The Middle East’s strategic equation is rapidly changing against the global backdrop of polarisation between democracies and autocracies. Its authoritarian rulers have lately taken a number of steps to safeguard their positions in this context by becoming more accommodating towards each other. Their moves entail serious implications for regional and global politics.
Of the recent developments, two stand out as highly consequential: the Iran – Saudi Arabia rapprochement and the rehabilitation of the Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad. Both, interactively, are set to influence the direction in which the Middle East is heading.
The first development, occurring under China’s good offices, signals the willingness of the de facto Chinese- and Russian-allied Islamic Republic of Iran and the traditionally pro-Western Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to smooth out their traditional sectarian and geopolitical differences. The restoration of their ties after a six-year break carries the potential for cooperation in reducing regional tensions between them in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and, most urgently, Yemen.
The second development indicates that the Arab world, despite its previous support of the popular uprising against the Assad regime and its condemnation of the regime for its bloody suppression of the opposition, with active Iranian and Russian support, wants to bring Syria back into the Arab fold. Assad’s attendance of the recent Arab League meeting in Riyadh, his call for domestic affairs of the regional states to be left to themselves, and his call for the curtailment of interference by outside powers, by which he meant specifically the United States, couldn’t have been more disconcerting to Washington and its democratic allies.
Read the article by Amin Saikal in The Strategist.