When Israel’s prime
minister, Naftali Bennett, met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi on
October 22, Syria and its future featured high on the agenda. Putin said that Russia had been “making
efforts” to restore the country’s statehood and strengthen it. It is not clear if that was a form of
shorthand for consolidating Bashar al-Assad in power as Syria’s president for
the next seven years, in line with the dubious election in which Assad recently
won a fourth term with 95.1% of the votes.
If Putin is thinking
along those lines, his policy would accord with that of some Arab states which
are seeking ways to bring Syria back into the so-called ‘Arab fold’.
Despite the West’s abhorrence of the crimes against his own people attributed
to Assad, now presiding over 70 percent of what was once sovereign Syria, the realpolitik
of the Middle East may yet see him rehabilitated.
Can Israel sit back and
permit this to come about without intervening?
Syria controlled by an Assad reconfirmed in office and readmitted to the
Arab league, would represent an enhanced danger to Israel. The reality would be a strengthened “Shia
Crescent” – the Iranian empire sweeping round from Yemen to Bahrain, then to
Iran itself, then Iraq, Syria and Lebanon where it holds sway by way of its
Hezbollah proxy. Israel’s efforts to deter
the transfer of armaments, and perhaps eventually nuclear weapons, from Iran to
Hezbollah by way of Syria, would need to be redoubled.
This Arab policy shift seems to be led by Jordan and it requires a focused diplomatic counter-offensive by Israel.
In September Jordan
fully reopened its trade border with Syria, while in the last few weeks Jordan has
been the driving force behind a deal to use Syrian facilities to pipe Egyptian
natural gas into Lebanon, which is facing an energy crisis. Syria’s defense
minister, Ali Abdullah Ayyoub, visited Jordan in September and met with
Jordanian military officials. Shortly
afterwards Jordan’s King Abdullah spoke to Assad by phone for the first time
since 2011.
Syria was suspended from
the Arab League back in 2011 because of its failure to end its violent crackdown
on protesters demanding Assad’s resignation. In 2018 the United Arab Emirates
reopened its embassy in Damascus, closed since 2011, and recently the idea of
reinstating Syria to the League has been mooted. Perhaps as a step in that direction, the UAE
economy minister, Abdulla bin Touq Al Marri, recently announced that the Gulf state and Syria had agreed on
plans to enhance economic cooperation.
The value of non-oil trade between the two countries in the first half
of 2021 was some $272m.
A few weeks ago the UAE invited Syria to participate in Dubai’s Expo 2020, the first world’s fair to be held in the Middle East. So named because it was originally planned for last year, Expo 2020 was postponed because of the COVID pandemic. It runs from October 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022. Al-Marri met his Syrian counterpart on the sidelines where, it is reported, they looked at ways to expand the UAE-Syrian relationship.
Political as well as
economic considerations loom large in current Arab thinking. The loss of US
prestige following its withdrawal from Afghanistan, as well as its moves to
reactivate the Iran nuclear talks, has prompted a reassessment of policy priorities. The ties that Arab states enjoy with Russia, Assad's
most powerful backer, become a consideration. If Russia, which has been
pressing for Syria’s return to the League, moves towards consolidating Assad in
power, some Arab states will go along.
Unlike the pragmatic
Arab world, western opinion remains opposed to Assad, widely regarded as a
tyrant whose hands are covered with the blood of his own people. There is something of a consensus that he
must be removed from power before Syria can be brought back into a normal
relationship with the rest of the world.
Bennett may have taken this line in Sochi.
In 2011 with the Arab
Spring at its height, Syria, like a handful of other regional dictatorships,
was plunged into civil conflict. Popular
dissent soon developed into an armed revolt, which finally sought to overthrow
the despotic Assad régime and substitute a democratic form of government. In August 2013 it became clear that Assad had
used chemical weapons against his opponents without regard to the horrific civilian
casualties that resulted.
US President Barack
Obama – although he had sworn to punish Assad if he deployed chemical weapons –
failed to act. Putin seized the
political initiative. He quickly
extracted an undertaking from Assad to surrender the chemical arsenal that he
had originally denied possessing. Obama
embraced the pledge, but it was a total sham.
In June 2021 Fernando Arias, the head of the international chemical
weapons watchdog, told the UN Security Council that chemical weapons had so far
been used in Syria a probable 17 times.
On October 13 US Secretary
of State Antony Blinken reiterated US opposition to any normalization of
relations with Assad. A US law, known as
the Caesar Act, that came into force last year punishes any companies that work
with Assad.
"What we have not
done, and what we do not intend to do, is to express any support for efforts to
normalize relations or rehabilitate Mr Assad," Blinken told a joint news
conference, pointedly refraining from according the Syrian leader the title
“President”. Blinken set out the US
requirement with regard to Syria as “irreversible progress toward a political
solution”. This can possibly be
interpreted as free and fair elections in which Assad will be debarred from
standing, leading to a new constitution for the country.
Whether this will become
anything more than a US aspiration, though, is doubtful. The words are strong;
the commitment less so. Syria is
scarcely seen in Washington as a vital US interest. Indeed the Middle East as a whole is not
among Biden’s top priorities. Given the withdrawal
of US forces from Afghanistan and shortly from Iraq, the Arab world would not
be too surprised if the administration announced it was leaving Syria.
A decisive lead from the
US can prevent Assad’s rehabilitation. But
is Biden, like Obama before him, too concerned with the nuclear deal and
Iranian sensitivities?
Published in the Jerusalem Post, 25 October 2021:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/can-israel-stomach-a-rehabilitated-assad-opinion-682982
https://mpc-journal.org/assad-at-the-crossroads/
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