Will the Assad Regime’s Return to the Arab League Affect the Future of Relations With the United States?

Syria’s return to the Arab League, according to many observers, despite repeated objections from the United States, represents a victory for the Assad regime, especially since the Assad regime was expelled from the League in the first place because of its responsibility for killing and arresting hundreds of thousands of civilians and displacing millions.

Arab normalization with the Assad regime also represents a blow to the United States politically and strategically, and indicates a decline in U.S. influence in the Middle East, and a regional shift towards a multipolar global order, according to U.S. media such as The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg.

According to the Associated Press, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the UAE have played key roles in pressing for Syria’s return to the Arab League, while Qatar and Kuwait remained the most prominent objectors to that plan until they finally submitted to the Arab consensus on normalization with the Assad regime.

On May 7, 2023, the Arab foreign ministers decided to resume the participation of Assad government delegations in the meetings of the Council of the League of Arab States and all its affiliated organizations and agencies.

Simultaneously, a meeting at the level of foreign ministers was held in Moscow between Russia, Iran, Syria, and Turkiye to discuss the path of reconciliation and find a solution for Turkish-Syrian relations.

In response to these two separate tracks regarding the Syrian crisis, the United States announced that it will not normalize relations with the Assad regime and will not support the normalization of relations with Damascus by others.

In a parallel track, representatives from the U.S. Congress presented a bill to prevent the U.S. administration from recognizing any Syrian government led by Bashar al-Assad and to expand the sanctions imposed on his regime.

Assad’s Rehabilitation

According to observers, Syria’s return to the Arab League was prompted by pressure from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE, and Egypt, America’s largest allies in the Middle East, while Qatar and Kuwait were initially conservative, despite the decision to return Syria to the Arab League was issued without announcing any reservations.

Speaking to CNN on May 4, 2023, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said, “Jordan has kept the United States informed of its efforts to rebuild relations with the Assad regime.

“In order for us to truly end the Syrian crisis, we have to make sure that the entire international community is involved, because at the end of the day there are European and U.S. sanctions imposed on it, and there will be an enormous need for global efforts for reconstruction,” Safadi added.

Officials and analysts said that Syria’s return to the Arab League, although symbolic, comes in the hope of paving the way for the international rehabilitation of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and perhaps the lifting of sanctions imposed on his regime.

In the absence of what they see as a lack of progress by the international community in its efforts to end the war there, Arab states have insisted on finding a regional solution, even if it means making peace with a leader whose regime has been accused of horrific war crimes, as described in the CNN report.

On May 10, 2023, Bashar al-Assad received an official invitation from Saudi Arabia to participate in the Arab summit that will be held in Jeddah next week, the first invitation of its kind since the outbreak of the conflict in Syria.

On the same day, the quartet meeting was held on the restoration of Syrian-Turkish relations, but without achieving tangible results.

A statement issued by the Russian Foreign Ministry, excerpts from which were quoted by TASS news agency, stated that the foreign ministers of Russia, Turkiye, Iran, and Syria agreed to assign their deputies to prepare a roadmap for developing relations between Damascus and Ankara.

During the meeting, Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad called on Turkiye to withdraw its forces from Syria, while Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that his country supports the continuation of the process of normalizing relations with Damascus without preconditions.

The closing statement of the ministerial meeting, the first of its kind in 11 years, affirmed commitment to Syrian sovereignty and the fight against terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, calling for increased international assistance to Syria in favor of reconstruction in the country and assistance in the return of Syrian refugees to their homeland.

It is noteworthy that Russia and Iran have been seeking for several years to convince Ankara and the Assad regime to restore their ties through the talks after the two neighbors’ relations soured after the 2011 unrest in Syria escalated into a civil war.

Russia’s long-standing effort to open a channel of dialogue between Turkiye and the Assad regime paid off last year, as the defense ministers and intelligence chiefs of Turkiye, Russia, and the Assad regime met in Moscow on December 28.

American Objection

On its part, the United States expressed its dissatisfaction through several statements about the Arab rapprochement with the Assad regime, especially the recent decision to return Syria to its seat in the Arab League, but it contented itself with asking the countries that were involved in normalization with it by pressing it to implement the solution in accordance with U.N. resolutions.

On May 8, 2023, the White House announced that the United States would not normalize its relations with the Assad regime in Syria and that its sanctions would remain in full effect.

White House spokeswoman Karen Jean-Pierre added, “Washington questions the Assad regime’s desire to take the necessary steps to resolve the crisis in his country, and is in harmony with its partners regarding the ultimate goals.”

She pointed out that “Washington informed its partners who conduct meetings with the regime that it is committed to the Caesar Act and warned them not to risk being subjected to sanctions.”

In turn, the U.S. State Department Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel stated that “the political solution stipulated in U.N. Security Council Resolution 2254 is the only viable solution to the conflict in Syria.”

It is noteworthy that Resolution No. 2254 calls for a roadmap for the peace process in Syria through UN-facilitated talks between the Assad government and members of the opposition.

In a more practical response, U.S. lawmakers from both the Republican and Democratic parties chose to go to legislation as a step that legally obliges the U.S. administration to exert pressure and employ its tools, by proposing a law that prevents normalization with the Assad regime.

On May 11, 2023, they presented a bill calling on the U.S. administration not to recognize Bashar al-Assad as the president of Syria and to strengthen Washington’s ability to impose sanctions in a warning to countries that have begun to restore their relations with Syria.

According to Reuters, the proposed legislation would prevent the U.S. federal government from recognizing or normalizing relations with any Syrian government led by Bashar al-Assad, who is under U.S. sanctions, and also aims to expand the scope of the Caesar Act, under which Washington has imposed harsh sanctions on Syria since 2020.

The bill comes after a number of Arab countries turned the page on years of confrontation with the Assad regime and allowed Syria to return to the Arab League, in a step that re-engages it regionally, despite its ostracism from Western countries.

The bill was introduced by Republican Rep. Joe Wilson, Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, Republican Rep. French Hill, Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen, and Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle, among other representatives.

Joe Wilson said, in a statement, that “countries choosing to normalize with the unrepentant mass murderer and drug trafficker, Bashar al-Assad, are headed down the wrong path.”

In turn, a senior congressional staffer who worked on the bill told Reuters that “the legislation is a warning to Turkiye and Arab countries that if they engage with Assad’s government, they could face severe consequences.”

“The readmission of Syria to the Arab League really infuriated Congress members and made clear the need to quickly act to send a signal,” he added.

It is noteworthy that the Syrian pressure groups in Washington, especially the American Alliance for Syria, worked on drafting the provisions of the bill with American lawmakers and blocs in the Republican and Democratic parties before reaching its final draft.

The alliance issued a statement containing the most essential axes under which the provisions of the bill will be included, which may be cited as the “Assad Regime Anti-Normalization Act of 2023,” pointing out that it is the strongest, largest, and most important of its kind, with significant effects on the Syrian, Arab, and international situation.

In addition to the Caesar Act—which imposed economic and diplomatic sanctions on the Syrian regime and was issued during the era of former U.S. President Donald Trump—last December, President Joe Biden signed the U.S. Department of Defense’s 2023 budget submitted by Congress, which included a law to combat Captagon, which is manufactured and traded by the Assad regime, and which will enter into force next June.

U.S. Allies in the Middle East

In an analytical article by a foreign policy expert at the Center for Middle East Policy, published on the Brookings Institution’s website, the author, Steven Heydemann, suggests that Syria’s return could mean more than just a local victory for an oppressive regime.

Heydemann says that normalization with Assad may indicate the existence of a new Middle Eastern order that is not controlled by the United States and its alliances as in the past.

He points out that normalization, in and of itself, could represent an acknowledgment by the Arab regimes that Assad cannot be eliminated and that he must be dealt with if only to limit his ability to create problems for his neighbors.

The Arabs hope, according to Heydemann, that the lure of normalization will be more effective than sanctions in persuading him to address regional concerns, with refugees and Captagon at the top of their agenda.

But the big picture, Heydemann says, is that Assad’s return represents something more important than these files, adding that his return to the Arab fold represents the continued consolidation of what can only be described as a new regional security structure.

He says, “Normalization represented an additional step towards stopping the escalation of intractable regional conflicts, in addition to other steps that narrowed regional divisions between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Qatar and its counterparts in the Gulf Cooperation Council, Turkiye and other competitors in the region such as Egypt, Israel, and Lebanon on maritime issues, or the Abraham Accords between Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain.”

Heydemann adds that this security landscape raises fundamental questions about the role of the United States in the Middle East and how the United States deals with the regional order that challenges many of the pillars of its policy in the Middle East.

On his part, political researcher Dr. Radwan Ziadeh explained in a statement to Al-Estiklal that “the return of the Assad regime to the Arab League as a representative of Syria is a flagrant violation of the right of the Syrian people to self-determination, and ends the era of the Arab Spring in one way or another.

“The White House’s statement regarding normalization between the Arab countries and Turkiye with Syria has two sides. A positive side is that for the first time the White House officially commented that they are committed to the Caesar Act and that they have informed the Arab countries and Turkiye of the consequences of normalization with the Assad regime and the sanctions imposed on it,” he added.

“As for the negative side, unfortunately everyone knows that the White House does not take effective steps, and that its statement came only as a result of pressure exerted on it by the Syrian opposition and the Syrian community in America to show the failure of the U.S. administration in resolving the Syrian crisis,” he said.

“Washington’s main allies in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Jordan, are the ones who led the track of Arab normalization with the Assad regime, contrary to the U.S. desire and will, which is an additional motive for the White House to take a public position in this regard,” he noted.

Dr. Ziadeh indicated that “U.S. sanctions may be the biggest obstacle to the paths of Arab and Turkish normalization with the Assad regime.”

“The U.S. Congress has a strong and solid position in supporting the Syrian revolution, and I believe that it may pass other laws in the future that will have a greater impact on U.S. allies and limit their relations with the Assad regime,” Dr. Ziadeh said.

He also noted that “U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to extend the state of emergency in Syria for an additional year is a blow to the recent Arab League decision.”