06 Aug 2020; MEMO: The United States intends to increase economic sanctions imposed on Syria in a bid to topple the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad, the New York Times reported yesterday.
The paper quoted remarks by the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Levant Affairs and Special Envoy for Syria, Joel Rayborn, who said that the sanctions imposed under the Caesar Act will not end “until the Syrian regime and its allies accede”.
However, the paper quoted diplomatic and humanitarian assistance experts who questioned whether progress could be made if diplomatic channels aren’t opened.
The paper has also quoted the former director of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, John Smith, as saying that “sanctions alone cannot solve the problem,” adding that “it’s difficult to see what else the U.S. government is doing in Syria other than putting a bunch of Syrian regime insiders on a list that they don’t really care one way or the other they are on.”
