Some things never change and Assad is one of them

UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan visited Bashar Assad in Damascus last week, in a further sign that some Arab countries hope the Syrian dictator may change his behavior.

The visit was part of the UAE’s effort to embrace Syria and reconcile with the Assad regime. However, the belief that Assad can change his behavior flies in the face of the proven fact that he is neither willing nor able to do so; a change of behavior would mean his end. No attempt to persuade him otherwise has succeeded, and none will, for the simple reason that his methods of ruling — authoritarian, centralized and brutal, exactly like those of his father Hafez — are the only way he can survive. Assad cannot share power, because sharing power would mean losing it.

Arab attitudes to Syria are divided. While the UAE is normalizing, with the declared aim of helping the Syrians and containing Iran, Qatar has categorically rejected any such approach, and its foreign minister has said that Assad should be held accountable for his regime’s crimes. The Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, said the Kingdom was not considering engagement with the regime, although it “understands” the effort by other countries to try to push a certain political process and break the unacceptable status quo. Jordan, meanwhile, feels the need to humor the brutal neighbor on its doorstep after the regime deployed troops in the southwest. It also poses a great danger to the Hashemite kingdom with the smuggling of weapons and drugs. Jordan refers to Assad as a “fact” — but the “fact” is that because Assad’s behavior will never change, there will be no peace, neither now nor later.

The Emiratis speak of bringing Assad into the Arab fold and creating a rift between him and Iran, but their assessment is based more on wishful thinking than on reality. The Russians have had a relationship with the Assad regime from the start, they have had bases in Syria since the early 1970s, and they saved Assad in 2015 when he was on the brink of defeat in the civil war. If they could not drive a wedge between Damascus and Tehran, will the Arabs — in whom Assad has no trust — be able to do so?  I very much doubt it.

The Israelis, on the other hand, have a realistic approach to Assad. They say their problem is not with him, but rather with Iran. At the end of the day, however, it is Assad who is allowing Iran to use Syria as transit territory for weaponry to reach Hezbollah. Israel knows that after one week of fighting in 2006, 80 percent of Hezbollah’s arsenal had been destroyed, and it was only after Assad opened the border and supplies started to flow that Hezbollah could continue to fight. Israel’s nightmare now is Hezbollah’s “precision project” to equip some of its 150,000 missiles with sophisticated GPS and render them accurate to within 5 to 10 meters — bringing airports, desalination plants, power stations and other vital Israeli infrastructure within target range.

Assad cannot share power, because sharing power would mean losing it.

Dania Koleilat Khatib

Hitting targets in Lebanon, or even Hezbollah positions in Syria, will not stop the stream of weapons as long as they can transit through Syria. And no matter how effective or precise the intelligence the Israelis have, it cannot detect every arms shipment. Moreover, Israel cannot act unilaterally against Syria without the blessing of the Russians, and Israel understands Syria’s importance to Russia — at least its previous prime minister did. This is why Benjamin Netanyahu had such a smooth relationship with Vladimir Putin, which Netanyahu’s successor Naftali Bennett hopes to maintain.

Assad is now seeking to open channels with Israel, but the latter has not been taking the Syrian dictator seriously. As far as the Israelis are concerned, “Assad has cried wolf too many times”, one US official told me. In 2007, Turkey tried to broker Syrian normalization with Israel, but Assad had cold feet at the last minute. The Israelis know Assad will not change his behavior, so they will not waste their time in futile discussions.

The Emirati plan is for a step-by-step normalization, meaning that for every concession Assad offers they will reciprocate, and vice versa. But Assad will simply obtain what he needs from them, and then find an excuse to stall the process. This tactic is already visible in the behavior of his delegation at Syria’s constitutional committee; they keep finding reasons to stall the negotiations and not commit to anything. At the same time, they want to give the impression that they are negotiating, when in fact they have no intention of compromising on anything, and have no goodwill.

Previous Arab overtures produced no results. The Emiratis reopened their embassy in 2018, and have lent a helping hand to the regime, but their support resulted in zero change in behavior. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is a popular definition of insanity. Overtures to Assad in hopes of a change in behavior appear to fall into that category.

• Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib is a specialist in US-Arab relations with a focus on lobbying. She is co-founder of the Research Center for Cooperation and Peace Building, a Lebanese nongovernmental organization focused on Track II. She is also an affiliate scholar with the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut.