Syrian President Bashar Assad's visit to the United Arab Emirates last week was part of an attempt to bring his regime back to the Arab world and distance itself from Iran, but the embrace of a former enemy is far from a rose-tinted vision about the future of Syria.
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Even if the regime of the butcher of Damascus rejoins the Arab League, it appears that even the UAE and the Saudis don't have deep enough pockets to fund the rebuilding of the region torn to shred in the war. Millions have been uprooted, and the chokehold Iran and the US sanctions cannot be released easily by money. What's more, the Assad regime doesn't even control about one-quarter of the territory.
So it would appear that the main point of the meeting between Assad and Emirati Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan was to position the UAE as a rising regional power – an entity that can talk to all the players in the Middle East – from Iran and Syria to Israel and Egypt.
It's no coincidence that after President Isaac Herzog visits the Emirates, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is due to arrive for a meeting with MBZ. All this, of course, is a direct result of the tripartite summit between Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, and MBZ in Sharm e-Sheikh last week. The newspaper Al-Arab even quoted diplomatic sources in Cairo saying that the summit had seen the birth of a "new Arab-Israeli coalition."
Since the Biden administration came into power, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have been in a crisis of faith with the US. Houthi attacks on the Emirates and on Saudi Arabia have only strengthened that feeling, after the pro-Iranian militia was dropped from the US list of terrorist organizations last year.
After one such attack, a Gulf Arab official told Israel Hayom that the Biden administration's refusal to take a stance against Iran and its satellites in the Middle East was destabilizing the region and hurting the US's own interests. According to the official, there is a general sense in the Middle East that the US has let it down.
The Ukraine war has provided an opportunity for the UAE and its Saudi partner to get back at the US. The Russian invasion raised the possibility that the EU would ban the import of Russian oil and gas, leading to a price jump in the energy market. The Saudi and Emirati crown princes could allow themselves to refuse to take Biden's phone calls, as the Wall Street Journal reported. Beyond that, Saudi Arabia announced this week that it was not responsible for supplying oil to the international markets.
But in the meantime, it turned out that an EU ban on Russian oil and gas was less realistic, and oil prices dropped in the days prior to the Houthi attack. The UAE is focused on shoring up its soft power to avoid dependence on the US or the roller coaster of the black gold. That soft power lies not only in a vibrant tourism industry and real estate initiatives, but also in ties with all sides.
These same ties will help the UAE in the post-US future. The western superpower has been backing away from the Middle East for years, and Abu Dhabi is very worried that Iran and other Islamist forces will try to step into the vacuum.
Mohamed bin-Zayed is slowing building the UAE into an Arab superpower, one that will lead an Arab coalition that can fill this void. After all, the Arab federation does not suffer the same economic troubles that Egypt and Jordan do, or from the Saudi's clumsy administration or the Qatari hypocrisy.
Unlike Israel, which has yet to fully smash the taboo of normalization, the UAE enjoy official relations with most players in the region, so it won't be any surprise to see the Emirates leading this nascent alliance.
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