Battle brewing over Syria sanctions repeal in Congress

The Senate and House are on a collision course over whether to repeal comprehensive sanctions on Syria, a rare area where there are bipartisan coalitions on both sides of the debate.

Discussion centers on whether to completely repeal the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019, a severe sanctions mechanism that blocked nearly all U.S. and international cooperation or engagement with the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

Legislation to repeal Caesar is included in the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2026. But an amendment to the House version of the NDAA to repeal Caesar was voted down last week. 

Senate and House lawmakers will spend weeks reconciling their two versions of the NDAA, which is considered must-pass legislation. It’s not clear if the Caesar provision will survive that process. Lawmakers will look to come out with a product that will gain a majority of votes and something that all Republicans can get behind.

While President Trump has said he wants to lift all U.S. sanctions on Syria, he hasn’t given explicit marching orders to Congress to fully repeal Caesar or indicated if he is happy with his current ability to suspend sanctions for six months at a time. 

GOP opponents of repealing the sanctions legislation say the government headed by Ahmed al-Sharaa, a U.S.-designated terrorist, has more to prove in demonstrating commitments to inclusive governance, protection for minorities, religious freedom and justice. 

“As Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, I recently introduced the Syria Sanctions Accountability Act, legislation designed to modernize U.S. sanctions policy for a post-Assad Syria,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), an opponent of repealing Caesar, wrote in a letter to the Alawites Association of the United States, a minority group in Syria advocating for protection of minorities. 

“This law links any potential sanctions relief to verifiable steps by the Syrian government to protect religious minorities, something that isn’t currently included in Syrian sanctions law. Our policies must make clear that respect for religious freedom is not optional.”

But the movement to repeal has powerful supporters. This includes the chair and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sens. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), respectively; Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee; and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

Still, some lawmakers supporting Caesar’s repeal are also suspicious of al-Sharaa’s ability to follow through on stated promises. 

“President al-Sharaa, mind you, he served in Iraq under a different force known as Al Qaeda. So when we met I told him, I as well served in Iraq,” Ernst, who served as a logistics officer with the National Guard during the Iraq War, said during an event hosted by the American Jewish Committee last week.  

“He was kind of taken aback by that, but we laughed.” 

Ernst traveled with a bipartisan group of lawmakers to Damascus to meet al-Sharaa in August. A co-sponsor of the Caesar Act, she said the most important priority for America is to remain engaged in Syria to prevent influences from Iran, Russia and China from gaining a foothold, or Turkey to dominate.

“Am I skeptical? Yes. I’m skeptical. But am I optimistic? Yes. I am also optimistic. So we will give the benefit of the doubt as long as they are earning that benefit,” she said. 

“But then if things start going south, we no longer support, and we made that very clear to the president while we were on that visit.” 

Advocates for keeping Caesar in place say the bill allows the U.S. to hold the Syrian government to account on those main priorities, particularly in the wake of the terrorist bombing of a Greek Orthodox church in June in Damascus, and ethnic violence in July in the southern city of Suwayda. 

Nearly 2,000 people were killed in that fighting. The majority were victims of violence committed by Syrian government authorities and ethnic militias. Those targeted were overwhelmingly part of Syria’s Druze community, and the atrocities included the killing of an American citizen, and women and children killed intentionally.

“We cannot expect perfection, we are not looking for Jeffersonian democracy in Syria, but we are also looking for a government to do all it can to prevent seven Druze, including one U.S. citizen, from being executed,” Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) said during a committee hearing in July, putting his support behind Lawler’s bill to calibrate sanctions relief for Syria. 

Members of Syria’s minority communities gathered on Capitol Hill last week to advocate for the U.S. to exercise more pressure on the Syrian government to protect minorities and promote Syria’s federalization, letting minority groups control and govern areas where they hold the majority. 

“It’s probably not a popular call to put a pause on sanctions relief that started in May with the meeting between President Trump and the interim Syrian President al-Sharaa. But I think it could be used as leverage,” said Sirwan Kajjo, a Kurdish affairs analyst who spoke at the event hosted by the Shai Fund and the Nazarene Fund. 

“Sanctions by default are used to change behavior of regimes and governments around the world. And I think this is the exact set of circumstances that could be used to make sure that the current regime in Syria does not use the U.S. opening, to commit atrocities against different communities, including Sunnis,” he continued, referencing the religious affiliation of al-Sharaa’s ruling party. 

Advocates for repealing Caesar say the legislation is out of date, and that its mission to change the behavior of the deposed Syrian dictator does not apply to the al-Sharaa government. 

Shaheen came back from meeting al-Sharaa in August saying she was clear-eyed about the overwhelming challenges facing the country but resolute that sanctions should be lifted. 

“We also talked about the importance of lifting the Caesar sanctions, which are preventing investment in the country and the prosperity and opportunity that people want to see in the future,” Shaheen said in a call with reporters last month, hours after leaving Damascus. 

“Everyone we met with acknowledged that this is the beginning of a long, challenging effort to make sure that security and prosperity in the country are able to be enjoyed,” she said, referring to religious community leaders and civil society she engaged with on the trip. 

Shaheen was joined at the time by Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), who is sponsoring Caesar’s repeal in the House. 

Wilson described al-Sharaa as a “positive individual … dedicated to the people of Syria.” 

“I now see why President Donald Trump, in meeting with him in Riyadh [in May], was so impressed,” Wilson said. 

“And he [Trump] announced lifting the sanctions, and now we need to repeal the sanctions. We need to, as he said so eloquently, give Syria a chance.”