Giorgio Cafiero is the CEO and founder of Gulf State Analytics, a Washington-based geopolitical risk consultancy.
While so much attention is focused on Israel's war in Gaza and its shockwaves across the Middle East, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government is steadily reintegrating into the Arab world, despite still being shunned by the West as a pariah. Since Syria made its full-fledged return to the Arab League in May 2023, when Assad flew to Saudi Arabia to deliver a speech at the pan-Arab organization's summit in Jeddah, Damascus's regional rehabilitation has continued. The wealthy states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have taken the lead in bringing Assad back into the Arab diplomatic fold.
In January, a Saudi delegation visited Damascus in preparation for reopening the kingdom's embassy in Syria, which has been closed for the past 12 years. Saudi Arabia is following the UAE, the main driver of Arab efforts to normalize relations with Assad's regime. Abu Dhabi officially reopened its embassy in Damascus back in 2018, and in 2022, the UAE hosted Assad for a symbolic visit: his first trip to an Arab country since Syria's popular uprising-turned-civil war began in 2011.
Days before the Saudi delegation's trip to Syria earlier this year, a new Emirati ambassador arrived in Damascus, taking over for the charge d'affaires who had been running the UAE's diplomatic mission since its reopening. Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad joined the new ambassador, Hassan Ahmad al-Shihi, at a ceremony in Damascus where the two hailed the "deep and strong" relationship between Syria and the UAE.
The UAE's current relationship with Damascus starkly contrasts with the Gulf country's initial policy of cutting off ties with Assad's government and arming the Free Syrian Army early on in the Syrian conflict. "If you kill your people, you can't stay" in power, the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, who also serves as the UAE's vice president and prime minister, said of Assad in 2014. "Eventually he will go." But unlike Qatar and Turkey, the UAE was more skeptical of the Syrian opposition, especially after Islamist and jihadist militias gained an upper-hand among anti-Assad forces in Syria.
Ongoing sanctions on Syria by the United States and the European Union have still prevented the UAE and other wealthy Gulf countries from restoring economic ties with Syria—in particular, making investments in Syria's stalled reconstruction that Assad desperately seeks. Nonetheless, Abu Dhabi has done a lot to shore up the Assad regime in other ways.
"The UAE played a central role in the rehabilitation of the Assad regime in the region and beyond."
- Ali Bakir
A year after its reopening, the Emirati embassy in Damascus hosted a celebration of the UAE's National Day, where the charge d'affaires, Abdul-Hakim Naimi, expressed his hope that "safety, security and stability in the Syrian Arab Republic will prevail under the shadow of the wise leadership of Dr. Bashar al-Assad." In November 2021, Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan visited Assad in Damascus. Four months later, Assad made his symbolic visit to Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Since then, Sheikh Abdullah has returned to Damascus, as has Assad to the UAE.
"The UAE played a central role in the rehabilitation of the Assad regime in the region and beyond," Ali Bakir, an assistant professor at Qatar University's Ibn Khaldon Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, told Democracy in Exile. "In pushing other states to normalize with [Assad]," the UAE helped "end his diplomatic isolation." Bakir added that as a result, "the UAE secured a lot of common interests with the regime in Syria—not only on the economic level, which it hopes will enable it to play a central role in reconstruction of the country, but also in political, intelligence and defense levels."
The UAE and Saudi Arabia would like to see Syria shift into greater geopolitical alignment with them in an effort to, at least partly, pull Damascus away from its main regional ally, Iran. While Iran and Russia propped up Assad militarily when anti-regime forces threatened his rule, now it is the wealthy Gulf states that could, theoretically, provide the Syrian government with the economic support necessary to rebuild the shattered country, while possibly opening up diplomatic backchannels to the West—neither of which Tehran or Moscow can provide Damascus.
