00:00The United States should be mindful about the decision to lift all sanctions on Syria,
00:07as announced by its President Donald Trump.
00:09Director of the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities, Rosemary Klanek,
00:13says the U.S. should exercise caution about backing the new leadership.
00:20The decision comes as Trump meets with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman,
00:25marking a high-profile engagement between the two nations.
00:28So Syria has been under sanctions for decades of various sorts.
00:34But, you know, the most recent round of sanctions that the United States put on
00:39happened during the Arab Spring uprisings after Bashar al-Assad began brutalizing his own people
00:47in response to their uprising against his regime.
00:50And since, you know, those sanctions were put on,
00:54the United States has this habit of putting sanctions on and never quite taking them off.
00:58The President should also be cautious, like the United States should be cautious, too,
01:02because you don't want to go whole hog in and invest in any particular regime,
01:07because even though they've stayed for six months,
01:10there's no guarantee that they're going to continue beyond six months, right?
01:15You know, what we saw in Syria is truly a revolution, right?
01:19A new regime came to power that wants to reorder society in a fundamental way.
01:22It's not going to be a dynasty the way that it was under the Assads.
01:26And any time that happens, there's so much sort of at stake and so much up in the air
01:32that things can change in really unpredictable ways.
01:37Trump said on Tuesday he would order the lifting of sanctions on Syria
01:41at the behest of Saudi Arabia's crown prince,
01:44a major U.S. policy shift ahead of an expected meeting with Syria's President Ahmet al-Shara.
Comments