Saudi Arabia and Syria are about to resume relations in the talks brokered by Russia

In the wake of the China-brokered agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran on resuming relations this month, the emerging rapprochement between Damascus and Riyadh, if it sticks, would leave the United States on the sidelines again on another major development in the Middle East.

Saudi and Syrian officials said negotiators aimed to seal a deal before a possible visit by Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan to Damascus after the Eid al-Fitr holiday in late April. But they warned that the discussions could collapse.

On Thursday evening, Saudi state television reported that negotiations had begun with Syria to resume providing the necessary consular services to both countries, quoting a source in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Saudi Arabia and Syria severed relations in 2012 over Assad’s response to the political protests that emerged from the Arab Spring uprising and his actions in the ensuing civil war. The Saudis helped orchestrate Syria’s expulsion from the Arab League and funded the rebels fighting Assad’s forces for years.

Officials from Saudi Arabia, Syria and other Arab countries said the Russian government brokered a preliminary agreement when Assad visited Moscow last week. Then, senior Syrian officials visited Saudi Arabia in recent weeks.

If a formal agreement is reached, a vote on Syria’s reintegration into the wider region and its reconstruction will be on the agenda for the next Arab summit expected in May in Saudi Arabia, according to Arab officials.

Much of the Arab world has moved to distance the rivalries that plunged the region into chaos in the aftermath of uprisings that began in 2011 and toppled several Middle Eastern governments. Mr. Assad has held talks with several Arab countries to end more than a decade of isolation, and the Saudi foreign minister recently said the status quo with Syria is not sustainable.

An Iranian official and advisers to the Syrian government said that Iran encouraged Syria to strike a deal with Saudi Arabia after Riyadh and Tehran agreed to resume diplomatic relations after a seven-year hiatus. Arab officials familiar with the talks said other Arab countries such as Amman and Jordan also supported rapprochement between Damascus and Riyadh.

Syrian government advisers said the main focus of the talks was security. These people said that the kingdom wants to resolve the issue of Saudi detainees who were captured after joining jihadi groups involved in the civil war. The officials said that Damascus is seeking Riyadh’s help to cut off funding and recruitment for fundamentalist factions fighting in Syria.

Any agreement between Saudi Arabia and Syria, brokered by Russia, would mark another impressive diplomatic move by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The 37-year-old who rules the day-to-day oil-rich kingdom of his aging father, King Salman, has restored ties with Washington, Saudi Arabia’s longtime protector in the Persian Gulf, and has developed closer ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin. And Chinese leader Xi Jinping since the beginning of the Ukraine war.

Prince Mohammed faced diplomatic isolation for several years after Saudi agents killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in an operation that US intelligence concluded was ordered by the king. The Saudi government says Prince Mohammed was not involved and the perpetrators have been brought to justice.

Prince Mohammed has tried to avoid being drawn to any side since the beginning of the Ukraine war. He used the war as an opportunity to formulate an independent foreign policy that strengthened Saudi Arabia’s position as the world’s largest oil exporter. The talks on Syria come after Prince Mohammed gave the green light to a deal with Iran in a deal brokered by China.

“Oil-exporting countries and authoritarian states have more in common than the democratic West, with regard to their use of sanctions and perceived hypocrisy in respecting sovereignty,” said Karen Young, senior researcher specializing in Middle East affairs at the Center on Global Energy Policy in Columbia. university. In the Middle East, she said, “the general trend is the consensus on non-interference in internal affairs as a principle.”

Mediation between Saudi Arabia and Syria strengthens the Russian presence in the Middle East. Mr. Putin’s airpower intervention in the Syrian civil war has proven decisive for Assad, and he has courted the Saudis, aligning oil-rich Russia with the Riyadh-led Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

For the United States, the deal is a reminder that while it remains the preeminent military and diplomatic power in the Middle East, its influence there is waning.

The United States still has forces in Syria, conducting counterterrorism operations in the country’s southeast and with Kurdish-led forces in the northeast. But Washington has long indicated it wants to focus more on Russia and China and less on the region’s chaotic affairs, and the shift was demonstrated Thursday when the Wall Street Journal reported that the US would send aging attack aircraft to the Middle East and replace them. The most advanced fighter jets out there right now.

“The single most important factor affecting the region is the perception of a US withdrawal, which creates a vacuum in which other countries can step in,” said William Wechsler, a former US Department of Defense official and current director of the Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs. in Washington.

The Middle East has undergone a dramatic realignment in recent years. The Saudis patched up a diplomatic row with Qatar, the Persian Gulf states began to set aside long-standing differences with Turkey, and conflicts in Libya, Yemen, and Syria subsided considerably.

The United States remains engaged in trying to broker a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, but there are significant hurdles.

“After the Saudi-Iranian agreement, and now the possible rapprochement between Syria and the Kingdom, the United States has been increasingly marginalized diplomatically,” said Fabrice Balanche, an assistant professor specializing in Middle East affairs at Lyon 2 University in France. Middle Eastern countries make peace without Washington.

For Mr. Assad, the deal with Saudi Arabia will be one of the final demonstrations that he has won in a grinding 11-year civil war, against not only rebels but also a host of foreign actors, including the United States and Saudi Arabia, who have called for his removal. out of power.

Assad used the devastating earthquake that struck the north of his country last month to advance normal diplomatic relations, visiting Oman and the United Arab Emirates in recent weeks. But he remains a pariah in most parts of the world, with overwhelming evidence that he used chemical weapons against Syrians and oversaw the killing of tens of thousands of civilians.

Write to Summer Said at [email protected], Benoit Faucon at [email protected] and Michael Amon at [email protected]