Arab leaders assert ‘strategic sovereignty’ over Middle East conflict in pointed message to West
- Assad’s return to Arab League and Zelensky’s appearance mark efforts by Arab states to remain diplomatically neutral in the West’s tensions with Russia and China
- Saudi Arabia is on a ‘geopolitical offensive’ as it seeks to manage regional conflict and boost Arab engagement and realignment
The Arab League also pushed back against US pressure to accelerate its normalisation of relations with Israel by hosting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and reiterating demands for a two-nation solution.
Saudi political commentator Salman al-Ansari described the Jeddah meeting as “the summit of Arab strategic sovereignty”.
The event established three “noes” to political “polarisations, militias and ideologies” and three corresponding “yeses” to “sovereignty, unity and partnership”, he said.
By inviting Ukraine’s Zelensky, Riyadh brought “the West’s most iconic military-geopolitical leader into some kind of conversation with all Arab leaders”, Hellyer said. Such a move, he noted, was “going to play quite well in different Western capitals, not least in Washington”.
While the gesture was unlikely to reset relations between Saudi Arabia and the West, “it does help, nevertheless”, Hellyer said. Ties had deteriorated last year over Riyadh’s refusal to pump more oil to compensate for the loss of Russian supplies to Western sanctions over the Ukraine war.
She said this policy was “tied” to Saudi Arabia’s prioritisation of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 to diversify and grow its economy away from dependency on oil revenues.
It was also designed to meet the kingdom’s security goals of seeking to “stave off future waves of unrest and instability” like the Arab Spring protests which rocked authoritarian regimes in the Middle East in the early 2010s, she said.
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The Arab League summit invitation to Assad, and intensified negotiations to end the war in Yemen between the Houthis and Riyadh-backed government, come on the back of the China-brokered restoration of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia in March, after seven years of estrangement.
Efforts to normalise relations with Syria and bring Assad back into the Arab fold materialised after the deadly earthquake of February 6, analysts said.
“Assad’s coronation is a culmination of years-long efforts by many Arab states to normalise relations with Syria, and reposition themselves as balanced entities to the US on one hand and Russia and China on the other,” said Qutaiba Idlbi, head of the Syria Project at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank.
By limiting US involvement in Syria to the Kurdish-controlled northeast, Washington had left “a vacuum in other parts of the country where Arab states look to Russia and Iran – and Assad by extension – as their partners to shape their Syria policies”, he said.
“Along with its de-prioritisation of Middle East policy, the Biden administration is contributing to this regional shift that subsequently accelerated the reintegration of Assad,” Idlbi said.
Vakil said Syria would be a “key test case” for Saudi Arabia’s new diplomatic manoeuvring as it required coordinating key issues such as terror, narcotics trafficking, refugees and Assad himself. Syria also “lies at an intersection” with Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Russia, Turkey and the US.
Syria’s Assad gets warm welcome at Arab summit after years of isolation
“These de-escalatory trends present a new direct approach to regional conflict management [which] has created an unprecedented wave of Arab engagement and realignment,” said Vakil, who is director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House, a British think tank.
Regional security, however, was “still a work in progress”, she said.
“Achieving long-term stability goals requires consistent engagement and the rebuilding of relationships across the Middle East.”
