The U.S. announced its intention on Monday to remove the terrorist designation for the Syrian group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which overthrew the country’s longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad.
HTS originally grew out of a Syrian al Qaeda branch.
The move is part of a larger executive order aiming to lift sanctions on Syria. It was directed from a State Department memo from June 23rd.
A spokesperson from the State Department said that the agency does “not comment on deliberations, or potential deliberations, related to terrorist designations.”
Following Assad’s ousting, President Trump has been aiming to give Syria a chance at rebuilding itself.
“I took off the sanctions because if I didn’t do that, they wouldn’t have had a chance. And Syria has a chance,” Trump said last week.
The Trump administration has been working as well to encourage Syria’s integration into the global community, such as by encouraging the country to join the Abraham Accords.
“The president is certainly hopeful that more countries in the region will sign on to the Abraham Accords,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said last month. “When the president met with the new president of Syria that was one of the requests that [Trump] made; for Syria to sign on to the Abraham Accords. We want to see a long withstanding endurable peace in the Middle East and that's the way to do it.”
Leavitt added that she doesn’t “have a timeline for you but this administration wants to see that happen and our partners in the region should know that.”