Lifting sanctions on Syria ‘gives them a chance of greatness’, Donald Trump says
Donald Trump has said that lifting sanctions on Syria “gives them a chance of greatness”.
“The sanctions were really crippling, very powerful,” he added. He said the US will drop “all of the sanctions on Syria, which I think will be a good thing.”
He said that he is looking to normalise relations with Syria.
Key events
Helena Horton
Brooke Rollins, US agriculture secretary, has been visiting London to finalise the details of the US-UK trade deal agreed last week.
She told reporters, as she visited the new Whole Foods supermarket in Chelsea, that she had convinced energy Secretary Ed Miliband to take more wood pellets from America.
These are used to power the Drax power station, which environmental experts have said is unsustainable because burning wood emits carbon and the pellets used to power it are shipped across the ocean.
The drax plant accounts for about 6% of the UK’s electricity supply but it had its subsidies halved last year, and was directed by government to only use sustainable wood.
Last year, Drax was forced to pay £25m to the energy regulator Ofgem after it was found to have submitted inaccurate data on the sourcing of its wood pellets. There have been reports some of the pellets used in the power station have been from rare forests.
Rollins said:
We are 100% confident that [the wood pellets] does meet your sustainability requirements here in this country yesterday, that was one of the key things that I spoke to, Secretary Miliband and Under Secretary [Michael] Shanks about, is the one who’s leading that specific issue for the Energy Department here.
And they agreed, I don’t want to get ahead of them, but in that meeting, they felt fully assured that what we are doing in America does meet your sustainability requirements, and in fact, we could potentially be opening up more markets for our wood pellets into the UK, as other countries that you’re importing here into this country are clearly not meeting those marks.
What are the Abraham Accords Trump has urged Syria to agree?
It was reported earlier today that Donald Trump urged Syria to sign onto the Abraham Accords with Israel (see post here).
The Abraham Accords are bilateral agreements that established formal diplomatic relations between Israel and two Arab nations – the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain – both of which officially recognized Israel’s sovereignty as part of the accords.
These agreements were signed on 15 September 2020, and were mediated by the United States.
The first deal, announced on 13 August 2020, involved Israel and the UAE, followed by a similar agreement with Bahrain on 11 September 2020.
The accord with the UAE marked the first time Israel had normalized relations with an Arab country since the 1994 peace treaty with Jordan.
The name ‘Abraham Accords’ was chosen to reflect the shared religious heritage of Judaism and Islam through the figure of the prophet Abraham.
President Donald Trump continues his visit to the Middle East with a Qatari state visit later today.
According to a schedule released by the White House, the president will arrive at Doha’s Hamad International Airport within the next hour, before stopping off to visit Amiri Diwan.
He will then arrive at St Regis Doha for the state visit shortly before 4pm local time.
Trump is also scheduled to attend a state dinner at the Lusail Palace this evening at 8pm.
In pictures: Trump’s meeting with Gulf leaders
William Christou
The meeting between Donald Trump and Syria’s president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, in Saudi Arabia was the culmination of months of diplomacy by the Syrians, as well as their Turkish and Saudi allies, who believed face time with Trump would help end Syria’s international isolation, writes William Christou.
Damascus had prepared a pitch to Trump that included access to Syrian oil, reassurances of Israel’s security and a proposal to build a Trump tower in Damascus.
A meeting with Trump was seen as a key step towards recognition of the legitimacy of the new authority in Damascus after Bashar al-Assad was ousted as Syria’s president in December.
The Trump administration had previously been wary of engaging with Sharaa, a former leader of the Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
Though sanctions were originally imposed on Assad after his bloody crackdown on peaceful protesters in 2011, the US and other countries retained their economic embargo on Syria as they evaluated the new Islamist-led government in Damascus.
The US state department had handed the Syrians an extensive list of conditions to end sanctions and were in the process of negotiating when Trump suddenly announced the lifting of US sanctions on Tuesday night.
At the end of his speech to the Gulf Cooperation Council in Riyadh, Trump told leaders in the region that he wants them to forge a Middle East that is “thriving” and the “geographic centre of the world”. He said the “whole world is talking about what you are doing”.
He added that it had been a pleasure to spend time with Mohammed bin Salman before he criticised the “fake news” media.
Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman has told Donald Trump that Arab Gulf states were seeking to work with the US to de-escalate tensions in the region, as the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza continues to drag on and destabilise the Middle East.
