Lawmakers are coalescing around the prospect of cautious sanctions relief for Syria, conditioned on its compliance with key benchmarks, even as the Israeli government publicly remains deeply skeptical of the new Syrian leadership.

The fledgling Syrian government is led by former ISIS and Al-Qaida leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, and the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Islamist paramilitary group, which spun off of Al Qaeda’s Syria branch. U.S. policymakers have hoped to gain influence with al-Sharaa and the HTS government to advance U.S. objectives, but are also cautious about engaging the former terrorist commander, who now claims to be pursuing a more egalitarian, reformist agenda.

The widespread alignment among U.S. lawmakers was on clear display at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing earlier this month, when lawmakers and witnesses on both sides of the aisle sounded largely in lockstep on a new U.S. policy towards Syria involving gradual sanctions relief based on specific conditions and expectations.

“The new government that’s in place there is saying the right things,” Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Jewish Insider this week. “That’s not the same thing as doing the right things. They have a checkered past and as a result of that, I think it’s reasonable for us to say, ‘Let’s see how this is going to work.’”

Risch said he thinks there “should be some sanctions relief because this is an opportunity for the United States to have a relationship with Syria, and we should not miss this opportunity. If they’re going to do the right things, we want to help. But I’m not willing to let the whole [sanctions regime] come off at once.”

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), a Democratic member of the committee, noted that both Democrats and Republicans are in agreement that the U.S. needs to figure out a strategy to move ahead with some sanctions relief.

“The question would be, could we convince the administration that it’s in their interest to maybe do some sanctions relief and then have some phasing out of other sanctions that we could lift based on behavior?” Kaine said. “We don’t want to be too slow out of the box, so it’s a phasing issue. I think we all sort of want the same thing to happen.”

“AJC hopes for a peaceful, stable, and independent Syria, one in which its diverse population, oppressed for half a century by a corrupt and brutal dictatorship, is protected and represented — and one that does not threaten, or allow other states to use its territory to threaten, neighboring states,” Jason Isaacson, chief policy and political affairs officer at the American Jewish Committee, told JI. “We look forward to our government’s careful review of the continued applications of sanctions.”

He said that there’s a “good bipartisan sense on the committee that here’s an opportunity. Not exactly sure we can really assess it right now, but better than the status quo ante, and we don’t want to miss an opportunity.” Kaine said he’s not sure yet how the committee plans to push the effort forward.

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) also said he supports phased sanctions relief.

“We’ve got to be able to have some way to engage … in reconstruction and engagement,” Lankford said. “We’ve got to be able to figure out, what does that actually look like? For Lebanon and Jordan [and] Turkey, as they’re trying to be able to engage to help reestablish some kind of stability — you can’t just ignore it and say, ‘Assad’s there.’ Assad is not there.”

Jewish groups in Washington said that any sanctions policy changes should be made carefully.

“AJC hopes for a peaceful, stable, and independent Syria, one in which its diverse population, oppressed for half a century by a corrupt and brutal dictatorship, is protected and represented — and one that does not threaten, or allow other states to use its territory to threaten, neighboring states,” Jason Isaacson, chief policy and political affairs officer at the American Jewish Committee, told JI. “We look forward to our government’s careful review of the continued applications of sanctions.”

AIPAC spokesperson Marshall Wittmann said, “Any change in policy must be based on a sustained demonstration of positive behavior from the new Syrian government.”

Israeli leaders recently took a frosty or outright hostile posture toward the new Syrian regime, skeptical of the purported changes in the onetime jihadi leaders.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said this week that discussion of change in Syria was “ridiculous,” urging European leaders not to trust the new government. “The government is a jihadist Islamist terror group from Idlib,” Sa’ar said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week that he would not allow the new Syrian army or HTS forces to enter the region south of Damascus, demanding a full demilitarization of southern Syria, and pledged to protect the Druze community in southern Syria. Some Druze leaders in southern Syria have said they want to join Israel.

Israel has been carrying out strikes against HTS forces in southern Syria in recent days.

