Saudi Arabia’s King Salman invited Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad to attend an upcoming Arab League meeting
Syria's Bashar Assad could be included in Arab League meeting - analysis
This is a major development and shows how quickly Saudi Arabia has worked to bring Syria back into the Arab fold.
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN Published: MAY 11, 2023
Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has invited Syrian regime leader President Bashar Al-Assad to attend an upcoming Arab League meeting that will take place on May 19.
The Saudi official press agency has reported the invitation. This could be a big deal for Assad as Syria was recently invited to return to the Arab League with some conditions. Syria’s regime also recently met with Iran and Turkey in Russia.
According to the reports from Riyadh, “the invitation to the meeting was handed over by the Kingdom’s ambassador to Jordan, Naif bin Bandar Al-Sudairi, during a meeting with the president in Damascus.”
This is a major development and shows how quickly Saudi Arabia has worked to bring Syria back into the Arab fold.
An emerging era of new Arab diplomacy
The goal of Saudi Arabia is to lead new diplomatic initiatives in the region as part of an emerging era of new Arab diplomacy. Towards that end, Saudi Arabia has also reconciled with Iran in a China-backed deal.
The goal of Riyadh is “stability” in the region. The message to Assad on the eve of the Arab League meeting is all about this stability. However, Iran’s role in Syria generally destabilizes Syria, potentially putting Iran and Saudi at cross purposes on what is happening in Syria.
Watching the next steps of Syria and Saudi Arabia in the coming week will be important. The Arab League invited Syria to return to the League after a closed-door meeting in Cairo recently. Syria was suspended from membership in 2011 during the Syrian civil war and Damascus' crackdown on protests that led to a conflict.
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Saudi Failures in the Mashreq and the Beijing Agreement
- ABBAS ASSI
Riyadh’s biggest takeaways from the China-brokered deal with Iran are decreased military tensions and political independence from Washington.
- April 25, 2023
Although the Beijing agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran was the result of arduous negotiations brokered by China, other factors prompted the two countries to sign the deal and re-establish full diplomatic relations. It is likely that the most prominent of these factors is the ongoing game of regional power politics that both Riyadh and Tehran have been playing for decades.
For Riyadh, the fear of losing leverage in the Levant and the hope of curbing Iran’s support to the Houthis in Yemen, as well as the desire to focus more on domestic development policies, were motives for signing a deal with its sworn enemy.
In fact, for many years, the Saudis vehemently ruled out any possibility of rapprochement with their Shiite nemesis. Yet having exhausted all possible means to undermine Iran’s role in the region, either by attacking its allies or by targeting its domestic security—as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman once confessed in an interview—they were left with no other choice.
Over the past decade, Iran and Saudi Arabia have been on opposite sides of a number of regional conflicts, and Riyadh was tirelessly, but unsuccessfully, trying to reduce Tehran’s influence and to increase its own in countries such as Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon.
In order to secure its interests in Syria, Riyadh took the risk of supporting armed opposition militias to overthrow the Assad regime. However, as the war in Yemen raged on, the cost of this support grew intolerable, and the Saudis realized that their efforts to oust Assad were doomed to failure. The material and moral costs that the Saudi adventure in Syria entailed were an unwelcome burden, added to faltering internal development policies and the fragmentation that afflicted the ruling family after Mohammed bin Salman obtained the mandate of the covenant. Mohammed bin Salman’s desire to secure an environment conducive to assuming power after the death of his father made him susceptible to a more lenient path that would mitigate external conflicts and allow him to focus more on domestic affairs.
In Iraq, the kingdom tried to take advantage of the political mayhem that the Islamic State’s occupation created in the north of the country in 2014 to expand its influence and subvert Iraqi Shiite militias, such as the Dawa Party. Soon enough, this policy proved counterproductive to Saudi interests as Iran’s rapid intervention and support for the Popular Mobilization Forces after the Islamic State’s occupation of Mosul proved instrumental in establishing Tehran’s influence yet detrimental to Riyadh’s project in Mesopotamia.
Saudi Arabia also tried and failed to take advantage of its political alliance with the Shiite leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, who controlled the largest parliamentary bloc in Iraq. Al-Sadr, who the Saudis hoped would be an asset as he became closer to them relative to Iran, was unable to change the balance of power in his favor despite his threat to resign and to start a civil disobedience campaign that he hoped would push for the formation of a government in which he had the largest share. The Saudi failure allowed Iran to remain the strongest external party at play in the war ridden country.
