U.S. Ambassador to Türkİye and Special Envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack and Acting Under Secretary Brad Smith, Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Treasury
US Department of State
Special Briefing
Thomas Barrack, U.S. Ambassador to Türkİye and Special Envoy for Syria
Acting Under Secretary Brad Smith, Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Treasury
Via Teleconference
June 30, 2025
MS HOUSTON: We are honored to be joined today by three distinguished speakers for the on-the-record remarks: Tammy Bruce, the spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State; Ambassador Thomas Barrack, the U.S. Ambassador to Türkiye and Special Envoy for Syria; and Brad Smith, the Acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
At this time, we will begin with the on-the-record opening remarks. We will start with our department spokesperson, Spokesperson Tammy Bruce. Ms. Bruce, you have the floor.
MS BRUCE: Thank you, Mignon, very much. Welcome aboard, everyone. And of course, I believe that it's been obviously noted this is embargoed and the time to which we will - I hope will have for you by the end of the call, but the signings will begin at 2:30 this afternoon, so the embargo will be certainly after that point.
Welcome aboard, everyone. I appreciate it. We have a very special briefing planned for you today focused on our ongoing efforts in Syria. The interagency team, including the Departments of State, Treasury, and Commerce, is actively executing the President's bold vision for a stable, secure, and peaceful Syria. This vision is not just aspirational; it is actionable, and we are delivering.
To provide deeper insight into how we are advancing these efforts, we are fortunate to have Ambassador Barrack, U.S. Ambassador to Türkiye and our Special Envoy for Syria. Ambassador Barrack brings both experience and resolve, carrying out the clear vision of President Trump and Secretary Rubio.
He is actively engaging with partners and stakeholders to ensure that U.S. priorities are understood. His leadership exemplifies the strategic clarity this administration brings to foreign policy.
And of course, diplomacy works best when paired with smart economic policy. The Departments of Treasury and Commerce have played a critical role in advancing the President's directive. We are grateful for their partnership and proud to welcome Acting Under Secretary Brad Smith from the Treasury Department, who will also share some remarks at the top here.
Before we continue, let me also reiterate an additional issue: This administration remains fully committed to transparency. As we have said before, this is the most transparent administration in history, and we are indeed very proud of that.
We believe the American people deserve to hear directly from their government, and we remain committed to openness and regular engagements with the press. That principle is at the heart of our approach, particularly as we navigate the challenges and opportunities in Syria and the broader Middle East.
We look forward to today's press briefing. Welcome aboard everyone and thank you all for joining on this call.
With that, I will turn it back over to Mignon.
MS HOUSTON: Thank you, Spokesperson Bruce, for really setting the tone for today's call. Next, we are privileged to hear on-the-record remarks from Ambassador Thomas Barrack. Ambassador, you now have the floor.
AMBASSADOR BARRACK: Thank you, and thank you, Tammy. And Tammy, thanks for all you do everywhere, every day. It's an amazing, amazing delivery. And thanks for all of you being here.
So what I thought would be fruitful is to just give you the background from one of the ground troops as to what the approach is and what's happened, and then we can deal with some of the details. But from 35,000 feet, what's unusual here? What's unusual is you have a President who is driven by event diplomacy, not process diplomacy. And you have a Secretary of State who's driven by execution and results. And that doesn't sound odd, but it is odd. And the fact that this Secretary of State is also the National Security Advisor is unique in history. There's only been one other time that that's happened and that was with Henry Kissinger in 1973. So what's transpired is not confusing efforts with results.
So you have a President who, on May 14th[1], decided that he was going to rip the sanctions off of Syria, and you have a Secretary of State who immediately thereafter said we're going to start unwrapping this onion at speed. And you had the ground troops to support them in an unbelievable manner, which has been the NEA, who is participating in this call; the Foreign Service Officers who are unbelievably capable and competent but who very seldom are actually called upon to get things done rather than just have a continual process.
So the background of this is you have an Assad regime fall on December 8th. You have a fire, which has always been the controversy here, of somebody who had been al-Nusrah and had been considered a bad guy who all of a sudden becomes the leader. So from December 8th to January 29th, he becomes the president of the new government of Syria.
I just want to call out for you - I was thinking of July 4th and as part of the gift and the privilege that I have of being (inaudible) here is what July 4th message is there. And in thinking through it, if you remember, we had a revolutionary war that lasted 14 months. And we had brutality. We had the Battles of Concord, the Battle of Lexington. And from 1776 when we declared independence, it was 12 years until we got a president. And who was the president? The president was a general. Who was the general? It was George Washington. And in those 12 years, we were defining everything. We were defining a constitution, we were defining the framework, we were defining a judiciary - trying to figure out where we're going before we ever had the election.
