On moving the Syrian file to Riyadh

The UN envoy to Syria, Geir Pedersen, is conducting consultations regarding moving the Constitutional Committee’s meetings from Geneva to Riyadh, after Moscow rejected his invitation to hold the ninth round in Switzerland, considering it “not neutral” regarding the Russian war on Ukraine, and its objection to holding it in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Moreover, Washington objected to Baghdad, according to a Russian proposal. Riyadh is an option agreed upon by both the regime and the opposition, as well as Russia, the US and the UN based on the approach adopted by Saudi foreign policy over the past year, which is based on calming all parties. Moving the meetings of the Constitutional Committee to Riyadh means that it will assume a greater role in the Syrian file, a matter that Saudi Arabia has not decided upon, as Syria is not among its priorities.

In the last year, the Saudi strategy has tended to look for stability in the region, because it serves the realisation of the Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s plans to reform the economy and Vision 2030. It has changed its hostile policies towards the Houthis in Yemen, Iran and its militias in the region, which were not successful due to its relying on continued American support, which did not meet Riyadh’s expectations. This pushed it to adopt moderate policies, so it accepted a historic rapprochement with Tehran under the auspices of China, which was followed by reconciliation with the Syrian regime in April 2023, the return of Syria to the Arab League in May 2023 and the opening of the Syrian embassy in Riyadh in December 2023.

Last January, it handed the tasks of handling Hajj and Umrah affairs back to the Syrian regime, after a decade of entrusting them to the opposition, in exchange for its closure of the Houthi embassy in Damascus in October 2023. However, Riyadh did not appoint an ambassador to Damascus, indicating that it had not gone far in restoring relations with the Assad regime.

Saudi Arabia was supportive of the Syrian opposition, and it formed the negotiating body at the Riyadh 1 meeting in late 2015. It was committed to supporting the opposition and restructuring the body according to its interests in the Riyadh 2 meeting at the end of 2017, then suspended its support in 2021, but relations remain strong between the two parties, in addition to this, Saudi Arabia is still providing humanitarian support to the opposition areas in the north, where members of the Syrian opposition leadership reside.

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Damascus will take advantage of this step to promote broad Arab normalisation with it in the media and will not change the policies of procrastination and stalling in the Constitutional Committee. In fact, it does not seem that the regime’s government is betting on deep normalisation with the countries with which it has restored relations, as it is unable to carry out projects related to developing the infrastructure necessary to encourage Gulf investments.

There is also a policy of “chasing away” staff and expertise, which are necessary for investment operations. What the regime wants, politically, is to remain in power through relations with Gulf countries that have normalised or want to normalise relations with Israel, believing in the latter’s ability to support its survival, and economically it is content with maintaining the movement of food exports, mainly to the Gulf countries, which has been revived since the opening of the Nasib-Jaber crossing in 2018 as its main commercial outlet.

Russia is interested in resuming the meetings that mean its success in diverting the path of the political solution in accordance with international resolutions to meetings between the regime and the opposition to agree on a joint constitution, in addition to its interest in improving relations with Saudi Arabia and remaining far from the Western axis that is hostile towards Moscow in its war against Ukraine.

It was the Syrian Negotiating Committee that proposed Riyadh as an alternative to Geneva. Not even Iran will hinder this move as long as its relationship with Saudi Arabia is on the mend, albeit in a limited manner, and as long as Saudi Arabia is committed to neutrality towards the Houthis and their targeting of maritime traffic in the Red Sea and does not participate in the strikes led by Washington against the group.

Certainly, Saudi Arabia does not expect progress in the negotiations on the constitution, due to the Syrian regime’s refusal to make concessions, and it has experienced first-hand its inability, and unwillingness, to meet the security demands related to limiting the trade of Captagon, which is popular in Saudi Arabia and across Jordan. It left the task of controlling the borders to the Jordanian army, whose operations are expanding into Syrian territory, repeatedly clashing with drug traffickers who work according to Iranian agendas.

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Likewise, Riyadh does not have hopes for measures by the regime regarding the return of refugees given its inability to receive them because they will pose an additional economic burden that it cannot bear. In addition to all of the above, the US administration has repeatedly stressed the continuation of the sanctions, the draft law preventing normalisation with Assad, and Congress expanding the Caesar sanctions and solidifying them so that subsequent US administrations will not be able to cancel them. This further pushes Saudi Arabia to the conviction that the path to rehabilitating the Syrian regime is blocked, which reduces its enthusiasm regarding the Syrian file. However, in the long term, Riyadh is interested in future investments in Syria if there is international consensus on the reconstruction file, and therefore it may choose to embrace the Syrian issue even if the file remains frozen in the short-term.

The ongoing Israeli war on the Gaza Strip is an additional reason for Saudi Arabia to consider working to revitalise the Syrian file by hosting Constitutional Committee meetings, because the war has hindered the kingdom’s plans, including the file of normalisation with Israel. It is currently in a state of waiting for the war to end, because the outcome of the war is directly linked to Iran and its militias, and therefore, the fragile rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran is susceptible to collapsing and could cause Riyadh to withdraw from normalising ties with the Assad regime.

This article first appeared in Arabic in Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed on April 2024

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.