The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), proposed a late amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act on September 11 that includes a four-year extension of Caesar Act sanctions on the regime of Bashar al-Assad while expanding the criteria for designation under the act. Though Cardin’s amendment signals bipartisan support on Capitol Hill for expanding sanctions against the Assad regime, it also includes problematic wording that could create unintentional but broad loopholes in the full range of U.S. sanctions on Syria.
Congress approved the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019 by overwhelming margins. “Caesar” is the code name of a Syrian military photographer who fled the country in 2013 with 55,000 digital images showing the tortured and starved corpses of men, women, and children detained by the regime. The law went into effect in June 2020 and is set to expire at the end of this calendar year.
Despite the law’s vigorous enforcement in the waning days of the Trump administration, the Biden White House opted for a policy of quietly encouraging Arab allies to normalize relations with Assad, which culminated in Syria’s readmission to the Arab League in 2023. Biden’s policy included token enforcement of the Caesar Act, which led to bipartisan criticism from Congress.
In February this year, the House voted 389-32 in favor of the Assad Regime Anti-Normalization Act, many of whose provisions serve as models for similar planks in Cardin’s proposed amendment. The House-passed bill aggressively expands sanctions against the Assad regime to include targeting Assad’s Arab Socialist Baath Party and the country’s rubber-stamp parliament, in addition to targeting Damasus’ wholesale diversion or theft of humanitarian aid intended for the people of Syria. It would also have directed the president to actively oppose other countries’ bids to normalize relations with Assad. The Cardin amendment includes similar provisions.
Likewise, the amendment incorporates the Anti-Normalization Act’s requirement of annual reports to Congress from the executive branch describing how it has countered and will prevent normalization with the Syrian regime. As part of this requirement, the executive branch would have to list “covered transactions” with a value of $2,500,000 or more between Syrian entities or individuals and counterparties in a wide range of Arab states.
In effect, the requirement to report covered transactions compels the sitting administration to provide Congress with information essential to determining whether the executive branch is enforcing sanctions. With a list in hand, Congress can quiz the administration on why particular transactions were allowed or blocked.
While many provisions in the Cardin amendment will strengthen the Syria sanctions regime and help to hold Assad accountable for his actions, one provision would likely undermine not only the expansion of sanctions but also the underlying law itself: an otherwise innocuous exception to sanctions for food, medicine, and humanitarian assistance. Such exceptions are an integral part of all U.S. sanctions regimes. In this instance, the exception covers financial “transactions that are necessary for, or related to,” permitted trade. There is a potential for the phrase “related to” to be subject to an overly broad interpretation, potentially enabling the Syrian government or individuals or entities that have been sanctioned — from Iranian-supported militias to ISIS — to conduct prohibited transactions by making them part of permitted ones.
As Cardin’s text clearly recognizes, the Assad regime is a serial manipulator of humanitarian assistance programs and the UN agencies that provide them. If it becomes law, the amendment would be the most significant step so far to address the diversion and theft of aid. But if permitted to remain, its poorly worded humanitarian exception could create loopholes that undermine sanctions on Syria.
David Adesnik is research director and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Matthew Zweig is senior policy director at FDD Action. For more analysis from David and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow David on X @adesnik. Follow FDD on X @FDD. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy.