... alarmed at the US decision against dealing with Assad’s regime.
Should the Saudis agree to facilitate Syria’s comeback in the Arab League, Qatar will remain the only player to resist it. Yet the Doha-Damascus relationship is getting stronger, and should ... ... claiming to preserve its presence in the Middle East. This new environment could not but render the existing trend in Russia-Saudi Arabia relations irrelevant. Under new circumstances, Moscow and Riyadh have more capability for productive cooperation ...
... its crisis … by stopping its financing of armed groups and the trafficking of weapons.”
Readmitting Syria while it is still led by Bashar al-Assad would only mean that Saudi Arabia acknowledges its inability to put somebody else at the helm there.
Saudi Arabia’s position is yet another obstacle to Damascus’s return to the Arab League. Riyadh has still not decided whether to let this process run its course, i.e. gradually restore relations with Damascus on a country-by-country basis without welcoming it back to League wholesale, or to aim for Syria’s full return to the ...
... to lie in fear of the Shiite expansion.
The Saudis have long been vocal about their
concern over the prospects of a Shiite crescent encompassing Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, and Yemen could now become another ally of Iran, completing the encirclement of Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi response to the Houthi rise was akin to panic, as they rushed to pressure the Arab League into deciding to set up a coalition and launch an air campaign despite the risk that this approach would merely repeat U.S. mistakes in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Along with the Houthi advance, Riyadh seems fearful of changes in U.S. policy, as ...
... movement of the socialist south to weaken the north, which the royal court regarded as a permanent threat.
Reuters
It’s a different matter that the air raids on Yemen are not producing the desired effect, which is illustrated by the
speeches
at the Arab League Summit in Sharm el-Sheikh. The willingness of a number of Arab countries to begin a ground operation in Yemen raises many questions as well. First, Arab solidarity with Saudi Arabia is too thin. One of the key countries of the Arabian Peninsula – Oman –
rides the fence
, which has always been characteristic of Sultan Qaboos, a Muslin of Ibadi denomination, who for many years has been a mediator between Iran ...
