Congress Repeals Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act via FY 2026 NDAA Language After Al-Khayyat Brothers' Trump-Adjacent Lobbying Campaign

In December 2025, Congress included language in the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) repealing the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019. The FY 2026 NDAA passed both chambers and was signed into law by President Trump, taking effect in January 2026. The Caesar Act repeal removed comprehensive U.S. secondary sanctions that had made it commercially unviable for non-U.S. firms with U.S.-dollar or U.S.-market exposure to participate in Syrian government-backed reconstruction contracts.

What the Caesar Act Did

The Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019, named for the pseudonymous Syrian military defector who smuggled photographs of tortured detainees out of Syria, imposed:

• Secondary sanctions on non-U.S. persons providing “significant” material support to the Syrian government, Iranian government in Syria, or Russian government in Syria
• Specific prohibitions on construction, engineering, oil/gas, and aviation sector financing
• OFAC designation authority for foreign individuals and entities
• Significant extraterritorial reach — the Act was explicitly designed to deter European, Gulf, and Chinese firms from participating in Assad-era reconstruction

The Act had functioned as the principal legal barrier to major international reconstruction investment in Syria from 2019 through 2025.

The Repeal Mechanism

The repeal was accomplished not through standalone legislation — which would have required dedicated floor time and made the vote politically visible — but through insertion of language into the annual NDAA, a must-pass defense authorization bill. This procedural choice:

• Bundled the repeal with uncontroversial defense authorizations
• Made standalone opposition votes logistically difficult
• Reduced media attention to the specific repeal provision
• Allowed members of both parties to vote for the bill while not individually voting for Caesar Act repeal

Public reporting indicates the Armed Services Committee staff-level markups included the repeal language, with limited floor debate on the specific provision.

The Al-Khayyat Brothers’ Lobbying Campaign

Per Bloomberg’s February 17, 2026 reporting and subsequent investigative coverage, the Syrian-born Qatari billionaire brothers Moutaz, Ramez, and Mohamad Al-Khayyat — who control Qatar-based Power International Holding — directly lobbied members of Congress for the repeal. Key elements of the campaign:

1. Trump-name association: The brothers explicitly referenced their commercial relationships with the Trump and Kushner families in meetings with members of Congress, signaling implicit administration support for the repeal
2. Congressional meetings: Multiple meetings with Republican and Democratic members across both chambers
3. Commercial pipeline framing: The brothers pitched the repeal as enabling post-Assad Syria reconstruction economic activity, positioning it as stability-enhancing rather than regime-supporting
4. Timing with Trump-family deal: The lobbying campaign ran concurrent with the Al-Khayyat-Kushner Sazan Island Albania deal negotiations

See al-khayyat-brothers for the brothers’ broader profile, including their 2019 federal terrorism-financing litigation history.

The Commercial Outcome

Within two months of the repeal taking effect, the Al-Khayyat brothers and Power International Holding secured approximately $12 billion in Syrian government-backed reconstruction contracts, per Bloomberg’s February 17, 2026 reporting. The contracts span:

• Construction (roads, power plants, telecommunications infrastructure)
• Housing rebuilding in Aleppo, Homs, and Damascus peripheral areas
• Commercial property development
• Partnership with post-Assad Syrian transitional government entities

See 2026-02-17–bloomberg-al-khayyat-syria-reconstruction.

Why This Event Matters

The Caesar Act repeal is the clearest publicly documented Trump 2 example of a foreign private-capital beneficiary achieving a major U.S. sanctions rollback through Trump-family-relationship lobbying. Three structural facts distinguish this event:

1. The same brothers benefiting from the repeal had active U.S. federal terrorism-financing litigation history (2019 ATA case alleging funding of Jabhat al-Nusra and other designated FTOs) — this is a non-ordinary profile for a sanctions-repeal beneficiary
2. The repeal lobbying was explicitly Trump-family-name-associated — per reporting, the brothers dropped the Trump name in congressional meetings, signaling administration backing
3. The commercial benefit was immediate and enormous — $12B in contracts within ~60 days of the repeal taking effect

Broader Policy Implications

The Caesar Act repeal repositions U.S. policy toward post-Assad Syria without meaningful public debate. Specifically:

• Human rights accountability: The Act had been the principal vehicle for sanctioning human-rights abusers associated with the Syrian regime. The repeal removes that enforcement mechanism.
• Post-Assad normalization: The repeal implicitly endorses whatever transitional government structure emerges from the post-Assad period, whether or not it meets democratic-transition standards
• Regional realignment: The repeal aligns U.S. commercial policy with Gulf-state (specifically Qatari) reconstruction priorities, positioning Qatari-aligned firms as principal reconstruction beneficiaries over European, Turkish, or Iranian alternatives
• Precedent for future repeals: The NDAA-bundled repeal mechanism demonstrates a procedural template that can be used for other foreign-policy-capture-driven sanctions rollbacks

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