“You have the potential of this new government in Damascus that you could partner with on core U.S. interests, counter Iran, counterterrorism, but whether or not they truly are going to deliver the goods is the big question,” Dana Stroul, the research director at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Biden administration, said. “If this new government cannot stabilize the economy, without question, Syria will lapse into another violent conflict that will cause the country to only be a further projector of instability and chaos across the region.”

Israel’s view of the situation could find some sympathetic ears inside the Trump administration. National Security Advisor Tulsi Gabbard, who faced scrutiny over past defense of the Assad regime, has broadly painted anti-Assad rebels in Syria as Islamist extremists, and condemned HTS and al-Sharaa. She said recently that she believes Islamist terrorism is the greatest threat to the United States.

But others in the administration, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have advocated for a policy of cautious engagement. Rubio said last month that the U.S. must “explore these opportunities” to advance its interests and keep Iran and other adversaries from filling the gaps in Syria.

It’s not clear yet what strategy the administration plans to pursue.

Many policy analysts in Washington are backing the same approach supported by U.S. lawmakers.

Dana Stroul, the research director at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Biden administration, who testified at the Foreign Relations hearing, told JI that the U.S. has clear interests in Syria and in seeing stability in the country. 

“You have the potential of this new government in Damascus that you could partner with on core U.S. interests, counter Iran, counterterrorism, but whether or not they truly are going to deliver the goods is the big question,” Stroul said. “If this new government cannot stabilize the economy, without question, Syria will lapse into another violent conflict that will cause the country to only be a further projector of instability and chaos across the region.”

Current U.S. sanctions, she said, are contributing to the country’s financial and humanitarian peril.

“Members from both sides of the aisle are trying to figure out how you test the premise that we can work with this new government in Damascus,” Stroul said. “So what I was arguing is that it’s too soon to completely lift all of the state-level sanctions, but we can create space and flexibility within the sanctions architecture to allow the Syrian economy to stabilize … benchmarked against the kind of behavior we want to see from this new government.”

“Be cautious and go slow,” David Adesnik, the vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JI. “We are dealing with a country whose president is a former Al-Qaida commander. I think he has acquitted himself fairly responsibly in a number of respects … but there’s also a lot of troubling signs about where Syria is headed.”

She said that sanctions relief should, for now, come in the form of waivers and licenses — rather than the rescinding of existing executive orders or sanctions laws — which would make it easier to re-impose sanctions if U.S. conditions are not met.

Conditions, Stroul proposed, should include steps to counter terrorism and block Iranian activity, eliminating chemical weapons and inclusive and responsive governance, which the HTS government has said is one of its own goals.

David Adesnik, the vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JI he supports a similar policy for sanctions relief, even using the same term, “benchmarks.”

“Be cautious and go slow,” Adesnik told JI. “We are dealing with a country whose president is a former Al-Qaida commander. I think he has acquitted himself fairly responsibly in a number of respects … but there’s also a lot of troubling signs about where Syria is headed.”

He said that a condition for sanctions relief should be expelling non-Syrian former jihadists, some of whom have been brought into the government, from the country entirely, as well as implementing a robust legal system such that the country cracks down on and does not permit terrorism or terror financing. 

Adesnik said that some of the Syrian government’s moves have not been consistent with progress toward democratic rule.

Both Stroul and Adesnik said that lifting sanctions too rapidly or repealing them altogether would give away a key tool for U.S. leverage to influence the new government. 

“If you did it now, lifted everything, took away the terrorism designations, what would be the reason for them to actually kick out the jihadists?” Adesnik said.

Stroul said that the “countervailing risk is that if we don’t find a way to help this government,” it will prevent not only the U.S. but also Europe, the Gulf, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank from getting involved, and “what you’re going to do is push the government in Damascus toward spoilers and malign actors like Russia, like Iran and like China to bail them out.”

Adesnik said that Israel appears to be effectively ruling out the possibility that the new Syrian government will shed its jihadi roots, but added that he believes some in Washington have been too quick to see al-Sharaa as reformed.

“I think the Israelis are just discounting the possibility of the better outcome that almost everyone wants to see,” Adesnik said. “At the moment, it’s not clear who’s right.”