The Gulf States and the Assad regime's shocking fall: a balance sheet of gains and losses

By Yoel Guzansky and Ilan Zalayat

Even for the Gulf countries, the rapid collapse of the Assad regime in Syria has come as a strategic surprise.

Outside of Qatar, the Gulf countries were in the midst of a normalization process with the Assad regime, which began as early as 2019 with the United Arab Emirates and continued recently with the reopening of the Saudi embassy in Damascus.

The Gulf states' attempt to bring Assad closer, with the aim of driving a wedge into the Shiite axis, was based on the assessment that his regime was strong and stable.

While the regime's collapse instantly shattered this Gulf strategy, it also achieved a coveted goal: Iran's Axis of Resistance is losing Syria and suffering a significant blow.

In addition, the flow of Captagon drugs to the Gulf is expected to weaken from now on.

In the short term, the Sunni camp in the region has the opportunity to strengthen itself at the expense of the weakened Iranian axis.

However, divisions within this camp will make it difficult to seize this opportunity.

The big winner among the Gulf countries may be Qatar, which, along with Turkey, has supported the Syrian rebels throughout and declared its opposition to the Assad regime.

Now, Qatar is leveraging its role as a channel of communication with the world through the main rebel organization, Hayat Tahrir al Sham, and will likely use this position to establish its influence in post-Assad Syria.

For their part, the other Gulf countries quickly sent their ambassadors to Syria to meet with the organization two days after the fall of the regime, hoping to establish ties with the new Syrian leadership.

In this context, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates could use the reconciliation they achieved in recent years with Türkiye and Qatar as intermediaries with the new Syrian regime.

This connection could also benefit Israel, which can leverage its ties in the Gulf to engage with the new leadership beyond its northern border.

Another issue is the “domino effect”: although this was not a popular revolution in the style of the “Arab Spring”, the success of Islamist forces in overthrowing the iron-fisted Assad regime (together with Hamas’s sensational but temporary success against Israel in the attack on 7 October) raises concerns among Gulf regimes about a possible Islamist wave sweeping through the region, which they consider their main political threat.

In particular, the Gulf states will not like to see the emergence of an Islamist state similar to the Taliban or ISIS [Islamic State] in Syria.

Source: INSS – The Institute for National Security Studies