A missile was launched from Yemen at Israel this morning (Sunday), the IDF announced.
“Initial report – The IDF has identified the launch of a missile from Yemen toward Israeli territory, IAF aerial defense systems are operating to intercept the threat. The public is requested to follow the Home Front Command’s defensive guidelines,” the IDF stated.
Following the IDF announcement, Red Alert sirens were activated in several parts of the country due to the missile attack, including Jerusalem, Gush Etzion, the Judean Hills, the Judean Desert periphery, and the city of Arad.
The IDF later confirmed that the missile was successfully intercepted.
“I’m very upbeat about the potential for an Abraham Accord with Syria and Lebanon,” the ambassador said.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFUpdated: MAY 24, 2025 09:08Syiran President Ahmed al-Sharaa and US President Donald Trump.(photo credit: Canva/Kaboompics.com, Engin Akyurt from Pexels, BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP, Getty Images/LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP)
Israeli ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter said that he believes that Syria and Lebanon could join the Abraham Accords and normalize relations with Israel before Saudi Arabia, in an interview published on the conservative media platform PragerU on Thursday.
“There’s no reason now why we wouldn’t be moving into accommodation with Syria and Lebanon,” he said. “We have dramatically changed the paradigm there. I’m very upbeat about the potential for an Abraham Accord with Syria and Lebanon, and that may actually precede Saudi Arabia.”
Speaking to the platform’s CEO, Marissa Streit, Leiter added that Saudi Arabia was considering joining the accords “because in 2019, they weren’t very far away. If President Trump had remained in office in 2020, we probably would’ve reached that point – a complete normalization with Saudi Arabia.”
Leiter added that now, Israel and Saudi Arabia are still on the path to normalization, although there are still complications to normalization due to the Gaza war.
Regarding Lebanon’s possibility of normalizing relations, the ambassador said, “Lebanon has the opportunity to ’emerge from its failed state status and reassert itself as a civil society.” Regarding Syria, Leiter said that the US should have been more hesitant in removing sanctions from the country, stating that the US should wait to see what actions Syria takes, mentioning the importance of protecting minorities such as the Druze and Alawites in the country.
Israeli Ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter speaks to the media at the Capital Jewish Museum, near the site where two Israeli embassy staff were shot dead, in Washington, DC, US, May 22, 2025 (credit: REUTERS/KEN CEDENO)
Performance-based agreements with Syria, Lebanon
“There’s not a long history of jihadis becoming Jeffersonians,” he said. “We also can’t allow jihadis to be on our border; we learned that from October 7. We’d like to see al-Sharaa move in a direction where he’s disbanding the jihadi groups, outlawing terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, and protecting minorities, adding that the removal of sanctions must be “performance-based.”
Leiter also describes Israel’s ceasefire with Lebanon as “performance-based.”
“To the degree that Lebanon disarms Hezbollah, to that degree, we’re moving towards accommodation and peace,” he added. “We removed our troops. We have five installations on the border; we’ll remove them too.”
Leiter later spoke about Qatar, saying that he is “more uncomfortable with them than anyone else.”
“It’s unfortunate to see journalists in certain areas of public discussion here supporting Qatar and saying that they’re actually allies of the West, and they’re not. They have an agenda, and it’s not a pro-Western agenda.”
Sweeping economic relief doesn’t include removal of Sharaa’s HTS from terror blacklist; some US officials pushed for phased approach that would include normalizing ties with Israel
A cropped handout picture provided by the Saudi Royal Palace shows US President Donald Trump (R) shaking hands with Syria’s interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa (L) in Riyadh on May 14, 2025. (Bandar AL-JALOUD / Saudi Royal Palace / AFP)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration granted Syria sweeping exemptions from sanctions Friday in a big first step toward fulfilling the president’s pledge to lift a half-century of penalties on a country shattered by 13 years of civil war.
While broad, the administration’s actions could possibly be reversed. Syrians say they need permanent relief to secure the tens of billions of dollars in investment needed to rebuild after a conflict that fragmented the country, displaced or killed millions of people, and left behind thousands of foreign fighters.
A measure by the State Department waived for six months a tough set of sanctions imposed by Congress in 2019. A Treasury Department action suspended enforcement of sanctions against anyone doing business with a range of Syrian individuals and entities, including Syria’s central bank.
Syria is now led by Ahmad al-Sharaa, a former militia commander who helped drive longtime autocratic leader Bashar Assad from power late last year.
