US Sanctions Relief for Syria Urgently Needed to Enable Aid, Rubio Says
Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended President Donald Trump’s recent decision to lift sanctions on Syria (see 2505130061), saying the country’s transitional authority might collapse in weeks or months without outside assistance, a situation that could lead to civil war.
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“Right now, the most important thing is that partnering nations, the nations in the region, want to get aid in, want to start helping them, and they can’t because they’re afraid of our sanctions, so they don’t,” Rubio testified. With “the lifting of the sanctions, the most immediate impact will be to allow neighboring countries to begin to assist [the] transitional authority to build governance mechanisms that allow them to actually establish a government, unify the armed forces under one banner and the like.”
Rubio said congressional action may be needed to make sanctions relief permanent, which could help attract much-needed foreign investment.
Rubio’s comments came four days after Senate Banking Committee ranking member Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, urged the Trump administration to follow through on Trump’s pledge to lift sanctions on Syria. The lawmakers wrote in a letter to Rubio and two other Cabinet secretaries that they have yet to be briefed on how the sanctions relief will be implemented, which they believe should be accompanied by an easing of export controls.
Also during the Foreign Relations hearing, Rubio said the administration plans to continue sanctioning Iran’s nuclear program until the U.S. and Tehran reach an agreement to address the program.
“When it comes to the nuclear program, until there’s a deal, there are going to be sanctions,” Rubio testified. “None of these are being slowed down while we’re engaged in these talks.”
Asked whether he supports a bill introduced by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., that would sanction Russian financial institutions and oil and mining companies and Russia's supporters if Moscow refuses to end its war against Ukraine (see 2504020003), Rubio said “it may come to that point. If, in fact, it is clear that the Russians are not interested in a peace deal and they just want to keep fighting a war, it may very well come to that point. The president has made that [case] in the past."
However, Trump "believes that right now if you start threatening sanctions, the Russians will stop talking and there’s value in us being able to talk to them and drive them to get to the [negotiating] table," Rubio added.
Rubio noted that the Trump administration hasn’t lifted any of the Russia sanctions imposed by the Biden administration. "We have the same leverage today that we had under the previous administration," he argued.
Besides addressing sanctions, Rubio defended ongoing efforts to reorganize the State Department, saying they are needed to speed up the agency's slow decision-making process. "Ultimately, the goal of reorganization is to put the State Department at the center of our foreign policy," he said. "It actually had lost that role. One of the reasons why it had lost its role is [an] inability to deliver quickly."