Trump Will Lift Sanctions on Syria After Massive Business Deal Offer
Category: News & Politics
Via: john-russell • last year • 13 commentsBy: Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling (The New Republic)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Donald Trump claimed he wanted to give Syria a chance to rebuild itself.
Donald Trump announced Tuesday he will lift all U.S. sanctions on Syria, but the timing of the lifted international penalties was remarkably suspicious.
"I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at greatness," Trump told an auditorium in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, describing the apparently unnecessary sanctions as "brutal and crippling."
"In Syria, which has seen so much misery and death, there is a new government that will hopefully succeed in stabilizing the country and keeping peace. That's what we want to see," he continued. "In Syria, they've had their share of travesty, war, killing many years. That's why my administration has already taken the first steps toward restoring normal relations between the United States and Syria for the first time in more than a decade."
American caution toward Syria has spanned half a dozen administrations. Syria has been designated as a state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. since 1979, when Syrian forces occupied Lebanon. The Bush administration slammed Syria with more sanctions in 2004, condemning Syria's "pursuit of weapons of mass destruction" and its support for Hezbollah and Hamas, U.S.-designated terrorist organizations. The Obama administration imposed more sanctions on Syria in 2011, denouncing the country's dictator, former President Bashar Al Assad, for human rights abuses against its protesting citizens.
"We're taking them all off," Trump said Tuesday.
But the decision to strip what had effectively become an embargo of Syrian goods followed another important development for the Trump family: the possibility of building a Trump Tower in Syria's capital, Damascus.
"[Syrian leader Ahmed Al Sharaa] wants a business deal for the future of his country," pro-Trump activist Jonathan Bass—who met with Sharaa for hours in late April—told Reuters Monday.
Sharaa is working to meet face-to-face with Trump, but his priorities include economic revival, regional stability, and healed relations with Israel, according to Bass.
"He told me he wants a Trump Tower in Damascus. He wants peace with his neighbors. What he told me is good for the region, good for Israel," Bass told the newswire.
As a reminder, it's actually unconstitutional for presidents to profit from or receive compensation from foreign governments—but that hasn't stopped Trump one bit. The Trump family's Middle East real estate plans include a Trump-branded golf course in Qatar (as part of a $5.5 billion development project), a $1 billion Trump hotel and residence in Dubai, and a $2 billion cryptocurrency investment by an Abu Dhabi firm into one of Trump's cryptocurrency projects, the World Liberty Financial coin.
The family also revealed in December that it would be expanding its presence in Saudi Arabia, announcing Trump Tower Jeddah. The price tag for the building has not been made public, but one of the developers on the project, Dar Global, compared it to another $530 million Trump Tower in the city, reported Reuters.
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the decision to strip what had effectively become an embargo of Syrian goods followed another important development for the Trump family: the possibility of building a Trump Tower in Syria's capital, Damascus.
"[Syrian leader Ahmed Al Sharaa] wants a business deal for the future of his country," pro-Trump activist Jonathan Bass—who met with Sharaa for hours in late April—told Reuters Monday.
trump and his sycophants sure do like guys that wear sheets around, here and abroad ...
Time to double down?
Your hero is completely corrupt.
That's one TDS driven opinion.
Who is this hero of his and EXACTLY how is he corrupt.
Show the receipts.
MAGA and Trump apologists will ay its just a coincidence that Trump, out of the blue, decided to end sanctions on Syria right after receiving an offer from the Syrian government to promote a Trump hotel in Syria's main city Damascus.
It has been reported that no one in the Trump administration was expecting this result from the Middle east trip. That is because the offer just came up a few days ago.
"What are they gonna say, man, when he's gone? 'Cause he dies when it dies, man. When it dies, he dies."
You do realize that the person being talked about there was insane, dont you?
The guy who knew how to fight the Vietnam War.
Let's just say that our nation survives these four years of "Trump," what will the federal government do to heal. . . and will Trump be left whole with all his ill-gotten gains as president? That is what I want to know. That is, who, in some little known office has the answer to all this corruption that is happening in plain sight?
Trump is as content doing business with crooked world leaders as a pig swallowing in slop.
We survived the forst four years of Trump just fine and look what happened.
We got a dementia riddled old, corrupt fool and an idiot DEI hire VP.
Let's hope that doesn't happen again.
You digressed. Trump wants to be the future of this country, even beyond his second term. We'll have to see about that, and how it goes.