Syrian Jewish Community Leader Urges Senate to Reject Conditions on Syria Sanctions Relief

A debate is quietly simmering in Washington over the prospect of repealing congressionally mandated sanctions on Syria, an effort that has bipartisan support — but is not without its opponents.

As part of the Senate’s ongoing consideration of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, a provision was included in a bipartisan consensus package of amendments that would fully repeal the Caesar Act, a strict sanctions framework imposed in response to the Assad regime’s human rights violations. Should the NDAA move forward on the Senate floor, the amendment is almost certain to pass.

The sanctions are currently being waived by the Trump administration, but can only be permanently repealed, before their 2029 expiration date, by Congress.

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John Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America and a national security advisor to former Vice President Dick Cheney told JI he opposes the sanctions repeal, and that he favors a conditional approach like that outlined in the Lawler bill.

Hannah said that there is “some significant evidence” that Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa is willing to engage on U.S. security priorities which justifies some easing of sanctions, “but our big concern is that the administration has had kind of a blind spot on internal matters in Syria with regards to governance and particularly with the relationship of Damascus to the key minority groups, some of them quite well armed.”

He warned that Syria’s future is being “undermined” by internal governance issues, including what he described as an “Islamist, Sunni-supremacist” and “highly centralized, authoritarian” approach to statebuilding by al-Sharaa, and by the two high-profile massacres of religious minority groups in recent months.

“[Al-Sharaa] has shown himself to be a ruthless pragmatist and I think the U.S. has just got to use the significant leverage it does have and continues to have, which is primarily wrapped in Caesar — to apply that equally as effectively as we have on the security priority to a set of priorities about the process of internal governance in Syria,” Hannah said. He argued that the U.S. should not “just surrender that prematurely, particularly after these extraordinary levels of violence we’ve seen inside of Syria that are completely undermining the possibility of a stable, cooperative Syrian partner to the United States.”

He warned that al-Sharaa’s “particular vision of Syria” is the greatest risk and potential driver of another collapse and devolution back into civil war in Syria — more so than the potential impacts of sanctions, as argued by proponents of sanctions relief. “We can’t tolerate another 1,500-person massacre of some minority inside of Syria. I think it’ll break the country,” Hannah added.

He said the U.S. should condition sanctions relief on legitimate dialogue and efforts to include and protect minorities, including Druze and Alawites, Western involvement in training and professionalizing the Syrian military and the expulsion of foreign jihadists from the Syrian government. Under such conditions, he said he’d be supportive of repealing Caesar in two years, ahead of its current expiration in 2029.

Hannah said that by making clear the U.S. is “fully committed to continuing to issue waivers,” as long as “we see a sustained level of progress here,” it should provide “sufficient green lights” to wealthy Arab states and others to begin ramping up investments.

He also urged the U.S. to work with regional and European allies to develop a joint approach and outreach strategy for Syria, and said that the time is not right for the U.S. to remove its remaining military forces from the country and surrender the leverage those troops provide.

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Read the full piece in Jewish Insider.