Hafez Bashar al-Assad, the eldest son of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, is on the latest list of 14 senior officials and entities of the Syrian regime sanctioned by the United States Department of State under the so-called Caesar Act.
The appointments, which focus on the “Barbarian First Division of the Syrian Army,” are the second wave of sanctions to be applied under the law following the first move by the US State Department on June 17.
The first wave attacked the businessmen who financed Assad, with secondary sanctions designed to discourage any other external actor having relations with Assad’s business circle.
No sanctions were imposed on Russia or Assad’s supporters in the Middle East outside Syria, but the United States urged everyone to close all connections with the Syrian regime.
The sanctions come as Syria struggles to prevent an economic collapse caused by the nine-year civil war, hyperinflation, food shortages, and the spread of the coronavirus through the Middle East.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Joel Rayburn said the sanctions were slated to be introduced in the week of some of the worst atrocities committed by the Assad regime in 2011 and 2019.
When asked why Assad’s teenage son had been added to the list, born in 2001, Rayburn said: “There has been a tendency for the main actors and entrepreneurs of the Syrian regime to have been active in the regime to do business to through their adult relatives. to evade sanctions.
“It seems very clear that Bashar al-Assad’s immediate family and his in-laws are trying to consolidate economic power within Syria so that they can use this to further consolidate political power.”
He said: “Assad would only use that power to strengthen the killing machine against the Syrian people.” He denied that the sanctions would have any impact on humanitarian trade or on Lebanon’s economy.
The steady pace of sanctions, which mimics a long-held US policy elsewhere in the Middle East, notably Iran, reveals a determination in Washington to use non-military leverage to compel the Assad regime to negotiate the terms of a political agreement with the opposition largely defeated.
Syria is caught in a stalemate with Assad’s Iranian and Russian supporters unable to destroy the last opposition stronghold in Idlib, but Assad remains adamant that he will not cooperate with the UN-led peace process, even in a new one. constitution for the country.
The UN security council has recently come to a standstill on the number of cross-border humanitarian crossings in Syria with Russia and China, insisting that only one could be allowed. The stagnation occurred when the coronavirus began to sneak into the refugee camps in and around Syria.
Caesar’s sanctions, enacted in December 2019, are named in memory of the Syrian code named Caesar that smuggled photos of Syria showing the magnitude of atrocities in Assad’s prisons.
Rayburn promised “this is a campaign that will continue.” This is going to be César’s summer. “
He insisted that the sanctions were having a negative effect on the expected external investment in Syria.
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