... international support for regime change through economic strangulation. To do this, a bill was tabled in the Congress, as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, which imposed sanctions on Syria.
Passed in June 2020, the bill was called the “Caesar Act”, deriving its name from a mysterious figure who claimed to have been the photographer employed by the Syrian Ministry of Defense to take photographs of victims killed in the civil war. Described as a “defector”, he delivered more than ...
... to Syria, much less for transit to Lebanon (owing to the sanctions). Predictably, Syria’s imports have dropped and the prices of food and other imported goods gone up as a result of the high sanctions risks and increased cost of logistics services.
Caesar Act: Real Sanctions
Unfortunately for Syria, the secondary U.S. sanctions under the "Caesar Act" quickly began turning into an effective mechanism (much unlike previous measures, often limited to the compilation of sanctions lists), although ...
... Syrians’ traveling to the U.S.
The U.S. also imposes secondary sanctions designed to prohibit certain categories of third-country
trade with Syria. U.S. secondary sanctions on Syria were comparatively limited until late 2019, when
Congress passed the Caesar Act. However, secondary sanctions remain more limited than primary
sanctions. Main categories of secondary sanctions are on:
Non-U.S. companies that support or engage in significant transactions with the Syrian
government, including entities owned ...
... power” (
Awlad alsulta
), falling out of favour. Last year, he was rumoured to have been placed under house arrest for his refusal to donate the bulk of his 5-billion-dollar fortune to advance the Syrian President’s personal efforts to involve the private ... ... power,”
Syria’s third cellular service provider
to compete with Syriatel, the flagship of Makhlouf’s “empire.”
The Caesar Act as an Aggravating Factor
While
the Department of State
insists that secondary sanctions do not extend to the humanitarian ...
