Source: Responsible Statecraft
by James M Dorsey
“Middle Eastern battlegrounds are alive and kicking even though rivals seek to balance contentious relations. Take efforts by the United Arab Emirates, and more recently Saudi Arabia, to bring Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in from the cold in a bid to drive a wedge between Syria and Iran and address numerous repercussions from the more than decade-long brutal war he waged to keep himself in power. … Assad has demanded a return to the situation that prevailed in northern Syria before the civil war’s outbreak as a condition for a rapprochement between Ankara and Damascus.” (05/10/23)