There is another dimension at play given that the leadership in Abu Dhabi and Damascus have certain ideological synergies. Fundamentally terrified of the widespread protests of the Arab Spring, both governments put much effort into supporting an authoritarian status quo in the Middle East and North Africa since 2011, often described as a counterrevolutionary foreign policy agenda. Sharing a view of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, the UAE and Syria have long perceived of the Sunni Islamist movement as posing a grave threat to their authority. They have sided with various actors in the Arab world that attempted to weaken the Brotherhood as much as possible. This didn't prevent Syria from supporting Hamas, which emerged as a Palestinian offshoot of the Brotherhood in the late 1980s. Assad's government hosted Hamas' leader-in-exile, Khaled Mashaal, until 2012, when Hamas distanced itself from Assad's regime, declaring its support for the Syria opposition, and Meshaal left for Qatar.
The UAE's efforts to shore up the Syrian regime reflect broader geopolitical interests beyond the Middle East, within the context of the international system becoming more multipolar. With U.S. hegemony in a steady decline, GCC members, especially the UAE, have diversified their alliances and partnerships around the world, bringing Abu Dhabi much closer to Russia in particular. Moscow's military intervention in Syria beginning in 2015 was in no small part aimed at cajoling the Gulf countries into accepting Assad's "legitimacy" and coming to terms with the regime's survival. The UAE accommodated Moscow's agenda in Syria while supporting narratives about Russia taking a lead in fighting global terrorism. Since 2018, Abu Dhabi's diplomatic efforts to rehabilitate the Syrian government among Arab states have served to further consolidate the UAE's position as Russia's closest GCC partner.
Assad's reintegration into the region has accelerated since Israel's war in Gaza began in October, following the Hamas-led attack into southern Israel. The Biden administration's ironclad support for Israel since Oct. 7 has weakened America's standing in the Arab world, given the staggering death toll in Gaza and the civilian suffering that shows no sign of ending. While the U.S. attempts to keep Damascus isolated internationally, Gulf states—with the exception of Qatar and Kuwait, which still haven't reestablished ties with Assad—are increasingly willing to thumb their nose at Washington when it comes to engaging Syria diplomatically.
"The logic of Syria normalization has gained strength over the last year as America's prestige in the region has been drastically eroded by Biden's support for Israel's brutal invasion of Gaza," Joshua Landis, a Syria expert and the director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, told Democracy in Exile. At a time when popular anger against the U.S. is intensifying across the Middle East, including in the Gulf, GCC leaders are more confidently distancing themselves from the Biden administration. Some of this has benefited Assad's government, which wants officials in GCC states to ignore U.S. pressure to keep Damascus isolated.
"It appears, as was often the case in the past few decades, that the Syrian regime managed to extract significant concessions from the Gulf states without necessarily offering something important in return."
- Karim Emile Bitar
For Syria, regional reintegration goes a long way in helping Assad restore his legitimacy after more than a decade of civil war. But what have Gulf states received in exchange for their outreach to Damascus?
The answer is hardly anything, according to Karim Emile Bitar, a professor of international relations at Saint Joseph University of Beirut. "It appears, as was often the case in the past few decades, that the Syrian regime managed to extract significant concessions from the Gulf states without necessarily offering something important in return," he said in an interview with Democracy in Exile.
If Gulf leaders think that they can drive a wedge between Syria and Iran by reestablishing ties with Assad, they will likely come up short, Bitar added. There is no evidence that the Syrian government has made any concessions to the UAE or Saudi Arabia regarding its close ties with Iran or with Tehran's network of proxy militias, including Hezbollah in Lebanon. Bitar sees Abu Dhabi's rapprochement with Damascus as "an extension of the Syrian regime's strategy of trying to open doors of negotiations, gaining time and extracting concessions without necessarily giving much in return."
Bitar believes that Assad would only make major concessions to Gulf states if they are "genuinely ready to put large amounts of money in the Syrian reconstruction process," which is only possible if Saudi-Iranian détente turns into a lasting and durable rapprochement. Damascus would not move closer to Abu Dhabi or Riyadh without Tehran's approval, he insisted.
"I do not think that Syria would be ready to get closer to Gulf countries. Most Syrian strategic analysts still consider that they have benefited a lot from this strategic alliance with Iran and that it has actually allowed Assad to remain in power for so long," Bitar said. "I'm quite skeptical whenever I hear that Syria will be brought back into the Sunni Arab fold. Again, it's a very old song that we've heard many times in the past."
