On the Syrian Government aimed at protecting civilians from further war crimes and preventing any Foreign Investment with president assads regime. Syrian writers and scholars look at the economic and political impact of the sanctions. The sanctions announced last week came into force and came into force and its an unprecedented economic crisis in syria bring the syrian pound to roughly 3000 to a single u. S. Dollar. Small businesses are closing and ports are plummeting of those living under the poverty line already at 85 are increasing in number. An average monthly salary in syria reportedly by a large bag of limits. Corruption has triggered a crisis and humanitarian the potential famine this winter. While lebanon remains my the economic crisis and kelly continues to spread in syria, the decision 600 the rollout of the turkish lira to nearly a third of their income population. The northwest to be the nail in the coffin to what remains. In the podcast released last week are nonresident scholar daniel focus on the internal dynamics of regime held syria positive at the current crises inside syria might represent more dangerous threats than any military threat seen in recent years. And yet as its citizens facing crazily dire conditions the regime has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in recent weeks on new fighter jets from russia, Armored Vehicles and it is burned wide swaths of Agricultural Land in the northwest of the country. Fueled by these economic and the political frustrations, syria minority Druze Committee has taken to the streets holding bold antiregime protests and expressing unusual solidarity with the opposition in italy. Protests have been seen in syria Southern Province were an expanding insurgency is developing. The regime controlled central desert isis is slowly researching and and loyalist canaries public expression of discontent and criticism for the regime are emerging more clearly than any point since 2011. So might the sanction seemed up with diplomacy force the same machine or two russian and ringing to compromise or will they only serve to exacerbate human suffering across the country . These and many more questions will be up for discussion today. To take part of this discussion im really thrilled to introduce our panelist. First we had ambassador James Jeffrey whos going to use special representative for syria engagement and the use special envoy to the Global Coalition to defeat isis. Ambassador jeffrey also from has held senior positions crossley, including Deputy National security adviser and is a master and iraq and turkey. Next we have rime allaf, and political analyst who will a seat the board of the day after project and was an associate fellow from 20042012. And we finally have qutaiba idlbi, nonresident fellow of the me i Syria Program as as a forr detainee and torture victim himself, easy and unique position to talk on this panel and is also serious fellow at the National Center for Transitional Justice were his work focuses on political imprisonment in syria. Ambassador jeffrey, welcome. Finally if you are smart. In terms of the format each pencil begin with roughly five minutes of opening remarks followed by a moderated discussion. This event is live on zoom, on our live stream and live on cspan. For the many people worldwide only dive dialed into this even zoom i would encourage all to submit question using the q a feature which you should see on your screen. For those dialing in by phone, watching on our live stream or on cspan you can submit questions to us by emailing them to events at any i. Edu. Feel free to submit questions at any point during the event and i will do my best work them into the discussion and one final note, i i understand where cury scheduled to hold the event for an hour. If the quantity of questions is a mini as we expect we may push beyond that time but we will playthings lightyear. But to kick off the discussion, ambassador jeffrey, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us, and please go ahead. Thank you, charles. Its good to be back at in any i event. We have worked together including unserious act in times past four had another existence. Mei even picture moshe have seen sector estates and secretary of treasurys statements on the caesar act last week and some of the commentaries and fact sheets i wont get into the details. What a want to do is explain why the caesar act is important, how were going to implement it and what the next steps are. Most importantly start with the title, as charles said, it is the civilian protection act of 2019. It is designed to protect the Syrian People from assad in two ways, directly in the introduction by calling on the airstrikes against the same people and then more generally to require participation in the critical process under the u. N. , thats the 22 resolution 2254 process, which is of the american policy and we do not deviate and iota on that. It is not regime change. It is not a a separate deal. It is the human process that were supporting everywhere we can including with this legislation. Its not the first sanctions action against syria. Weve had a set of them, mainly executive but this is important because it is a law. It is a lot of stuff only passed by congress and signed by President Trump, its a law that passed overwhelmingly, almost unanimously in both houses. Thats very important because a reflex that syria policy and the United States today covers all parts of the u. S. Political system, from the right to the left, republicans to democrats, from people who think negatively another things, there is near unanimity on the need to do more on syria. Because this is such a terrible conflict for its own population, the latest statistics ive seen that only a little over a third of the population is the under assads active control. Of the less than a third of refugees in turkey, lebanon and jordan put done an amazing job taking care of those people in some and europe. Almost a third are also in areas outside of regime controlled in the north west and east. That is a telling point and where