Why has US policy toward Syria shifted, and what might the future hold?

MARSEILLE — United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order lifting most of his country’s sanctions on Syria on Monday, formalizing a sea change in Washington’s approach to Damascus and following through on an earlier promise to give the new state what he called “a chance at greatness.” 

Targeted sanctions on individuals associated with the former regime of Bashar al-Assad, as well as select figures within the new Syrian army, remain in place. The terrorist designation of both Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)—the former Al Qaeda affiliate al-Sharaa led under his nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Jolani—is currently under review. 

This constitutes a dramatic policy reversal since sanctions were first imposed on Syria as a state sponsor of terrorism in 1979. Successive sanctions regimes, coupled with more than a decade of war, devastated the Syrian economy and pushed 90 percent of the population below the poverty line.

As Syria’s new administration takes shape and the country takes its first steps towards rebuilding, Washington is charting a new course of its own. How is US engagement with Syria shifting under a second Trump administration, and what could its future policy look like?

Renewed US engagement

Previous US administrations had lost interest in Syria and lacked a coherent policy, Natasha Hall, senior associate at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), told Syria Direct. “They had kind of given up on Syria, de-prioritized it to really basic conflict management, if even that…just keeping Assad weak but in power, essentially,” she said.

The sudden fall of the Assad regime last December sparked “a significant reassessment of US policy,” Steven Heydemann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, said. Most observers initially expected the Trump administration to move slowly and be reluctant to engage with the new Syrian administration, he added. 

“With a democratic or republican administration, you would have seen either hostility against this administration in Syria or a lot of foot-dragging with regards to lifting sanctions,” Hall echoed.

Trump’s sudden announcement that he would lift sanctions on Syria, during a visit to Saudi Arabia on May 13, shattered those expectations. He met with al-Sharaa—still officially designated a terrorist by the US—the following day.

“He made the decision, as is usual in his case, without a lot of consultation. The decision took even his Middle East advisors by surprise,” Heydemann said. 

The “historic” move made Trump “a very popular president in Syria,” Radwan Ziadeh, a senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC (ACW) think tank, said.  Signs thanking Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman  soon popped up in the streets of Damascus.

Both Heydemann and Hall describe the move as transactional, motivated by gains to be reaped from Gulf states. “I think the Saudis offered quite a bit in return for much of this,” Hall said. Ziadeh also pointed to the role of Qatar and Turkey, alongside Syrian-American lobbying efforts. 

The main factor, in Heydemann’s view, was Trump’s own personal interests rather than foreign policy objectives. “He is incredibly self-interested and tends to take into account how a bilateral relationship will benefit him, his own financial standing, his businesses,” he said.

Following Trump’s first term, his son-in-law Jared Kushner benefited from billions of dollars in Saudi investment. In an attempt to woo the US president, proposals had been put forth for the construction of a Trump Tower in Damascus before the May announcement.

Still, the benefits for Syria are clear, Ziadeh noted. “To be able to rehabilitate and rebuild the country…will require a significant role of the international community, and no other country can mobilize the international community” like the US, he said. 

While Hall, Heydemman and Ziadeh note that this week’s executive order came without conditions, lasting sanctions relief could be conditional, according to a State Department proposal leaked in May. The proposal lays out a three-phase roadmap culminating in Syria joining the Abraham Accords and normalizing relations with Israel. 

The most rigorous sanctions on Syria—under the Caesar Syrian Civilian Protection Act of 2019—remain in place, though suspended by a 180-day waiver. In June, US legislators introduced bills in both the Senate and the House of Representatives to repeal the legislation, though the timeline for doing so remains unclear. 

Pulling back

While the lifting of sanctions has been welcomed as a much-needed reprieve, the US is set to pull back from other aspects of its Syria policy. It has withdrawn a quarter of its troops in the country, bringing the number to 1,500 personnel—despite reports of an uptick in Islamic State (IS) activity. As of last month, IS had conducted nearly 100 attacks in Syria since the start of the year, mainly against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Washington’s longtime ally in northeastern Syria.

This has been accompanied by the Trump administration’s dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in January. Previously the largest aid donor in the world, the US accounted for a quarter—nearly $400 million—of humanitarian funding in Syria last year. 

Hall sees the US government’s cuts to aid and reintegration programs in northeastern Syria’s al-Hol camp, where families of IS fighters are detained, as particularly ominous. “There was already no, or not enough, aid to reintegrate people from al-Hol back into their towns and cities, and now you don’t even have that limited support,” she said. 

IS and “other extremist elements could be a poison pill for the future of the country and rebuilding efforts,” she added, citing last month’s church bombing in Damascus as intended “to cause confusion, anger, division, and conflict.” The Syrian government declared IS responsible for the attack, while a little known group, Saraya Anasar al-Sunna, claimed responsibility.

Political transition

US Ambassador to Turkey and Special Envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack said in a briefing on Monday that the US will not conduct “nation-building” in Syria. President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are “not dictating, they’re not requiring, they’re not giving the framework of the democratic model that needs to be implemented to their architecture or desire,” he added.

“Al-Sharaa has read the writing on the wall that most in the region and the United States are not prioritizing—to say the least—democratization in the country, so he is prioritizing the consolidation of power and economic development,” Hall said. 

It will be four or five years before elections are held in Syria, while one third of the country’s parliament will be selected by al-Sharaa. The remaining members will be selected by electoral committees, which are to be formed by a supreme committee appointed by al-Sharaa. Key ministerial portfolios have been handed to members of al-Sharaa’s former Syrian Salvation Government.

If the country’s democratic transition does not proceed as planned, instability could result, Hall and Heydemman warned. “We may see mobilization hoping to influence the government, we may see rising levels of protest, perhaps rising insecurity,”  Heydemman said. 

 “Most of the [US] demands have been of a security nature and they have not addressed things that could result in security issues later down the line,” Hall added.

Instead, “there will be pressure on Syria to join the Abraham Accords, to normalize its relationship with Israel,” Ziadeh said. “The US administration is focused on this issue, not on democratic issues or women’s rights or any governance issues.” 

Since the Assad regime fell, Israel has invaded Syrian territory, conducted hundreds of airstrikes and fomented sectarian tensions—moves met with little reaction by Washington, Heydemann noted. Israel’s presence in Syria is “deeply destabilizing and…quite counterproductive strategically and diplomatically,” he added. 

At the same time, “Israel has been somewhat concerned about the direction of US policy, the speed with which the US is reconciling with and recognizing the al-Sharaa government,” Heydemann said.

US Syria envoy Barrack told US media on Thursday that Washington is facilitating “meaningful” dialogue between Damascus and Tel Aviv.

Any Israeli-Syrian agreement aside, Heydemann expects the US to step back as regional powers—Gulf states or Turkey—take the lead in Syria. “I don’t think Trump views Syria as a foreign policy priority for the US other than the extent to which it overlaps with US-Iran issues and US-Israel issues,” he said. “Beyond that, my sense is that the US under the Trump administration is likely to have a relatively low profile in Syria.”