Statement by Bronx Antiwar Coalition, May 13, 2025
Statement by the Bronx Antiwar Coalition, May 13, 2025
Editor’s note: Great statement but I would keep watching this issue. Remember, we are dealing with Donald Trump here, and a country with 3 different zones of occupation controlled by 3 different countries. Congress put the sanctions on Syria and renewed them shortly after al-Jolani came to power. How much sanctions relief will come is hard to gauge.
The Trump regime’s decision to lift sanctions on Syria exposes the true purpose of sanctions: to deliberately impoverish ordinary citizens, force regime change, and extend U.S.-led imperial control. For 15 years, the United States imposed draconian sanctions on the Syrian Arab Republic—isolating Syria from international banking, trade, and essential sectors such as energy, health, and education—with the explicit intent of undermining its self-sufficient socialist economy. These measures were designed to demoralize ordinary Syrians and force a change in leadership by targeting the elected coalition government of Syria under President Assad, which had defended the Palestinian cause and refused to normalize relations with the Zionist entity.
The Syrian government’s principled stance made it a prime target for this economic assault. The sanctions worked as intended: by devastating the lives of ordinary Syrians through food shortages, ruined healthcare, and a collapse in education and industry, they paved the way for destabilization and an attempted overthrow of the Syrian Arab Republic. In its place, the U.S. and its allies sought to install a new regime—a brutal, terror-driven government led by takfiri extremists from HTS under Jolani. Jolani, the founder and former leader of Al-Qaeda in Syria, embodies the very violence he once claimed to oppose. His rise to power was a calculated move by the U.S., Israel, Turkey, and Gulf states, who engineered and supported terrorist organizations as tools for regime change.
Even more reprehensible is the hypocrisy of U.S. imperialists and the reactionary Syrian diaspora in the West. These groups once championed sanctions, fully aware they were designed to inflict devastating hardship on ordinary Syrians in order to dismantle the multi-ethnic, multi-religious coalition government of Syria, which had defended all Palestinian resistance factions and subsidized their political offices in Damascus. Now, with the Syrian government destabilized and Jolani’s terror-driven puppet regime in power, they clamor for the sanctions to be lifted—quietly admitting that such measures inherently harm ordinary people. Their opportunistic reversal exposes a glaring inconsistency: they supported policies that deliberately drove Syria below the poverty line and now celebrate their removal as if it were a humanitarian victory.
Announced at a high-profile Saudi investment forum with promises of giving Syria “a chance at greatness,” the lifting of sanctions does not represent relief or healing. Instead, it paves the way for Ukrainian-style mineral deals, grants Western corporations unfettered access to exploit Syria’s oil and gas resources, and even opens the door to symbolic ventures like a “Trump Tower” in Damascus. Concurrently, Jolani’s regime is normalizing ties with the Zionist regime, shifting from denouncing Israeli occupation of Syrian land to accepting it as the “State of Israel.” This betrayal of the Palestinian cause is especially egregious as genocide in Gaza escalates.
We have consistently opposed sanctions because we understand their devastating impact on ordinary people and reject the notion that economic warfare can ever be justified. True anti-imperialists have always maintained that sanctions crush the working class and inflict profound human misery. In contrast, U.S. imperialists and reactionary Syrian diaspora in the West once embraced these measures to achieve regime change but now hypocritically celebrate their removal. This calculated reversal underscores their opportunism and confirms that sanctions are an unjust tool, deliberately designed to dismantle the entire political system of the Syrian Arab Republic at the expense of the very citizens whose lives they destroy.