assad is today. We secondly see this legislation as giving us more powerful tools to go after those cronies and oligarchs were supporting assad and assad and his family themselves, as you see from the sanctions we brought. Those are under the executive order but were going to target these people with the caesar act with anything else we can as part of the package. Our goal is not to torpedo the economy, believe me. Assad more than capable of doing that himself as Charles Lister just explain. Hes doing a terrific job of pushing the pound into irrelevance and undercutting whatevers left of the syrian gdp. Rather, it is to inflict real pain on this people around assad and get them to understand this pain doesnt go away, until they change their policies. That involves either breaking off support for the regime or aa list of seven things the regime has to do for the regime as a whole can no longer be sanctioned. No longer besieged the Syrian People, no longer dealing with war criminals, encouraging refugees to return and on and on. Another thing we expect from the Syrian Government is to stop threatening the neighborhood, be it by allowing or ignoring the terrorist threat that is grown up in that country, charles again mention isis is on the march again in those areas that we dont control. Be it the use of chemical weapons, be it the weaponization of refugees, or inviting an iran with its hegemonic agenda or inviting and russian with an equal troubling agenda. But we have to resolve all of these geostrategic issues as well as the humanitarian issues if we can move forward. Next, the caesar act has strong humanitarian provisions that require us in the u. S. Government to explain to congress and the juror and her actual sanctions targeting the we do not undercut the humanitarian efforts underway. United states will be pledging a significant amount at the eu pledging conference she measuring eight at the end of this month. Already with over 10. 6 billion with the biggest humanitarian contributor. That will not stop drink is covid19 but we will continue the sanctions because of their nature they allow us to do secondary sanctions. They target specific areas. In one sense money laundry, the central bank which is abhorrent although it is always been sanctioned, but also the aviation industry, particularly military aviation, energy industry, construction industry. We want to make it clear for anybody who wants to rebuild assads syria but that cannot happen without caesar sanctions, and to have a political process. Now, what are we going to do with all this . In looking at the larger picture right now, and charles mentioned much of this, first of all we see an economic freefall of the assad regime largely through his own behavior and the collapse of the Banking System in lebanon. Secondly, we see his military offensive has stalemated. In idlib he was stopped in his tracks by opposition counteroffensive. The u. S. Has not left the northeast. The president in his own way in talking about with charles from example in afghanistan a mcclue we would eventually withdraw from syria here nothing is on the table right now. And the third country i mentioned is in many respects the ever more effective, particularly in targeting iranian and threatening syrian targets. So military situation isnt that great. Finally, on the accountability front which is so important in this conflict. We are seeing a great deal of support from secretarygeneral to terrorist who spoke out in written form in his reply to the outrageous and shameful 2504 resolution that cut two of the four humanitarian into syria calling for those corridors or a least one in the northeast to be reinstated and plenty of the obvious the Syrian Government is nothing significant to allow the mentoring deliveries in areas that it does not control. We have seen the board of inquiry called by the secretarygeneral condemning the regime and indirectly the russians for exploiting the passing of information on safe areas that were then subsequently bombed. Weve seen the opcw with it iit condemnation of the regime for three attacks in the spring of 2017 with chemical weapons, blaming not only Regime Forces the same this had to have been a great you an order by the top levels of the government. So thats the fourth thing along with the military situation, the economy, our sanctions and accountability that we believe will allow us to press the russians, our interlocutors, r a negotiated settlement under 20 to 54. Thank you, charles. Ambassador, thank you very much for the opening remarks. I think well go to qutaiba next. Thank you so much for being with us, qutaiba. Thank thank you so much, cha. Thanks for organizing this and for ambassador jeffrey his efforts in the state department to reestablish the commute geisha is an explain what the caesar act is. As you said this is a really important step towards accountability especially for a nation like syria. A lot of people have been forced the conflict inside syria but in reality its been going on for as long as the assad party was established, as long as 1963 was the first when the came into power. When you look at, i look specifically at the site of the syrian have Syrian Regime design syrian laws specifically to funnel all those detainees to a legal system that would put them in prison for use. This is not just a side issue, and organized issue. I think its great were putting this forward towards bringing a lot of commuters of war crimes and crimes against humanity, torture and killing of detainees, and maybe hopefully bring some hope to the families of the thousand disappear. Whats coming ahead of us, there are two challenges. The first one is to control the narrative regarding the caesar act. Again i respect ambassador jeffrey is effort in the last week reaching out to talk about the caesar act and address the concerns serious half of i almost saw him every day last week and addressing the questions. And to listen and to control the narrative that is reaching the Syrian People. Continue to reach out but i listen to syrians and see how the side effects