BIS Final Rule — Relaxing EAR Export Controls for Syria (implements EO 14312)

Mechanism

The rule is the BIS half of a coordinated two-agency post-Assad restructuring of US Syria controls. While OFAC's 25 September 2025 PAARSS rule (2025-09-25-us-ofac-paarss-syria-sanctions-rename) restructures the Treasury sanctions architecture (renaming 31 CFR Part 569 from SySR to PAARSS and revoking the broad Syria program in favour of a list/behaviour-based regime), this BIS rule restructures the Commerce export-control architecture under the EAR. Three operational changes:

1. License-review policy — BIS revises the existing restrictive licence-application review policies for items subject to the EAR to be more favourable, moving Syria away from the "policy of denial" posture that had governed most CCL-listed exports. 2. License exception extension — Existing EAR license exceptions (which previously excluded Syria from their geographic scope) are extended to apply to Syria, removing case-by-case licensing for transactions falling within the exceptions. 3. New license exceptions including EAR99 — New license exceptions are added for Syria, including for EAR99 items (commercial items not listed on the Commerce Control List) — this is operationally the largest change because it lifts the unique blanket-licence requirement that EO 13338 / SAA had imposed on EAR99 exports to Syria.

The legal authority chain runs through EO 14312 (30 June 2025) section 6 (waiving SAA section 5(a)(1) for CCL items and section 5(a)(2)(A) for EAR-subject items other than EAR99 food and medicine) and section 7 (waiving CBW Act sections 307(a)(5) and 307(b)(2)(C)).

Downstream implications

• US-origin commercial exports to Syria — telecoms equipment,

consumer electronics, automotive parts, civilian aerospace components — become routinely available without case-by-case Commerce licensing for transactions covered by the new/extended license exceptions. Reconstruction-relevant equipment (cement plant components, water-treatment equipment, electrical-grid parts) is the most directly affected commercial category.

• Reexport rules: third-country exporters incorporating US-origin

content into goods bound for Syria face materially lower de minimis / re-export licence burden; this is significant for Türkiye, UAE, and Jordan, which are the dominant trans-shipment hubs for goods entering Syria.

• The rule does not affect dual-use items captured by separate

multilateral regimes (Wassenaar, MTCR, NSG, AG) or items controlled for chemical/biological weapons reasons that remain restricted under residual EAR provisions and parallel OFAC/State Dept controls — Syria is not "off the export-control map".

• Together with PAARSS, this completes the Sep 2025 procedural

cluster turning the comprehensive US Syria embargo into a targeted-accountability program: PAARSS handles the financial- sanctions layer; this rule handles the goods-export layer.

Open questions

• Pace of follow-on State Dept ITAR (USML) updates — the EAR rule

does not move ITAR-controlled defence articles, which remain presumptively denied to Syria pending separate State Dept action.

• Treatment of US-origin items that flow to Syria via Türkiye and

UAE under the new license exceptions — diversion-control posture by BIS Office of Export Enforcement is being recalibrated and the operative end-use checks are still being defined.

• Interaction with residual SDN / PAARSS designations: a transaction

that is now EAR-eligible may still be blocked by OFAC if the counterparty is on the SDN List under the PAARSS program — the two licensing regimes apply concurrently, not alternatively.