The US and the UAE have been discussing — even before the sudden eruption of the insurgency by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham against Assad — how to persuade Syria to end its alliance with Iran. With Iran now weakened by Israel, and needing to keep its troops at home in case of an Israeli attack, the Islamic Republic is no longer capable of offering as much military help to Syria as it did in 2015 and 2016, when such help proved critical to Assad’s success. Christine Douglass-Williams discussed this here, and more on these discussions by the US and UAE can be found here: “US, UAE Discussed Lifting Assad Sanctions in Exchange for Break With Iran, Sources Say,” Algemeiner, December 2, 2024:
The US and the United Arab Emirates have discussed with each other the possibility of lifting sanctions on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad if he peels himself away from Iran and cuts off weapons routes to Lebanon’s Hezbollah, five people familiar with the matter said.
The conversations intensified in recent months, the sources said, driven by the possible expiry on Dec. 20 of sweeping US sanctions on Syria and by Israel’s campaign against Tehran’s regional network, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and Iranian assets in Syria.
The discussions took place before anti-Assad rebels swept into Aleppo last week in their biggest offensive in Syria for years.
According to the sources, the new rebel advance is a signal of precisely the sort of weakness in Assad‘s alliance with Iran that the Emirati and US initiative aims to exploit. But if Assad embraces Iranian help for a counter-offensive, that could also complicate efforts to drive a wedge between them, the sources said….
The UAE has taken a leading role in rehabilitating Assad among the mainly Sunni Muslim Arab states that shunned him after he accepted help from Shi’ite, non-Arab Iran to put down the Sunni-led rebellion against him.
The Emirates hosted Assad in 2022, his first visit to an Arab country since the start of the war, before the Arab League reinstated Syria’s membership.
The UAE has long hoped to distance Assad from Iran and wants to build business ties with Syria, but US sanctions have hampered those efforts, the sources said….
But now it sounds like the Americans are on board with the UAE plan to persuade Syria to cut ties with Iran. Washington is apparently now prepared to lift sanctions on Syria, so that the UAE, Syria’s main support among Sunni Arab states, can do business — that is, invest, in Syria. And Assad owes a great debt to the UAE for promoting its acceptance by the other Arab states. The UAE’s support is the key to having Syria welcomed back within the Arab fold. He must not ignore, but will have to consider carefully, any offer coming from the UAE.
It is estimated that to rebuild Syria’s infrastructure back to where it was in 2011, before the civil war, will require $350 billion. The only possible sources for such amounts are the rich Sunni oil states — the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait — as well as gas-rich Qatar. Assad has to be thinking about that rebuilding; Iran’s own economy is teetering, and the Islamic Republic will be of no economic help; he needs the UAE and the other deep-pocked Sunni states to finance Syrian reconstruction, but as long as he insists upon remaining an ally of Shi’a Iran, he won’t receive anything. Assad has to choose between Iran, which can no longer do much to prop up Assad militarily, and the UAE, with the tens of billions of dollars it is prepared to spend itself in Syria and the many billions more that the UAE might persuade its Gulf allies to provide, if only Assad cuts his ties to Iran.
The US placed sanctions on Syria after Assad cracked down against protests against him in 2011, and the sanctions were repeatedly tightened in the years of war that followed. The toughest, known as the Caesar Act, passed Congress in 2019.
The Caesar sanctions apply across Syrian business sectors, to anyone dealing with Syria regardless of nationality and to those dealing with Russian and Iranian entities in Syria.
Assad said they amounted to economic warfare, blaming them for the Syrian currency’s collapse and drop in living standards….
If Assad believes those American sanctions caused the Syrian currency to collapse and created widespread poverty, that is all the more reason for him to make a deal that will cause the Americans to remove those sanctions. The case for remaining an ally of Iran grows ever weaker, considering the benefits Syria would receive from cutting those ties.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
At this point, as President Trump said, we should just wait and watch what happens in Syria, before making any moves there. Hopefully, as Hugh opined, there is a full blown long lasting war b/w Assad, backed by Iran, Hizbullah and Russia, against HTS, backed by Turkey. I happen to think Russia too is getting blindsighted by some of this: in his interview to Tucker, Sergei Lavrov thought that there is an attempt to separate Turkish backed rebels from HTS, which he tied to al Qaeda & 9/11. Looks like Turkey is doing a number on him, since there is no current support from sunni Arab states for Assad’s ouster.