The United States soon will no longer designate Syria as a state sponsor of terrorism, a label it has held since 1979. President Donald Trump’s July 8, 2026, decision to remove Syria from the list is subject to a 45-day congressional review, which is expected to proceed without opposition, since Congress already has indicated bipartisan support for the move.
De-listing Syria would create needed economic opportunities as the country navigates a fragile political transition after more than a decade of civil war. However, precisely because this transition remains so precarious, it may be premature to remove Syria from the list at this stage.
President Donald Trump’s July 8, 2026, decision to remove Syria from the list is subject to a 45-day congressional review.
The December 2024 collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime ended Syria’s long-standing association with regional terrorism, especially with regard to its alliance with Iran and its proxies. However, it did not completely sever the country’s links to terrorism. Until he assumed power in Damascus, interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa was designated a terrorist because of his ties to Al Qaeda. Moreover, the coalition of armed groups that helped bring him to power was composed largely of jihadist and other Islamist factions, including his own organization, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, which remained on the State Deparmment’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list until July 2025.
Al-Sharaa has largely succeeded in keeping Syria out of regional conflicts. His government has taken reasonable measures to prevent Syria from once again becoming involved in regional terrorism. However, its inability to prevent extremist groups from carrying out atrocities against ethnic and religious minorities across the country—and in some cases, direct involvement in that onslaught—raises serious questions about Damascus’s ability to uphold the neutral posture it seeks to project.
Syria is also home to thousands of foreign jihadist fighters, many of whom have been integrated into the country’s new military structure. Some of these fighters continue to operate as rogue militias, sowing chaos and intimidating the civilian population. The new Syrian military is guided by a doctrine that is heavily influenced by jihadist ideology and is explicitly anti-Israel. The al-Sharaa government may seek to transform these factions into a professional army, but that process is likely to take years. Until there is clear evidence of meaningful progress, removing Syria from the state sponsors of terrorism list appears ill-timed.
When the U.S. military relocated thousands of Islamic State detainees held by its then-Kurdish partners in northeast Syria in January 2026, amid clashes between Syrian government forces and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, the decision was driven by more than immediate security concerns surrounding the fighting. U.S. officials were concerned that Syrian government forces lacked the capacity to securely manage Islamic State prisoners, particularly given that some members of the new Syrian military maintained sympathy toward Islamic State prisoners. During the January violence, U.S. intelligence agencies estimated that more than 15,000 people escaped from the al-Hol detention camp, a facility that housed tens of thousands of family members of Islamic State fighters and individuals with links to the terrorist group.
t would be wiser for the Trump administration to delay removing Syria from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list until the country’s political transition demonstrates greater durability.
Political transitions across the region in recent years have shown how quickly events can spiral out of control, even in countries that appeared to be stabilizing and offered genuine prospects for a democratic transition. Therefore, it would be wiser for the Trump administration to delay removing Syria from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list until the country’s political transition demonstrates greater durability.
A similar approach also should have guided the Trump administration’s lifting of U.S. economic sanctions on Syria. Rather than granting irreversible sanctions relief, Washington should have retained the ability to monitor developments and keep alive the option to reimpose restrictions if Damascus fails to meet key expectations.
The same principle applies to de-listing Syria. Establishing a clear monitoring mechanism—one with measurable benchmarks related to dismantling extremist networks, exercising effective control over disparate armed factions, protecting ethnic and religious minorities, and preventing support for terrorist organizations—would help to ensure that Syria’s new leadership remains committed to breaking with its past. Such a framework would allow the United States to encourage Syria’s economic and political recovery while preserving leverage and reducing the risk that the country once again could become a hub for terrorism.