of the caesar act will affect the life of ordinary citizens. Where the two exemptions, this is really important to tell the Syrian People that the caesar act is targeting those who are committing crimes specifically, and not targeting the lives of ordinary syrians. The second challenge is to adapt, to make sure actually that the caesar act and sanctions resulting from caesar act are actually serving their goal, to make sure that we have a very responsible sanction program. If you look at the sanctions program today, almost over 300 individuals come seeking individuals listed on the sanctions list. We have 217 individuals on the research center, working on chemical weapons. We want to make sure that actually the caesar act in effect and were targeting people were behind torturing syrians. We need to really expand and looking to those individuals in every intelligence center, in every government to make sure actually have those individuals, those who are responsible for those horrific acts weve seen. Thank you, charles. Qutaiba, thank you so much for placing that into some very important context. Rime, thank you. Please go ahead. Thank you heavenly and to think of a very good point on which to start which is to follow up with what qutaiba was saying. The narrative is extremely important for syrians to understand why this is necessary and how he could possibly benefit them, but also to counter the other narrative, which is that everything that the regime has done has been to save the country, has been to save syrians, and none of this wouldve happened had it not been for the sanctions. I think its important to remind those people whether they are kneejerk reactions as usual from people who say that anything the u. S. Does must be bad, or they are pure ignorant about what the regime has done. In everything that concerns you and the economy was in free fall. If you had followed, you would have known already that everything done by this regime, from turning a socialist close economy to a socalled open economy, but only for a certain segment of society. So wile they launched into this crony capitalism, no concurrent measures were taken to make sure that the normal economy for everybody else was going on. So that means that people saw subsidies begin to be reduced without something to make up for them. And the subsidies were needed because under the father, for 30 years, everything was told the only way that people could access anything from gas to bread, needed to be subsidized. So i think we really need to look at these issues to understand that even if the sanctions were removed. One day to the next, we would not be getting the normal involvement of a government, of a normal government with the people. I want to also mention that if anybody had been following the Syrian People, its been the regime all of these years. In the lately, its 800 for any syrian to renew a passport. This is not new. Theyve always paid for the privilege of going to syria. I can tell you young men who never lived in syria, but some from syrian heritage and want today visit their country would have to pay 5, 10 or 15,000 to be exempt from the military. This had gone for years. Import fees on cars. Until recently, until 2005 the import tax, the duty was 255 and we can name numerous examples of how it has always been the syrians that had to pay this heavy price to be able to participate in daily life. So, this is an answer to the naysayers who say that the sanctions hurt the people. Im not going to pretend they cannot hurt the people, they can hurt the people and thats why my position when i look at the situation today, is to say that the sanctions alone are not enough, and ambassador jeffrey mentioned there would be political pressure to move on with 2254 and i think that this is the key, the key point that we have to keep on making, that we have these sanctions, only against the regime enabler, but at the same time, there is only one way out of this, and the way, if we dont call it regime change, we can have a political transition, which is precisely what 2254 is about. And finally i would say about the seizures that the regime has carried out repeatedly, not just in syrian cities, but i remind you when the regime had to withdraw very quickly after the assassination in 2005, it imposed a blockade on lebanon. It left trucks for weeks with produce rotting in the sun. This is not new tactic by the regime and really absurd to imagine that all of these ills that have befallen the Syrian People is because of these sanctions. Thank you so much for those really important opening comments as well. I think all three of you have said things that compliment each other but give very important different perspectives or overlapping perspectives. Ambassador jeffrey, i come to you first, quite clearly its no secret to you that the legislation has sparked quite a debate within the community thats following syria and events elsewhere in the middle east. With sort of partnering the debate accusing the sanctions of having an overly negative effect on the civilian population and i think weve all all three of you have addressed why that argument by itself is potentially problematic, but i wanted to ask you about the fact that, you know, sanctions of any kind can have unintended consequences and is there, or are there any other plans of action by the u. S. Government to try to prevent or ameliorate any of those consequences . Theres been talk in Northern Syria in recent weeks talking whether the u. S. Should be bailing out the increased salaries by 150 last week, to make up for the inflation being seen in damascus and thats one example. And the other thing that struck my mind included in the sanctions, engaged in some form of work and dependent 90 on u. N. Financial assistance. Will syria trust essentially cease to exist. Some of those unintended consequences and the perspective from the u. S. Government would be very helpful. First of all, charles, the legislation has very Strong Language and very strong requirements. Humanitarian assistance, we had adhere fully to them. We have n