Jordan and Syria agreed to re-open their joint borders, after long years of closure due to security conditions and the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. In a telephone conversation on Tuesday, Jordanian Minister of Interior Mazen Al-Faraya and his Syrian counterpart, Mohammad Al-Rahmoun, agreed on the need to fully reopen the Jaber border crossing, given its strategic importance, said a statement published by the official Jordanian news agency (Petra). According to the Jordanian agency, “the Syrian minister welcomed the full reopening of the border point,” expressing his country’s readiness to “take the necessary measures in this regard […] and to coordinate with the relevant authorities the implementation of the necessary procedures to achieve the desired goals within the approved medical protocol.” For its part, the official Syrian News Agency (SANA) reported on Tuesday that the two ministers discussed “the agreement on joint coordination in order to facilitate the movement of trucks and passenger buses between the two countries.” The Jaber border crossing was closed by the Jordanian side in mid-2015, after it was seized by Syrian opposition factions. The crossing was reopened in October 2018, but various cases of Covid-19 coming from Syria forced the Jordanian authorities to close it again in September 2020. Sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that Amman had raised with Washington the exclusion of Jordan from the conditions of the sanctions imposed on Syria under the Caesar Act. Jordan’s position is based on recent agreements with the US administration on excluding a long list of food and agricultural products from the sanctions.