President Trump said Tuesday that he would lift our sanctions on Syria and cast an economic lifeline on a country that was ravaged by nearly 14 years of civil war and decades of dictatorship under the Assad family.
Trump was expected to meet Syrian new president Ahmed Alshara for the first time in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. Alshara led the rebel alliance that expelled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December.
The US president made a surprising announcement to end the sanctions when he attended a business forum in Riyadh, the Saudi Arabian capital.
This decision is a sea change for Syria and breaks the economic strangulation of a country that is deemed important for Middle East stability.
“We hopefully have a new government that will succeed in stabilizing the country and maintaining peace,” Trump said. “That’s what we want to see in Syria.”
All across Syria, people poured into the streets of big cities to cheer for news that hopes to alleviate the crushed poverty that most of the population faces.
Syrian Foreign Minister Assad Hassan al-Shaibani welcomed the move as “a new beginning of the road to reconstruction” and praised Saudi Arabia as the “voice of reason and wisdom” of the region. He did not directly refer to the United States.
Since banishment of Al Assad, critics and supporters of the new Syrian leader have argued that the collapse of the regime should end sanctions. Many of them claimed that they fell into the Civil War, which killed hundreds of thousands and destroyed several ruined sections of cities, in response to the brutal crackdown of the uprising that began in 2011.
“The sanctions were implemented in response to crimes committed by previous administrations against the people,” Alshara told The New York Times in an interview last month.
Trump said he came to the decision after speaking with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who supported the anti-Assad rebellion, and Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
The Saudi prince said this week that he would work to increase Riyadh’s investment in the United States from $600 billion to $1 trillion during President Trump, as he demanded.
“I order a halt of sanctions against Syria,” Trump told an audience sitting under a giant chandelier on Tuesday in front of a huge projection of the US and Saudi flags. “Oh, what am I doing for the Crown Prince,” he added, laughing from the enthusiastic crowd.
Having developed diplomatic and business ties with the kingdom, Trump has landed in Riyadh for a luxurious welcome. Saudi Arabia deployed a crowd of honor guards, a team of Arabian horses, and a crowd of royals and business leaders to greet him.
Trump’s cozy relationship with the kingdom provided Gulf leaders with the opportunity to push for the lifting of sanctions in Syria. Many of them believe it is important to prevent economic collapse and prevent fresh conflicts that could spread across borders.
“The Syrian economy is fragmented, but the region is poised, if not hopeless, to help it recover. “If our sanctions go down the road, Syria can look ahead to recover, reconstruct and reintegrate into the world for the first time in decades,” said Charles Lister, a senior fellow at Washington’s Middle East Institute.
In Damascus, the capital of Syria, people sniffed horns, sirens, and waving Syrian and Saudi flags. Some gathered in the group to chant revolutionary slogans for Al Assad. And they expressed their joy that their country could soon be reintegrated into the global financial system and begin reconstruction.
“Things will be cheaper,” said Intisar Al-Moussa, 49, a local government employee. “We can buy our children what they want and give them a good education. We will be like other countries.”
She came to the square with her sister, siblings, mother and other relatives to celebrate and say the announcement changed Trump’s mind.
“We didn’t really like Trump, but now we love him because he was standing with us,” she said.
She also had another wish. “I hope our salary will go up a little.”
It was not yet clear how extensive the US president was with Alshara on Wednesday.
White House officials said Trump agreed to “greet” Syrian leaders, according to a news pool traveling with the US president.
In a speech Tuesday, Trump opposed Iran, one of the major international allies of the Assad regime, which was banished. He called it the “largest and most destructive” force, threatening the stability and prosperity of the Middle East, vowing not to have nuclear weapons.
If Alshara wins a meeting in which he faces Trump, he will have an unusual opportunity to make his point to a world leader with the power to dramatically shape Syria’s future. It is also a spectacular turnaround for a man who once led the branch of al-Qaeda but tried to ease his image in the hopes of breaking ties with jihadist groups and gaining wider traction.
For months after a coalition of rebels took control of Damascus and overthrew Al Assad, the United States maintained a multi-tiered sanctions regime that, with the war, pushed the country to the brink of economic collapse.
Critics of US sanctions argued that lifting them would allow for the flow of international aid and investment needed to help the country recover from war.
European leaders, eager to promote stability and prevent new waves of migration to the coast, are seeking more economic involvement.
But even as Europe began to lift some sanctions, few businesses and local governments were willing to invest in the country under the burden of US sanctions.
The Trump administration has kept its distance from Alshara’s fledgling administration for months. Some US officials have expressed deep skepticism about Alshala’s motivations and his promise to protect religious minorities, pointing to his Muslim orientation and his history with al-Qaeda.
The US administration also issued requests related to counter-terrorism and other issues that must be met to consider sanction relief.
The Syrian government has said several demands must be negotiated, including a ban on foreign fighter jets from the Syrian government and the military. But at the same time, it moved towards meeting other demands.
Syria recently brought in a team of Qatar’s forensic experts to search for the bodies of Americans killed by the Islamic State.
And Syrian officials told American intermediaries they had eager to avoid conflict with all their neighbouring countries, including Israel, and welcomed US investment.
For months, regional and European leaders have struggled to draw attention from the Trump administration on the issue of sanctions.
However, the tide had recently begun to change. Trump hinted at rethinking the issue prior to his trip to the Middle East.
Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron vowed to gradually lift European Union sanctions on Syria as the first European leader to host Syrian president in its capital.
“I told the Syrian president that we would continue ours if he continued his path,” Macron said.
Eric Schmidt Contributed with a report from Washington.
