The United States announced on Wednesday that it will remove Syria from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, ending a designation that has been in place since 1979. That’s 47 years of being on Washington’s naughty list, the longest stretch for any country in the program’s history.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio communicated the decision, which kicks off a 45-day review period before taking effect, assuming Congress doesn’t intervene. The move follows a meeting between President Donald Trump and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa at a NATO summit in Turkey, and it represents the final domino in a series of sanctions rollbacks that have quietly been reshaping Syria’s financial landscape, particularly for digital assets.
A year of unwinding restrictions
Executive Order 14312 terminated the comprehensive Syria sanctions program on July 1, 2025. In July 2025, the US revoked the Foreign Terrorist Organization designation for Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the armed group that al-Sharaa previously led. By November 2025, al-Sharaa himself was delisted from the Specially Designated Global Terrorist lists, with the United Nations taking similar actions around the same time.
Why crypto is the immediate beneficiary