President Donald Trump announced last week that the US would roll back the heavy financial penalties in a bid to give the interim government a better chance of survival. The Trump administration said businesses and investors are getting the protection against sanctions they need to come back to Syria, calling it “the opportunity for a fresh start.”
“The only other option was Syria becoming a failed state and civil war,” said Mouaz Moustafa, a Syrian American advocate who had campaigned for quick, broad relief. “Now there is hope for a future democratic Syria.”
A man fires into the air from one of the trucks carrying some of the 60 displaced families who, supported by an NGO, are returning to their village after more than five years in the Atmeh camps near the Syrian-Turkish border, in Kafr Sijna, south of Idlib, Syria, May 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
The congressional sanctions, known as the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, had aimed to isolate Syria’s previous rulers by effectively expelling those doing business with them from the global financial system. They specifically block postwar reconstruction, so while they can be waived for 180 days by executive order, investors are likely to be wary of reconstruction projects when sanctions could be reinstated after six months.
The Trump administration said Friday’s actions were “just one part of a broader US government effort to remove the full architecture of sanctions.” Those penalties had been imposed on the Assad family for their support of Iranian-backed militias, their chemical weapons program and abuses of civilians.
admnistration says it expects action from Syria
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement Friday that in return for sanctions relief, Trump expects “prompt action by the Syrian government on important policy priorities.”
Al-Sharaa’s own past has fueled doubts. The group that he led, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, was originally affiliated with al-Qaeda, although it later renounced ties and took a more moderate tone. It is still listed by the US as a terrorist organization.
But if al-Sharaa’s government fails, the US and others fear renewed conflict in Syria and a power vacuum that could allow a resurgence of the Islamic State and other extremist groups.
“If we engage them, it may work out, it may not work out. If we do not engage them, it was guaranteed not to work out,” Rubio told lawmakers this week.
A masked opposition fighter carries a flag of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in the courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque in the old walled city of Damascus, Syria, on December 10, 2024. (AP/Hussein Malla)
Trump met al-Sharaa last week in Saudi Arabia, a day after announcing his intention to lift the sanctions: “We’re taking them all off. Good luck, Syria. Show us something special.”
Rubio said sanctions relief must start quickly because Syria’s transition government could be weeks from “collapse and a full-scale civil war of epic proportions.”
But asked by lawmakers this week what sanctions relief should look like overall, Rubio gave a one-word explanation: “Incremental.”
Debate within the Trump administration
While some sanctions can be quickly waived through executive actions like those taken Friday, Congress would have to permanently remove the penalties it imposed.
Some Trump administration officials have been pushing for relief as fast as possible without demanding tough conditions first. Others have proposed a phased approach, giving short-term waivers right away on some sanctions then tying extensions or a wider executive order to Syria meeting tough conditions.
Critics said that could slow or prevent longer-term relief, hindering the interim government’s ability to attract investment and rebuild.
Proposals circulated among administration officials, including one shared this week that broadly emphasized taking all action possible, as fast as possible, to help Syria rebuild, according to a US official familiar with the plan who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Another proposal — from State Department staff — that circulated last week suggested a three-phase road map, starting with short-term waivers and then laying out sweeping requirements for future phases of relief or a permanent lifting of sanctions, the official said.
Removing “Palestinian terror groups” from Syria is first on the list of conditions to get to the second phase. Supporters of sanctions relief say that might be impossible, given the subjectivity of determining which groups meet that definition and at what point they can be declared removed.
File: Then-Syrian president Bashar al-Assad (2-L) receiving the leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Ziad al-Nakhala (R) Hamas chief of Arab relations, Khalil al-Hayya (2-R) and secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, Talal Naji (L), in the capital Damascus, on October 19, 2022. (STRINGER / Syrian Presidency Facebook page / AFP)
Other conditions for moving to the second phase are for the new government to take custody of detention facilities housing Islamic State fighters and to move forward on absorbing a US-backed Kurdish force into the Syrian army.
To get to phase three, Syria would be required to join the Abraham Accords — normalized relations with Israel — and to prove that it had destroyed the previous government’s chemical weapons.
Israel has been suspicious of the new government, although Syrian officials have said publicly that they do not want a conflict with Israel. Since Assad fell, Israel has launched hundreds of airstrikes and seized a UN-patrolled buffer zone in Syria.
