The U.S. President, Donald Trump, signed the executive order on Monday lifting the sanctions imposed on Syria with immediate effect.
This presidential decree revokes the five previous executive orders that established the sanctions imposed on the regime of Bashar al Assad, overthrown in late 2024 after an offensive by rebel militias, led by the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) and the current president of the country, Ahmed al Shara.
In response, the Syrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Assad al Sheibani, emphasized that the end of the sanctions “helps Syria to open up to the international community.” “It opens the door to a long-awaited process of reconstruction and development,” he said.
Trump already promised in May during a visit to Saudi Arabia that he would lift the sanctions, a measure that both Damascus and its main allies, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, were requesting in order to facilitate the reconstruction of the country.
That same month, a new regulation was published that temporarily suspended the sanctions, and the executive order implies their definitive cancellation.
The US sanctions on Syria began in 1979 when the country was designated as a “state sponsor of terrorism”. They were expanded in 2004 due to the Syrian military presence in Lebanon and in 2011, amid the civil war that the protests against Al Assad turned into during the so-called Arab Spring.