Stiff and smiling, Bashar Al-Assad was welcomed by the Sultan of Oman at the foot of his plane which had just landed in Muscat on Monday, February 20. The accolades were followed by a guard of honor: a moment that the leader, proscribed in recent years on the Arab scene, could only savor. Determined to emerge from its isolation, the Syrian government has seized the hand extended by several of its peers, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the lead, since the deadly earthquake of February 6.
This rare trip is the second that the Syrian president has made to an Arab capital since his banishment by the Gulf monarchies in 2012, when the bloody repression by the regime of the popular uprising tipped into a deadly war. This visit of a few hours is a new threshold crossed in the Arab diplomatic activism which has been played out in Damascus since the earthquake.
According to official Omani and Syrian statements, the Sultan, Haitham Ben Tareq, and Bashar Al-Assad spoke of “joint cooperation” and “efforts to consolidate security and stability in the region”. The Syrian news agency SANA adds that the sultanate “hope to see [la Syrie] return to its normal relations with all the other Arab countries”.
This meeting is important because of Oman’s role as mediator. “The sultanate is the secret kitchen of regional reconciliation agreements. Oman trusted by Iran [allié de Damas] and the United States [opposés au pouvoir syrien]. Bashar Al-Assad probably needs his informal channels to move the lines”, points, from Amman, the political analyst Amer Sabaileh. The head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, went to Oman in 2022, to push for the return of Syria to Arab rule, a goal that the godfather of the Al-Assad regime has been pursuing for years.
Countering Iranian Influence
Since the earthquake, the Syrian president, a pariah in the eyes of Westerners who blame him for the destruction of Syria, has never ceased to thank the “Arab brothers”. Messages of condolence followed one another after the disaster which claimed more than 3,600 victims in Syria (the majority of them in rebel areas), to which must be added the Syrian refugees who died in Turkey. More than a hundred planes loaded with aid for devastated government areas have taken off from the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Oman, Algeria, and even Saudi Arabia.
By bringing aid to the Syrians, these countries are also pushing their political pawns. This is especially true for the United Arab Emirates, keen to counter Iranian influence in Syria. “With Jordan, whose diplomacy is aligned with theirs, and Egypt, the Emirates form a trio favorable to a rapprochement with Syria. The earthquake allows them to break political taboos to reengage, but their efforts are older”, decrypts Amer Sabaileh. The UAE and Jordan have dispatched their foreign ministers to Damascus.
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