President Trump said on Tuesday that he would lift U.S. sanctions on Syria, throwing an economic lifeline to a country devastated by nearly 14 years of civil war and decades of dictatorship under the Assad family.
Mr. Trump was expected to meet for the first time with Syria’s new president, Ahmed al-Shara, on Wednesday in Saudi Arabia, where the American leader is making the first major state visit of his second term. Mr. al-Shara led the rebel alliance that ousted President Bashar al-Assad in Syria in December.
The U.S. president made the surprise announcement to end sanctions as he addressed a business forum in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, where the crowd erupted in cheers and gave him a standing ovation.
The decision represents a sea change for Syria, breaking the economic stranglehold on a country seen as critical to the stability of the Middle East.
“There is a new government that will, hopefully, succeed in stabilizing the country and keeping peace,” Mr. Trump said. “That’s what we want to see in Syria.”
Across Syria, people poured into the streets of major cities to cheer the news they hope will alleviate the crushing poverty that the majority of the population faces.
Syria’s foreign minister, Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani, hailed the move as “a new beginning on the path to reconstruction” and praised Saudi Arabia as the “voice of reason and wisdom” in the region. He did not mention the United States directly.
Since Mr. al-Assad’s ouster, Syrians have argued that the fall of the regime should bring an end to sanctions.
“The sanctions were implemented as a response to crimes committed by the previous regime against the people,” Mr. al-Shara told The New York Times in an interview last month.
Many of the sanctions were put in place in response to the Assad government’s brutal crackdown on an uprising that began in 2011 and descended into a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands.
Mr. Trump said he had come to the decision after speaking with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who backed the anti-Assad insurgency, and Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
Mr. Trump has been trying to drum up Saudi investment in the United States, and the Saudi prince said this week that he would work to increase Riyadh’s total pledge to $1 trillion from $600 billion, as the president requested.
“I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions on Syria,” Mr. Trump said on Tuesday, speaking in front of giant projections of the U.S. and Saudi flags to an audience seated beneath a massive chandelier. “Oh, what I do for the crown prince,” he added, drawing laughter from the enthusiastic crowd.
Mr. Trump, who has cultivated close diplomatic and business relationships with the kingdom, landed in Riyadh to a lavish welcome. The Saudis rolled out an honor guard, a team of Arabian horses and a crowd of royals and business leaders to greet him.
The cozy relations between Mr. Trump and the kingdom offered Gulf leaders an opportunity to push for the lifting of sanctions on Syria, which many of them see as critical to stemming economic collapse and preventing fresh conflict that could spread beyond its borders.
“The Syrian economy is in pieces, but the region stands poised, if not desperate, to help get it back on its feet,” Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, wrote in an email. “With U.S. sanctions out of the way, Syria will for the first time in decades be able to look ahead toward recovery, rebuilding and reintegration into the world.”
In the Syrian capital, Damascus, thousands of revelers gathered in the central Umayyad Square, waving Syrian and Saudi flags while fireworks went off. Some chanted revolutionary slogans against Mr. al-Assad. And they expressed joy that their country might soon be able to reintegrate into the global financial system and begin to rebuild.
“Things will get cheaper,” said Intisar Al-Moussa, 49, a local government employee. “We’ll be able to buy our kids the things they want and give them a good education. We’ll be like other countries.”
She had come to the square with her sister, brother, mother and other relatives to celebrate and said the announcement had changed her idea of Mr. Trump.
“We didn’t like Trump much before, but now we love him because he stood with us,” she said.
She had another wish, too: “We hope that our salaries will go up a bit.”
Crowds celebrated in the major cities of Homs and Aleppo as well.
It was not yet clear how extensive of a meeting the U.S. president might have on Wednesday with Mr. al-Shara. A White House official said Mr. Trump agreed to “say hello” to the Syrian leader while both were in Saudi Arabia, according to the press pool traveling with the U.S. president.
In his speech on Tuesday, Mr. Trump railed against Iran, one of the chief international allies of the ousted Assad dictatorship. He called the country “the biggest and most destructive” force threatening the stability and prosperity of the Middle East, and vowed it would never have a nuclear weapon.
If Mr. al-Shara does get a face-to-face meeting with Mr. Trump, he will have a rare opportunity to make his case to a world leader with the power to drastically shape Syria’s future. It would also be a stunning turnaround for the man who once led a branch of Al Qaeda before he broke ties with the jihadist group, seeking to moderate his image in the hope of gaining broader traction.
In the months since a rebel coalition seized control of Damascus and toppled Mr. al-Assad, the United States has kept in place a multilayered sanctions regime that, with the war, has pushed the country to the brink of economic collapse.
Critics of U.S. sanctions argued that lifting them could allow a flow of international aid and investment needed to help the country recover from the war.
European leaders, eager to foster stability and prevent new waves of migration to their shores, have also pushed for more economic engagement.
Yet, even as Europe began lifting some sanctions, few businesses or regional governments had been willing to invest in the country under the burden of U.S. sanctions — and without knowing if it would raise the ire of Mr. Trump.
The Trump administration had for months kept its distance from Mr. al-Shara’s fledgling administration. Some U.S. officials have expressed deep skepticism of Mr. al-Shara’s motives and his promises to protect religious minorities, pointing to his Islamist orientation and history with Al Qaeda.
The American administration had also issued demands related to counterterrorism and other issues that it said must be met for sanctions relief to be considered. The Syrian government has said that some of the demands, such as a ban on foreign fighters in Syria’s government and armed forces, have to be negotiated. But at the same time, it has made moves toward meeting other demands.
Syria recently brought a team of forensic experts from Qatar to search for the remains of Americans killed by the Islamic State.
And Syrian officials have told American intermediaries that they have sought to avoid conflict with all neighboring countries, including Israel, and welcomed American investment.
For months, regional and European leaders had struggled to get attention from the Trump administration on the sanctions issue. But the tide had begun to shift recently. Mr. Trump hinted before his Middle East trip that he would reconsider the issue.
Last week, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, offered a diplomatic boost to Mr. al-Shara, as the first European leader to host the Syrian president in his capital, vowing to gradually lift European Union sanctions on Syria — provided that the new leaders keep the country on a course toward stability.
“I told the Syrian president that if he continued to follow his path, we would continue on ours,” Mr. Macron said.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.
