The US House of Representatives has passed a repeal of the Caesar sanctions on Syria as part of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Despite earlier reports that any repeal might be wrapped in tight conditionality, the actual language is a straightforward repeal. 

Context: The bill now needs to pass through the Senate and then be signed by the president, but there are no indications that the Senate will reopen or harden the Caesar language. The House passed the NDAA on 10 December by 312–112, and Senate leaders and US media say the upper chamber is expected to approve the same package next week, before the Christmas recess, after which President Trump is expected to sign it into law.

Analysis: There has been a lot of speculation about conditions being attached, but the relevant amendment – now Section 6211 – does not condition or reverse the repeal itself. Instead, it bolts on a light, political oversight mechanism. Subsection (a) simply states that the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019 “is hereby repealed,” meaning the statutory authority is terminated outright once the NDAA is enacted. The new subsections (b)–(d) then require the President or his designee to send Congress an unclassified report 90 days after enactment, and then every 180 days for the next four years, “certifying” whether the Syrian government is meeting six broad benchmarks: committing to eliminate the threat from ISIS and other terrorist groups in partnership with the US-led Global Coalition; making progress on providing security for religious and ethnic minorities and including minorities in government; refraining from unilateral, unprovoked military action against neighbours (explicitly including Israel) while moving toward appropriate security arrangements; not knowingly financing, arming or sheltering actors that threaten US, allied or partner security; removing, or taking steps to remove, foreign fighters from senior roles in state and security institutions; and investigating and committing to prosecute serious human-rights abuses committed since 8 December 2024, including massacres of religious minorities.

Subsection (c) obliges the President to inform the Syrian government of the report’s findings, and subsection (d) adds only a “sense of Congress” provision stating that if the President cannot make an affirmative certification for two consecutive reporting periods, Congress believes sanctions under the Caesar Act should be reimposed until a positive certification is possible. In US legislative practice, “sense of Congress” language expresses a political view but has no automatic legal effect by itself; it does not undo the repeal clause or cause sanctions to snap back without further action. The practical outcome is an unconditional repeal of Caesar, combined with a recurring but highly flexible reporting and signalling framework rather than a new binding conditionality regime. It is also noteworthy that even in this certification mechanism, there is no mention of the March 10 agreement between Damascus and the SDF, which earlier reports had suggested might be written in. An earlier Senate draft had discussed “suspending” Caesar, with language that would have allowed sanctions “suspended under subsection (a)” to be immediately reimposed if certification failed. That structure would indeed have looked more like a conditional suspension than a clean repeal, but it appears to have been dropped; in its current form, the sanctions removal is not conditional.

Therefore, if the Caesar clause passes the Senate in its current version, it is a major win for Ahmed al-Sharaa and his HTS-led government, signalling an unconditional and immediate repeal of one of the most important remaining US sanctions tools on Syria. What makes this even more striking is the contrast with Iraq after 2003. In Iraq’s case, even after a full-scale US invasion and regime change, the country remained under elements of the UN Chapter VII sanctions architecture for years. The broad UN trade and financial embargo was only lifted in May 2003, and some key residual measures linked to WMD and the Oil-for-Food framework were not fully terminated until 2010–2011. By contrast, in Syria, within roughly a year of Assad’s fall, most broad US, UK and EU economic sanctions have been lifted or wound down – even though some targeted measures on specific individuals and entities remain – and Caesar itself is being repealed outright rather than merely suspended.

That speed, delivered to a transitional government led by a former al-Qaida-linked figure, with unresolved SDF and Druze issues and only a soft, discretionary certification mechanism as a check – underlines just how decisively Washington and its partners have prioritised geopolitical realignment and “normalisation” with al-Sharaa over maintaining serious leverage through sanctions.