DAMASCUS, Syria >> President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he would lift U.S. sanctions on Syria, throwing an economic lifeline to a country devastated by nearly 14 years of civil war and decades of dictatorship under the Assad family.

Trump was expected to meet with Syria’s new president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, on Wednesday in Saudi Arabia, where the American leader is making the first major state visit of his second term. Al-Sharaa led the rebel alliance that ousted President Bashar Assad in Syria in December.

The U.S. president made the surprise announcement to end sanctions as he addressed a business forum in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, where the crowd erupted in cheers and gave him a standing ovation.

What it means

The decision is a sea change for Syria, breaking the economic stranglehold on a country seen as critical to the stability of the Middle East.

“There is a new government that will, hopefully, succeed in stabilizing the country and keeping peace,” Trump said. “That’s what we want to see in Syria.”

Across Syria, people poured into the streets of major cities to cheer the news they hope will alleviate the crushing poverty that the majority of the population faces.

Syria’s foreign minister, Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani, hailed the move as “a new beginning on the path to reconstruction” and praised Saudi Arabia as the “voice of reason and wisdom” in the region. He did not mention the United States directly.

Since Assad’s ouster, critics and supporters of the new Syrian leadership have argued that the fall of the regime should bring an end to sanctions, many of which were put in place in response to a brutal crackdown on an uprising that began in 2011 and descended into a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands and razed sections of several cities to the ground.

“The sanctions were implemented as a response to crimes committed by the previous regime against the people,” al-Sharaa told The New York Times in an interview last month.

Trump diplomacy

Trump said he had come to the decision after speaking with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who backed the anti-Assad insurgency, and Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

“I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions on Syria,” Trump said Tuesday, speaking in front of giant projections of the U.S. and Saudi flags to an audience seated beneath a massive chandelier. “Oh, what I do for the crown prince,” he added, drawing laughter from the enthusiastic crowd.

The cozy relations between Trump and the kingdom offered Persian Gulf leaders an opportunity to push for the lifting of sanctions on Syria, which many of them see as critical to stemming economic collapse and preventing fresh conflict that could spread beyond its borders.

“The Syrian economy is in pieces, but the region stands poised, if not desperate, to help get it back on its feet,” Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, wrote in an email. With U.S. sanctions out of the way, he added, “Syria will for the first time in decades be able to look ahead toward recovery, rebuilding and reintegration into the world.”

Scene in the capital

In the Syrian capital, Damascus, people honked horns, blared sirens and waved Syrian and Saudi flags. Some gathered in groups to chant revolutionary slogans against Assad. And they expressed joy that their country might soon be able to reintegrate into the global financial system and begin to rebuild.

“Things will get cheaper,” said Intisar Al-Moussa, 49, a local government employee. “We’ll be able to buy our kids the things they want and give them a good education. We’ll be like other countries.”

She had come to the square with her sister, brother, mother and other relatives to celebrate and said the announcement had changed her idea of Trump.

“We didn’t like Trump much before, but now we love him because he stood with us,” she said. She had another wish, too: “We hope that our salaries will go up a bit.”

It was not yet clear how extensive of a meeting the U.S. president might have Wednesday with al-Sharaa.

A White House official said Trump agreed to “say hello” to the Syrian leader while both were in Saudi Arabia, according to the press pool traveling with the U.S. president.

If al-Sharaa does get a face-to-face meeting with Trump, he will have a rare opportunity to make his case to a world leader with the power to drastically shape Syria’s future. It would also be a stunning turnaround for the man who once led a branch of al-Qaida but broke ties with the jihadi group, seeking to moderate his image in the hope of gaining broader traction.

In the months since a rebel coalition seized control of Damascus and toppled Assad, the United States has kept in place a multilayered sanctions regime that, with the war, has pushed the country to the brink of economic collapse.

Critics of U.S. sanctions argued that lifting them could allow a flow of international aid and investment needed to help the country recover from the war.