Trump Moves To Strike Syria From List Of Terror Sponsors, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Its President Was Still The Man The United States Once Offered $10 Million To Capture

WASHINGTON. In a move hailed by the administration as a bold stroke of statesmanship, President Donald J. Trump notified Congress on Tuesday of his intent to remove Syria from the federal government's list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, resolving a long-standing concern that the nation's head of state was still, on paper, a wanted terrorist.

The designation, in place continuously since 1979, will lapse after a 45-day waiting period, at which point Syria will be free to sponsor terrorism the way America's other trading partners do, quietly and through intermediaries. Officials called the delisting a "historic step" intended to "give the Syrian people a chance at greatness," a chance they noted had been unavailable during the fourteen-year civil war the United States spent much of that period funding several sides of.

At the center of the rehabilitation is Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who until December 2024 was better known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, commander of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an organization that began life as al-Qaeda's official Syrian franchise. As recently as 2017 the State Department was advertising a $10 million reward for information leading to his capture, a bounty the department has now quietly concluded would be awkward to keep promoting about a man it would like to sign investment agreements with.

"The President has always said he alone can make deals nobody else can make, and there are very few people nobody else would make a deal with," said one source within the administration, adding that al-Sharaa had provided "formal assurances" that Syria would not support international terrorism going forward, the precise category of promise that a terrorism designation had previously existed to enforce. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who once described al-Sharaa's organization in markedly different terms, praised the delisting as the opening of "a new chapter."

Business analysts greeted the announcement warmly, observing that a Syria unburdened by sanctions and terror labels represents billions of dollars in reconstruction contracts for the Gulf monarchies that backed al-Sharaa's rise and have spent the past year lobbying Washington on his behalf. The American public, which is not expected to receive any reconstruction contracts, was reassured that the change would have no effect on its daily life beyond the abstract knowledge that the phrase "state sponsor of terrorism" now carries slightly less meaning than it did on Monday.

At press time, the State Department confirmed it was reviewing whether it also owed a $10 million refund to anyone who had already turned the President of Syria in.