Last week, the United States announced a new round of crippling sanctions on Syria. The Caesar sanctions ostensibly take specific aim at senior government figures and seek to punish any entities that would do business with Bashar Assad’s government. These sanctions, it is claimed by American policymakers, could be lifted if certain conditions are met — namely, the government of Syria releasing its political prisoners and ceasing the bombing of populated areas, which is a likely reference to the current combat in the Idlib region. In other words, the government of Syria is expected to stop fighting the war. No mention is made of reciprocity on the side of the various rebel factions. What these policies come across as, however, are a kind of sour grapes by the loose international alliance that has lost its bid to topple Assad.

While the U.S. never made as energetic an effort to overthrow the Assad regime as regime-change enthusiasts wanted, it did join Turkey and the Gulf States in spending eight years in funding and sometimes training his opposition. The effort ultimately showed that Assad’s support base was both larger and more robust than his would-be overthrowers assumed. These efforts likely drew out the conflict, turning Syria into a proxy-battleground for a pan-regional conflict.