On Friday, the State Department, sounding very much like Ozymandias, threatened Caesar Act sanctions against any country that is seeking to normalize relations with Syria. Acting Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs Joey Hood, during a briefing on Blinken’s trip to Europe (he’s in Rome now where he’ll be meeting with Yair Lapid), declared that the US won’t be normalizing US relations with the Assad government “absent a major change in behavior on its part.”
“And with regard to others who may be considering making moves, we are asking them to consider very carefully the atrocities committed by the regime on the Syrian people over the last decade as well as the regime’s continuing efforts to deny much of the country access to humanitarian aid and security,” Hood continued. “And I would also, of course, add that we also have the Caesar Act sanctions. This is a law that has wide bipartisan support in the Congress, and the administration is going to follow the law on that. And so governments and businesses need to be careful that their proposed or envisioned transactions don’t expose them to potential sanctions from the United States under that act.”
Throughout the briefing, Hood repeatedly claimed that the US main concern was about the humanitarian conditions of the Syrian population in all areas of the country, but no one had the guts to point out that the Caesar sanctions are preventing economic reconstruction and therefore are destroying the welfare of the population that the US claims to be so concerned about.
