Washington — President Trump signed an executive order Monday afternoon terminating the United States' sanctions program on Syria, the White House announced.

The comes after Mr. Trump announced in May during a trip to the Middle East that the U.S. would lift all sanctions on the country. While in the Middle East, Mr. Trump met with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who announced a transitional government in March. The Assad regime collapsed under the weight of an offensive by opposition forces. Sanctions will remain on Bashar al-Assad, Syria's former president. 

"The order will remove sanctions on Syria while maintaining sanctions on the former president, Assad, his associates, human rights abusers, drug traffickers, persons linked to chemical weapons activities, ISIS and their affiliates, and Iranian proxies," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday. 

Syria's transitional government has been pushing the Trump administration for sanctions relief for months, and some work has been underway to ease some sanctions since before the president's May announcement. 

Some sanctions would still need to be formally revoked by Congress. Syria has been under U.S. sanctions in some form since 1979, when the country was designated a state sponsor of terrorism.

Last month, the Treasury Department issued formal guidance rolling back some sanctions on banks, airlines and al-Shaara. It also released guidelines for approved transactions in Syria, including infrastructure projects. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said at the time that the measures were designed to encourage investment in Syria.

"As President Trump promised, the Treasury Department and the State Department are implementing authorizations to encourage new investment into Syria," Bessent said. "Syria must also continue to work towards becoming a stable country that is at peace, and today's actions will hopefully put the country on a path to a bright, prosperous, and stable future."

The new transitional government has blamed sanctions — which include penalties on third countries for doing business in Syria — for the country's inability to pay civil service salaries, reconstruct sizable chunks of war-ravaged cities and rebuild a health care system decimated by war.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia, two U.S. allies in the region, have backed normalizing relations with Syria's new government. Both countries have provided aid to Syria, and Saudi Arabia has offered to pay off some of the country's debts, two activities that could run afoul of sanctions. The Saudis see an opportunity to win the new Syrian government over to their side, after decades of the country being allied with their top regional rival, Iran, while the Assad regime was in power.

Relief was a key topic in meetings between Syrian officials, including its Central Bank Governor Abdelkadir Husrieh, and other world leaders at the IMF and World Bank spring meetings last month in Washington.

Some of the most punitive measures were imposed over the last two decades on the Assad regime for human rights abuses and support for groups designated by the U.S. as terrorist organizations. The Assad government collapsed in December as rebel groups, including fighters led by Sharaa, swept into Damascus, ending a 13-year-long civil war.

In 2003, then-President George W. Bush signed the Syria Accountability Act into law, which centered on Syria's support for U.S.-designated terror groups like Hezbollah, Syria's military presence in Lebanon, as well as alleged development of weapons of mass destruction, oil smuggling and backing of armed groups in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.