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Syrians on the streets of Damascus on Saturday welcomed the move by the Trump administration to ease sanctions imposed on the war-torn country.<\/p>\n
Their celebration follows the formal easing of sanctions by the EU earlier this week and that of the US announced last week during US President Donald Trump’s Middle East tour. <\/p>\n
\u201cYesterday, when I read the news that the Caesar sanctions are actually being lifted, especially after the reports we heard in recent weeks, I honestly cried,” a resident, Zeina Shahla, told local media.<\/p>\n
“We\u2019re finally seeing real steps toward the country\u2019s recovery,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
The sanctions relief follows the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024. On Tuesday, the EU said it adopted a gradual and reversible approach in order to support Syria\u2019s transition and economic recovery, which followed the suspension of some economic sanctions in February.<\/p>\n
For the US, the congressional sanctions, known as the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, aimed to isolate Syria\u2019s previous rulers by effectively expelling those doing business with them from the global financial system.<\/p>\n
However, a Treasury Department action has now suspended enforcement of sanctions against anyone doing business with a range of Syrian individuals and entities, including Syria\u2019s central bank.<\/p>\n
And a measure by the State Department waived for six months a tough set of sanctions imposed by Congress in 2019.<\/p>\n
They specifically block post-war reconstruction, so while they can be waived for 180 days by executive order, investors are likely to be wary of reconstruction projects when sanctions could be reinstated after six months. <\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump granted Syria sweeping exemptions from sanctions in a major first step toward fulfilling his pledge to lift a half-century of penalties on a country shattered by 14 years of civil war.<\/p>\n
Syria’s foreign ministry said Saturday that the country \u201cextends its hand\u201d to anyone that wants to cooperate with Damascus, on the condition that there is no intervention in the country\u2019s internal affairs.<\/p>\n
On Friday, the Trump administration said the actions were \u201cjust one part of a broader US government effort to remove the full architecture of sanctions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those penalties had been imposed on the Assad family for their support of Iranian-backed militias, their chemical weapons programme and abuse of civilians.<\/p>\n
Damascus resident Nael Kaddah said now that the sanctions are being eased, the country will flourish again. <\/p>\n
For Kaddah, Syrians will be able to transfer money freely, unlike in the past when there were several companies that monopolized the business and took large commissions on transfers.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow any citizen can receive a transfer from anywhere in the world,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The EU and the US say the removal of sanctions aims to give the interim Syrian government a better chance of survival, a key decision that the administration in Damascus has welcomed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ADVERTISEMENT Syrians on the streets of Damascus on Saturday welcomed the move by the Trump administration to ease…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[45053,2000,299,5187,2663,6500,15287],"class_list":{"0":"post-129349","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-damascus","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-european","12":"tag-sanctions","13":"tag-syria","14":"tag-syrian-refugees"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114565707510922569","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}