking civil servants surprised a surprise, as sources of CBS News tell.

The announcement was also not in relation to details, including the measures, and at what pace. The lack of clarity sent high -ranking civil servants in the Ministry of Finance to understand what he thought.

Now there are discussions in the Ministry of Finance to determine the speed and the extent that the economic activity within Syria and their handling of other countries can be restricted.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Finance said on Friday: “President Trump is the commander -in -chief and the finance department is in the castle to perform his historical vision to bring peace and stability back to the Middle East.”

Foreign Minister Marco Rubio said on Thursday at a meeting of NATO Foreign Minister that he was with Mr. Trump when he decided to accept the announcement to raise all sanctions against Syria in his speech in Riad. Rubio didn't say when the president made the decision.

“This is something in which the options were discussed for many weeks before this announcement, and that we will implement what the president has announced as an administration,” said Tommy Pigott, deputy spokesman for the deputy ministry of the US State Department in an briefing on Thursday.

Before the president's announcement for an incremental lifting of sanctions, some work was carried out in the Ministry of Finance, some of which go back to 1979.

In fact, the Transitional Government has driven Syria-approved by Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa-The Trump Management for sanctions in the past few months.

The new government has made sanctions responsible-intellectually the penalties for the business in Syria for their inability to pay salaries in the public service, to reconstruct considerable cities entitled to war and to rebuild a health system decimated by the war.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia, two US allies in the region, have supported normalizing relationships with the new government of Syria. Both countries have provided Syria for help, and Saudi Arabia has offered to pay for some debts in the country, two activities that could carry out sanctions in the country's victim. The Saudis see the opportunity to attract the new Syrian government on its side after the country's regional rivals were allied for decades of Iran, while the Assad regime was in power.

The relief was a central topic at meetings between Syrian officials, including the governor of the central bank, Abdelkadir Husrieh, and other World Bank world leaders last month in Washington.

Some of the most punishable measures have been raised to the former BASHAR al-Assad regime for human rights violations and support for groups described by the United States as terrorist organizations in the past two decades. The government of Assad collapsed in December as rebel groups, including fighters under the direction of Sharaa, swept in Damascus and end a 13-year civil war.

In 2003, the then President George W. Bush signed the Syrian mandatory obligation, which concentrated on the support of the Syrian terrorist groups such as Hisbollah, the military presence of Syria in Lebanon, in Lebanon, the alleged development of weapons of mass destruction, oil smuggling and supported groups in Iraq according to the US-led invasion.

In 2011, the Obama government led an international effort to insulate Syria -culminated in several sanctions -when Assad's army led a bloody civil war against rebel dispute, which led to half a million dead Syrian.

Another package of sanctions was imposed in 2019 as part of the Caesar Syria -Zivil Protection Act, also known as “Caesar Act”, which Mr. Trump signed in the law. The legislation imposed stiff sanctions against the government of Assad and the companies or governments that worked with it continued to extinguish Syria's already isolated economy.

In his comments in Turkey, Rubio indicated that there is relief in the form of exceptional regulations that give permission to do business in Syria without fulfilling punishments for the alternative system that the administration can issue under authorities in “Caesar Act”.

“I think we want to start with the initial waiver that enables foreign partners to help to do so without leading the risk of sanctions,” said Rubio. He also suggested that the Trump government “soon” could be able to ask the legislators to lift some sanctions permanently.