The leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday offered rare bipartisan support for an executive action this week by President Donald Trump — the lifting of longstanding U.S. sanctions on Syria in a bid to offer the Arab country’s new government a chance after 14 years of civil war.
Trump made the sanctions announcement Tuesday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, at the start of the first major foreign trip of his second administration. He followed that up with a meeting with Syria’s new president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, who led the rebel coalition that toppled the regime of longtime dictator Bashar Assad.
Committee Chairman Jim Risch, R-Idaho said he was initially unnerved by the emergence of al-Sharaa as Syria’s new leader given his past as the head of an al-Qaeda offshoot before he severed ties and adopted less-extremist stances.
