Bashar al-Assad seizes the opportunity to return after the Syrian earthquake | Bashar al-Assad

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Bashar al-Assad wasn’t trolling Aleppo, Syria, last month as a man bearing the fate of a nation.

As he took pictures with locals, who lined up to meet him to inspect the damage from the earthquake that has devastated parts of northern Syria, Assad appeared to show as much relief as concern for the victims. The smiling leader of the country seemed to realize that the moment had finally come.

Within days of the disaster, international aid chiefs were calling out to the public, asking the Syrian president for permission to reach the hardest-hit communities outside government control. World bodies were again deferring to Assad as the sovereign leader of a unified state.

Within days, so were Syria’s neighbors, with the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Egypt and officials from other Arab countries traveling to Damascus for a meeting, under the pretense of offering condolences. However, the symbolism fueled a seismic shift of a different nature.

For the first time in more than a decade of war and chaos, during which Assad was a pariah in the eyes of his regional adversaries, he is now being courted as a solution to the crisis that earned him the label in the first place.

Clearly, the man who presided over the disintegration of his country, the exile of half its population, and an economic devastation almost unparalleled anywhere in the world over the past 70 years is back. An official visit to Oman on February 20, complete with red carpets, processions and flag-lined streets, cemented his return. Syria will likely be re-admitted to the Arab League later this year, boosting Assad’s rehabilitation.

Bashar al-Assad and his wife, Asmaa, visiting survivors of the earthquake in a hospital in Latakia, western Syria, in February 2023. Photo: Yamam al-Shaar/Reuters

“It’s been a long time,” said a regional intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It can no longer be demonstrated that the region has become safer with Syria being encouraged to remain rogue.”

What Assad was expected to relinquish, or what political leverage his resurgent cronies might wield, remains unclear.

It is known that senior officials in the UAE and Saudi Arabia pressed hard on two issues; Separating Syria from Iranian influence and stopping the export of massive quantities of the drug Captagon, which is the trade name for the synthetic stimulant phenethylline hydrochloride, to neighboring countries.

In March last year, the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, and the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, set the stage for the transformation that is taking place now, and invited Assad on an unofficial visit to the UAE.

Both men made clear what was expected of Assad, describing him as a wayward leader who could be called upon to return to the fold, should he change his ways.

A year later, little seems to have changed except for regional positions. The drug industry supported by the most important Syrian institutions continues to turn the country into a drug state, to rival the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico on the scale of state intervention. With revenues from the large-scale export of homemade grain approaching $6 billion—a figure that rivals gross domestic product—there seems little on the economic horizon that can steer Syrian leaders away from such wealth.

Last month, Emirati officials intercepted 4.5 million Captagon pills hidden in cans of fava beans. Meanwhile, the Italian authorities ordered the arrest of the Syrian citizen, Taher Al-Kayyali, whom they accused of coordinating a shipment of 14 tons of steroids, destined for Libya and Saudi Arabia in 2020.

Italian police say they are confident the drugs came from Syria and could be linked to the Iran-backed Shiite group Hezbollah.

During a trip to Jordan last week, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was pressured by the country’s king, King Abdullah, to put more pressure on Assad to stop the Captagon trade, which regional and Western intelligence officers believe is being orchestrated by his younger brother, Maher. Assad, and the matter was mainly facilitated by the 4th Division of the Syrian Army, which is under his direct control. Abdullah also stressed the role of Iranian militias in the drug trade through southern Syria, which has posed enormous problems for the Jordanian border forces, and is also now providing lucrative trade in Iraq.

How Assad can turn away from Iran, when it remains central to his fortunes, remains a point of contention. This request was overshadowed by more ambiguity on Friday due to the sudden agreement between Riyadh and Tehran, which have been at odds throughout the post-Arab Spring years, as Syria, Lebanon and Yemen were often battlefields fought by their proxies.

The fact that Assad has reached the point of rehabilitation is due in large part to the support he has received from Iran, which has used the rebellion against him to cement a bridge in Syria through which it can deepen its support for Syria’s most important arm. Its foreign policy – Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Extracting the leader of two decades from the arms of Iran, in such a context, would be almost existential for one of his main guarantors. “It’s not a risk he can take,” the regional official said. “The Emiratis and the Saudis didn’t think about it.”

Another demand of Assad—serious negotiations with the Syrian opposition to reach a political solution and to encourage the safe return of refugees—seems equally dubious.

Even during the darkest years of the war, in which Assad was twice saved from defeat by his supporters, discussions with opposition groups were never taken seriously, and any agreements between the two sides centered around which part of Syria defeated communities should be exiled.

Repeated Western- and Russian-backed rallies in Geneva and Astana in Kazakhstan since 2013 have failed to generate real momentum, and demands for political power-sharing have not taken root. Brutality and fear have been used to further Assad’s police state, largely with impunity.

His enemies were once center stage at the United Nations demanding that he be held accountable for his atrocities. The lesson he can learn from the words hot then and the welcome he feels now is that he can sweat anyone — without changing his method.

Restoring Syria to its rightful place as a historic center of regional influence was a mantra that Assad stuck to during the 23 years he was president and a core belief of his father, Hafez al-Assad, who died in June 2000. It paved the way for an unlikely leader.

In his perpetual refusal to negotiate meaningfully, Assad has learned one of his father’s essential lessons. Seeing the results of this obstinacy, it is likely that divine wisdom is in the views of Leo the Father.

A European ambassador to the UAE said: “The Turks, the Russians and the Iranians are all impatient for influence and they don’t care if Assad stays in a weak country, that he can’t talk much about. If they can’t influence malign behaviour, it doesn’t matter.”

“The most important thing for them is to reap the reward from the rubble on their doorsteps. I think the Gulf countries now feel the same.”

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