The United States Can’t Stop Arab Rapprochement with Syria’s Assad
The United States shall struggle to stop Arab states from reengaging Assad as part of the regional security matrix.
Syria clearly is not on President Joe Biden’s foreign policy priority list, he has yet to mention Syria in any official speech after his first one hundred days in office. Furthermore in the first official communique after the G7 ministerial meeting in London last week, there was no mention of the criticism that Trump administration officials used to routinely issue regarding Arab states' normalization with President Bashar al-Assad. Similarly, despite the regular pleas from the Syrian opposition to Arab states not to reach out to Assad, the actual opposite has happened; there has been a slow but steady upsurge in Arab states reaching out and even actively helping Damascus. The United Arab Emirates has boldly and publicly called out the Cesar Act, with a recent statement saying that it does not help the regional effort to support Syria. The recent Saudi security delegation visit to Damascus has also furthered speculation of increased Arab support backed up by the Russians and even some European states. London-based Syrian journalist Ibrahim Hamidi, who has an inside track with most Western officials dealing with Syria, even wrote that the French went as far as to put pressure on the United States to exclude a public condemnation of Arab rapprochement with Assad. So what are the reasons the United States cannot put further pressure aside from Biden’s lack of interest? The answer lies in Lebanon, Iraq, and even the recent conflict in the Caucasus.