According to a White House spokesperson, Donald Trump called on Syria’s Ahmed al-Sharaa to ‘“deport Palestinian terrorists” and to help the US to prevent the resurgence of Islamic State. He urged Syria to sign onto the Abraham Accords with Israel.
Al-Sharaa invited American companies to invest in Syrian oil and gas.
During Trump’s speech to Arab leaders, he said he wants a future of “safety and dignity” for Palestinians but warned that was impossible if leaders in Gaza continued down a path of violence.
He praised the “constructive role that the leaders in this room have taken trying to bring this conflict to an end”.
He also thanked those involved in helping secure the release of Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander.
Lifting sanctions on Syria ‘gives them a chance of greatness’, Donald Trump says
Donald Trump has said that lifting sanctions on Syria “gives them a chance of greatness”.
“The sanctions were really crippling, very powerful,” he added. He said the US will drop “all of the sanctions on Syria, which I think will be a good thing.”
He said that he is looking to normalise relations with Syria.
Trump wants to make deal with Iran but tells them to ‘stop sponsoring terror’
Donald Trump has said he wants to make a deal with Iran, but it can only go ahead if the regime stops “supporting terror” and abandons its nuclear plans.
“Many are watching with envy,” Trump told assembled Arab leaders during a speech and said there “are incredible deals within reach for this region”.
He accused the Biden administration of “creating bedlam by being incompetent”.
The US president says “people at this table know where my loyalties lie”.
In related news, Iran’s deputy foreign minister will meet with European diplomats for nuclear talks in Istanbul on Friday, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Wednesday.
Reuters reported on Tuesday that Iran would hold talks on the now moribund 2015 nuclear deal with European parties, which include France, Britain and Germany.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said Donald Turmp’s decision to lift sanctions on Syria is of historic importance, Turkish state-owned Anadolu news agency reported on Wednesday.
Erdoğan met online with Donald Trump, Mohammed bin Salman and Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa.
Speaking at an investment forum on Tuesday, Trump said that he planned to lift sanctions on Syria after holding talks with Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. “I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at greatness,” Trump said.
Ahmed al-Sharaa’s pitch to woo the US president offered access to Syrian oil, reconstruction contracts and to build a Trump Tower in Damascus in exchange for the lifting of US sanctions on Syria.
Though the details of the sanctions relief were still unclear, Sharaa’s team in Damascus was celebrating, writes William Christou in Beirut.
“This is amazing, it worked,” said Radwan Ziadeh, a Syrian writer and activist who is close to the Syrian president. He shared a picture of an initial mockup of Trump Tower Damascus. “This is how you win his heart and mind,” he said, noting that Sharaa would probably show Trump the design during their meeting in Riyadh on Wednesday.
Donald Trump meets Syrian president in Saudi Arabia before Gulf tour resumes
Donald Trump has met Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa in Saudi Arabia after agreeing to lift sanctions on Syria.
Despite concerns within sectors of his administration over the Syria’s leaders’ former ties to Al Qaeda, Trump said on Tuesday during a speech in Riyadh he would lift sanctions on Syria. The onetime insurgent leader spent years imprisoned by US forces after being captured in Iraq.
The White House says Trump agreed to “say hello” to al-Sharaa before the US leader wraps up his visit to Saudi Arabia and moves on to Qatar.
Trump is also scheduled to attend a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council, the grouping of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. He then sets off for Qatar, the second stop in his Gulf tour. Trump will be honored with a state dinner in Qatar.
Al-Sharaa was named president of Syria in January, a month after a stunning offensive by insurgent groups led by al-Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, stormed Damascus and ended the 54-year rule of the Assad family.
Trump said he decided to meet with al-Sharaa after being encouraged to do so by Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The president also pledged to lift years-long sanctions on Syria.
“There is a new government that will hopefully succeed in stabilizing the country and keeping peace,” Trump said in a wide-ranging foreign policy address Tuesday in which he announced he was lifting the sanctions that have been in place in Syria since 2011. “That’s what we want to see in Syria.”
Trump also urged Iran to take a “new and a better path” as he pushes for a new nuclear deal and said he wanted to avoid conflict with Tehran.
The United States and Saudi Arabia signed a $142bn arms deal touted by the White House as the “largest defence sales agreement in history” in the first stop of Donald Trump’s four-day diplomatic tour to the Gulf states aimed at securing big deals and spotlighting the benefits of Trump’s transactional foreign policy.
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