Biden’s Jihad: Admin Seeks to Waive Sanctions on Assad

Just when you thought the horror of the weak Biden Administration couldn’t get any worse this happens. Syria’s Bashar al-Assad is one of the most brutal dictators on the face of the earth. However, that won’t stop the Biden Administration from waiving sanctions against this war criminal. Such a move will most certainly embolden Iran and Hezbollah as well. Under President Trump, peace agreements were being signed in the Middle East. The Biden Administration has blown up the peace in a few short months.

Biden Foreign Policy: bad decision after bad decision. https://t.co/jbqZicXHK9

— RJC (@RJC) September 9, 2021

Biden Admin Seeks to Waive Sanctions on Assad

By Washington Free Beacon, September 9, 2021

The Biden administration is expected to waive sanctions on Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad to facilitate an energy deal with Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon, according to congressional sources briefed on the matter.

The administration wants to waive portions of the bipartisan Caesar Act, which applied wide-ranging sanctions on Assad for his war crimes in Syria, to facilitate an energy deal with Arab nations that would provide the Assad regime with a financial and political lifeline.

Brett McGurk, the White House coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa who was caught having an extramarital affair with a reporter in 2008 while serving as the Obama administration’s ambassadorial nominee to Iraq, is pressing Egypt to sell gas to Lebanon via a pipeline that runs through Syria, congressional sources told the Washington Free Beacon. The Biden administration would have to waive key sanctions on Assad in order for the deal to go through.

As Biden and Democrats in Congress signal a willingness to back sanctions relief, Republican foreign policy leaders say removing sanctions on Assad will embolden his Iranian backers as well as Hezbollah. Indeed, Hezbollah itself sees the deal as a victory in its fight against U.S. sanctions and efforts to expand the Islamic Republic’s influence across the Middle East, saying it will loosen restrictions on all three countries involved: Syria, Iran, and Lebanon.

“Why in the world would the Biden administration lift sanctions on one of the most brutal human rights abusers in the world—the Assad regime?” Joe Wilson, a House Foreign Affairs Committee member and chair of the Republican Study Committee’s National Security and Foreign Affairs Task Force, told the Free Beacon.

A congressional source tracking the matter said the deal will supply the Assad regime with much-needed hard cash.

Assad is desperate for hard currency and that’s what they are going to get from this via the transit fees,” the source said. “The regime is literally starved for cash and Biden is saving them by the bell. A great new win for the human rights agenda after the Taliban taking over Afghanistan. So glad we have the geniuses in charge like McGurk.”

Diplomats from Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan met on Wednesday to finalize a roadmap for the energy deal and have signaled the Biden administration is prepared to issue the necessary waiver.

U.S. officials are also participating in the energy negotiations. Dorothy Shea, the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, has been working to address the country’s energy issues and confirmed in late August that she is in talks with the World Bank and Arab countries to finalize an agreement. Lebanon is also pushing the World Bank to finance the arrangement. Shea said she has also been in contact with the White House and Treasury Department as part of efforts to waive sanctions.

“There is a will to make this happen,” Shea said in an interview with Al Arabiya English last month. “There will be some logistical things that need to happen too, but I think that it will all fall into place fairly easily.”