Hezbollah downplays 'US Syria sanctions waiver'
Hezbollah downplays Washington's alleged temporary and partial waiver of its sanctions against Syria, which the US has recently issued under the pretext of facilitating relief missions in the earthquake-stricken Arab country.
The Lebanese resistance movement's Deputy Secretary-General Sheikh Naim Qassem made the remarks in a tweet on Friday.
"The American administration, with its implementation of the Caesar sanctions and blockade of Syria and its people, is devoid of all humanitarian standards," the Hezbollah official wrote.
Syria has been a target of US sanctions since 1979. The US and its allies intensified their sanctions against the Arab people in 2011, after the nation found itself in the grip of rampant and hugely deadly foreign-backed violence. Strengthening the sanctions even further, the United States approved the Caesar Act in 2019, targeting any individual and business that participated either directly or indirectly in the Arab country's reconstruction efforts.
Earlier on Friday, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued the waiver for the Caesar Act sanctions, allegedly authorizing earthquake relief transactions for a period of six months.
The quake hit Turkey and neighboring Syria in the wee hours of Monday. The 7.8-magnitude temblor has so far claimed respectively around 20,213 people in Turkey, while more than 3,500 people have been reported dead in Syria.
Qassem went on by asserting that the sanctions waiver would not serve to change the US's "barbarous face."
Hezbollah, itself, issued a statement recently, announcing the mobilization of all of the movement's capacities toward helping out the disaster-hit Syrians.
The movement's relief endeavors have featured dispatching convoys of humanitarian aid to the earthquake-affected areas in Syria, as well as the collection of foodstuffs, medicines, and first-aid materials for transfer to the Arab nation.
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