So if you take Syria and say, okay, we've been there for six months, we have a president who created a vision, you have a secretary of state who's implementing it as fast as he can, you have a general who transitioned from war time into a position of being the leader of a reframed new country that needs everything - and that's basically what's happening. But the vision and the execution was limited by our imposition of sanctions. Those sanctions have been cumulative, by the way - that we think about sanctions levied against the old regime and the previous country. And what does that do? What it does is create a subculture, a ghost culture of survival, and an inability for them to have their own initiative, their own mandate, their own architecture of how they move forward.
So the President, in his brilliance - and by the way, he did it really in his subtle discussions and unbelievable instinctive conversations with the Secretary - decided in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on May 14th[2] , after he met al-Sharaa: Give these guys a chance. Syria needs to be given a chance. And that's what's happened.
And what you're going to have this afternoon is the culmination of a very tedious, detailed, excruciating process of how do you unwrap these sanctions. And Brad is here to give you incredible detail on what happens in Treasury and OFAC. You've got Commerce here to tell you what happens on export licenses, and you have a President and a Secretary of State and National Security Advisor who filled in the blanks by saying: in addition to the general waiver which we have, I am going to rescind the executive orders that have been cumulative since the '70s, and I'm going to impose a new executive order that basically is going to give a blanket opportunity around all the things that we need to turn back on this economy.
But one thing is clear: Neither the President nor the Secretary of State are nation-building. They're not dictating, they're not requiring, they're not giving the framework of the democratic model that needs to be implemented to their architecture or desire. They're saying: we are going to give you an opportunity. We have a bunch of criteria that we want to watch along the way, and all those things that we've talked about that relate to pointing towards the Abraham Accords and baby steps, and how are you going to integrate these foreign fighters, and protecting the people who fought by our side and against ISIS and the SDF, and ridding of some of the militias that are (inaudible), and protecting all the communities - the Alawites, the Druze, the Kurds - that are part of this beautiful Bilad al-Sham, unbelievable civilization that existed for so long.
So you're going to see the details of this onion which is unwrapping. Sanctions turn on slowly. The President got it done by authorizing the process and procedure, the Secretary of State - who is the National Security Advisor - loaded all of the pieces that are necessary. And you have all of the elements of government who are here getting it done.
So with that, I'll turn it back over. But I'm unbelievably enthused, I'm hopeful, and I'm grateful to the President and the Secretary for giving this country an opportunity. Because it's hand-in-glove with the Middle East. None of this happens by itself. You see what's happened with Israel and Iran; that's a window. That window has never existed. So when we talk about event diplomacy, what you can do in Syria, what you can do in Lebanon, what you do in Iraq, what you do in Jordan, what you do in Israel, what you do in Egypt, supported by the Gulf - it's an opportunity that we have never, ever seen. And this President's put together a team that can actually get it done.
Back over.
MS HOUSTON: Fantastic. Thank you, Ambassador, for those remarks. Our final on-the-record remarks will be delivered by the acting under secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Mr. Smith, you now have the floor.
MR SMITH: Thank you, and thank you, Ambassador. I just wanted to offer a few remarks at the outset today, just to frame this from Treasury's perspective.
As you all may know, on May 13th President Trump took the historic decision to cease all sanctions on Syria. The Department of Treasury quickly moved into action and, with lightning speed, issued what we call General License 25, which was the first major step towards removing the sanctions architecture imposed on the country due to the atrocities committed by the former Assad regime. Since that time, we've continued to work expeditiously towards a more permanent action to address the situation in Syria.
Today, President Trump will sign an executive order that terminates the Syria sanctions program while allowing us to maintain sanctions where appropriate, including against Bashar al-Assad, his associates, and other destabilizing regional actors.
The significance of this moment cannot be overstated from our perspective. Syria has been under comprehensive sanctions for decades, which expanded in response to the regime's brutality during the country's civil war. Our sanctions played an important role in limiting Assad's ability to wage war against his own people, and frustrating his cronies' efforts to enrich themselves at the expense of the country and the Syrian people.
U.S. sanctions blocked human rights abusers, terrorists, Iran and its proxies, and also targeted narcotics traffickers and protected the U.S. financial system from all these threats. But circumstances changed significantly with Assad's exit, offering the promise of new beginnings for Syria and for its people.
President Trump has responded decisively in this historic moment, announcing that U.S. sanctions would not stand in the way of what could be a brighter future for the country. While we remain hopeful for the country's future in its new government, we are also clear-eyed that threats to peace remain. The United States will remain ever vigilant where our interests and security are threatened, and Treasury will not hesitate to use our authorities to protect U.S. and international financial systems.
Throughout history, Syria was a key center on the Silk Road and a hub for global trade, multiculturalism, and entrepreneurship. Today's actions, as the ambassador pointed out, will end the country's isolation from the international financial system, setting the stage for global commerce and galvanizing investments from its neighbors in the region as well as from the United States. We at Treasury are proud to play our part in executing on President Trump's vision for Syria and his promotion of peace and prosperity for the region.
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