diff --git a/src/Import.php b/src/Import.php
index d9aa644..7d23723 100644
--- a/src/Import.php
+++ b/src/Import.php
@@ -35,7 +35,11 @@ public function run( $sql_file_path, $args ) {
 		$is_stdin    = '-' === $sql_file_path;
 		$import_file = $is_stdin ? 'php://stdin' : $sql_file_path;
 
-		$this->execute_statements( $import_file );
+		if ( method_exists( $this->driver, 'create_parser' ) ) {
+			$this->execute_statements_with_ast_parser( $import_file );
+		} else {
+			$this->execute_statements( $import_file );
+		}
 
 		$imported_from = $is_stdin ? 'STDIN' : $sql_file_path;
 		WP_CLI::success( sprintf( "Imported from '%s'.", $imported_from ) );
@@ -133,4 +137,39 @@ public function parse_statements( $sql_file_path ) {
 
 		fclose( $handle );
 	}
+
+	/**
+	 * Execute SQL statements from an SQL dump file using the AST parser.
+	 *
+	 * @param $import_file
+	 *
+	 * @return void
+	 * @throws Exception
+	 */
+	protected function execute_statements_with_ast_parser( $import_file ) {
+		$raw_queries = file_get_contents( $import_file );
+
+		// Detect and convert encoding to UTF-8
+		$detected_encoding = mb_detect_encoding( $raw_queries, mb_list_encodings(), true );
+		if ( $detected_encoding && 'UTF-8' !== $detected_encoding ) {
+			$raw_queries = mb_convert_encoding( $raw_queries, 'UTF-8', $detected_encoding );
+		}
+
+		$parser = $this->driver->create_parser( $raw_queries );
+		while ( $parser->next_query() ) {
+			$ast       = $parser->get_query_ast();
+			$statement = substr( $raw_queries, $ast->get_start(), $ast->get_length() );
+			try {
+				$this->driver->query( $statement );
+			} catch ( Exception $e ) {
+				// Skip errors when executing SET comment statements
+				if ( 0 === strpos( $statement, 'SET ' ) && false !== strpos( $statement, '*/' ) ) {
+					echo 'Warning - SQLite import skipped SET comment statement: ' . $statement . PHP_EOL;
+					continue;
+				}
+				WP_CLI::error( 'SQLite import could not execute statement: ' . $statement );
+				echo $this->driver->get_error_message();
+			}
+		}
+	}
 }