Off the list after 47 years!
Washington designated Syria a state sponsor of terrorism on 29 December 1979. On Saturday the clock ran out on the last procedural obstacle to removing it.
Trump notified Congress on 8 July, certifying that Syria had provided no support for acts of international terrorism in the preceding six months and had given assurances it would not do so in future. The mandatory 45-day review expired without any reported effort to block it, leaving formal publication in the Federal Register by Marco Rubio as the remaining step. Paperwork, not politics.
Now the part worth stating carefully. Congressional silence was not a verdict on Damascus. It was structural. CRS flagged at the outset that only the Arms Export Control Act provides an explicit mechanism for Congress to block a rescission, and questioned whether it even applies to Syria, since the designation rests on other statutes. Congress did not weigh the case and decline to object. Congress had almost nothing to object with.
The stronger point is the one nobody is making. The campaign against the new Syria had 45 days and a possible legislative vehicle, and it did not produce a single member willing to test it. Not one. That is a measure of political weight, and the number came back near zero!
And note what does not lift. The designations on Assad and the men who ran his war stay. They should. Those are personal, and they are about crimes. What ends is the label on the state, and with it the idea that Syrians are collectively liable for the family that ruled them. That is the whole of it. Not amnesty for the old regime, but a normal seat for a normal country!
Friction remains. Some export licensing still applies and the banks will move slower than the statute. Friction is not exclusion.
Damascus has won the argument in Washington. The harder one is still at home.