On August 26, 2025, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) published a final rule removing the Syrian Sanctions Regulations (31 CFR Part 542) from the Code of Federal Regulations (“OFAC Final Rule”). This action follows the issuance of Executive Order (“EO”) 14312 on June 30, 2025, which terminated the national emergency declared in EO 13338 and revoked multiple Syria-related sanctions authorities. Our blog post on the issuance of EO…
On June 30, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14312 (the “Syria EO”) terminating the U.S. comprehensive sanctions program targeting Syria, while also continuing to maintain and expand certain sanctions targeting former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and others associated with the former Syrian regime. In addition, the U.S. State Department revoked the designation of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s (“HTS”) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (“FTO”) on July 8, 2025. OFAC has taken the following actions to implement…
In less than two weeks, we have seen Syria go from one of the most heavily sanctioned countries on the planet to a country well on the road to establishing normal trade relations with the Western world. The latest flurry of developments started on May 13, 2025, when President Trump caught much of the world by surprise when he said in a speech in Riyadh: “I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria…
On 24 April 2025, the UK government published the Syria (Sanctions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) Regulations 2025, which took effect on 25 April 2025 (“Amending Regulations”). These new regulations amend the Syria (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 to partially suspend a number of significant sanctions that have been in place for over a decade to reflect the developments to the political situation in Syria following the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024. The UK…