In Lebanon, Riyadh tried to shift the balance of power in favor of its own allies. In 2017, the Saudis temporarily detained the Lebanese Prime Minister, Saad Hariri, and forced him to resign in order to pressure President Michel Aoun and Hezbollah to make concessions. Later on, under Saudi pressure, Hariri announced that he was withdrawing from political life—a move that created a vacuum in Sunni community leadership and caused it to become scattered, weak, and unable to pursue its interests. To further pressure Iran and Hezbollah (the kingdom’s strongest rival in Yemen, Iraq, and Syria), the Saudis refused to support the election of Hezbollah’s presidential candidate, Suleiman Franjieh. In fact, Charles Jabbour, a spokesman for the Lebanese Forces party, an ally of Saudi Arabia, announced after the signing of the Beijing agreement that his party would not secure the parliamentary quorum needed to elect Suleiman Frangieh under any circumstances. Jabbbour’s announcement came in anticipation of any settlement that could place Hezbollah’s candidate at the lead of the presidential race at their expense.
A comparison of how Saudi Arabia and Iran deal with their allies shows that the Saudis have a history of abandoning their allies, with their behavior towards Saad Hariri in Lebanon and the opposition militias in Syria serving as prominent examples. Iran, on the other hand, is more loyal and more committed to the allies it makes, always seeking to strengthen their presence along its side at every political and military juncture. Therefore, it is expected that Riyadh’s relations with its local allies will witness a significant change in priorities in the short term.
The Beijing agreement will undoubtedly strengthen Iran’s position in the region because it will reduce the potential of costly military conflicts, especially in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, where turmoil frequently erupts. Riyadh, on the other hand, is likely to reap the long-term advantages of the deal as the alleviation of the burden of military involvement will offer the Saudis an opportunity to follow policies that are somewhat independent of Washington.
It is abundantly clear that Saudi Arabia, upon re-examining its choices, has found that a settlement with Iran is less costly than a confrontation with it.
About:
Abbas Assi holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Leeds in the UK. He previously worked at the Center for Arab Unity Studies.
Saudi Failures in the Mashreq and the Beijing Agreement - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
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You're invited. Cybersecurity creates new horizons for the Abraham Accords | Tues, May 23
- TUE, MAY 23, 2023 ? 9:00 AM ET
- A hybrid event on the expansion of the Abraham Accords to include cybersecurity, which examines the shared challenges from regional cyberattacks and the benefits of improved trans-regional cybersecurity cooperation.
The expansion of the Abraham Accords to include cybersecurity was announced on February 3, 2023 by the US Department of Homeland Security, alongside cybersecurity officials from Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco. Addressing the historical significance of the Abraham Accords and the normalization process, this event will explore both the shared regional challenges from criminal and state-sponsored cyberattacks and the political and economic benefits of improved trans-regional cybersecurity cooperation.
This event will feature a fireside chat with DHS Under Secretary Robert Silvers, Ambassadors from the Kingdom of Bahrain and Israel, and the head of cybersecurity of the United Arab Emirates, moderated by the Honorable R. Clarke Cooper, former Assistant Secretary for political-military affairs at the US Department of State and nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. The event will also feature remarks from the co-chair of the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus, the co-chair of the Senate Abraham Accords Caucus, and an experts panel moderated by former DHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism Policy and Middle East Programs’ nonresident senior fellow Thomas Warrick.
This event will take place in a hybrid format on Tuesday, May 23, 2023, at 9:00 a.m. ET at the Atlantic Council headquarters in Washington, DC. Participants can join in-person or virtually via Zoom.
This event is part of the N7 Initiative, a partnership between the Atlantic Council and the Jeffrey M. Talpins Foundation, which seeks to broaden and deepen normalization between Israel and Arab and Muslim countries.
Congressional Remarks
The Honorable Elissa Slotkin
United States Representative (D-MI); Co-Chair, Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus
United States Congress
Fireside Chat
H.E. Shaikh Abdullah bin Rashed bin Abdullah Al Khalifa
Ambassador of Bahrain to the United States
H.E. Dr. Mohammed Al-Kuwaiti
Head of Cybersecurity
United Arab Emirates Government
Managing Director, National Data Centre
United Arab Emirates Supreme Council for National Security
H.E. Michael Herzog
Ambassador of Israel to the United States
The Honorable Robert Silvers
Under Secretary, Strategy, Policy, and Plans
United States Department of Homeland Security
Moderated by
R. Clarke Cooper
Former Assistant Secretary for Political-Military Affairs
United States Department of State
Nonresident Senior Fellow, Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative
Atlantic Council
Panel Discussion
Jeanette Manfra
Global Director, Security and Compliance
RADM (Ret) Mark Montgomery
Senior Director, Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Moderated by
Thomas S. Warrick
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary, Counterterrorism Policy
United States Department of Homeland Security
Nonresident Senior Fellow, Middle East Programs
Atlantic Council
Other speakers to be announced.
Cybersecurity creates new horizons for Abraham Accords - Atlantic Council
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