Syria rejoins Arab League despite objections from the US and UK.

 

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly. AP.

Syria has rejoined the Arab League despite objections from the United States and the United Kingdom. AP. In a joint statement the United States and United Kingdom said they opposed the return of Syria to the League and said that their countries would not normalize relations with Syria until they abided by a UN peace plan. The Arab League does support that plan but allowed Syria to join the league anyways. Syria rejoined the Arab League this Sunday and is seen as a diplomatic coup for the Assad regime, despite the continuation of sanctions against the country. 

My Comment:

This is just another example of declining influence of the United States (and the United Kingdom for that matter). Before the Biden administration the Arab League would never have thought of doing something like this. But Biden has alienated much of the Arab World, most importantly Saudi Arabia. 

Indeed, I could see Saudi Arabia doing this just to anger the Biden Administration. Relations between America and Saudi Arabia are at their lowest point in recent memory. It's probably not fair to say that the Saudis are more fond of the Iranians at this point but considering the peace process they are going through in Yemen it's very possible that will be true soon enough. 

What gets me is that the Arab League is right. The Syrian Civil War is essentially over. It's largely continuing now because of foreign governments keeping it going, the Turks in the north and American forces in the south. The rest of the rebels have been destroyed, along with the vast majority of Islamic terrorists. Assad has won and the Arabs are accepting the fact that he isn't going anywhere soon. 

It's also another example of the Saudis and Iranians getting along better. Syria is a key Iranian ally, a status that greatly harmed relations with Saudi Arabia. With Iran and the Saudis getting along better that means that the Saudis no longer care about that. 

You would think that this situation would cause some soul searching at the Biden administration. This is another embarrassing failure for them along with Afghanistan and Ukraine. But I don't think that Biden and his regime will learn anything at all from this. Indeed, they will keep trying to keep the war going in Syria and will further alienate the Saudis, pushing them into the Iranian camp (and the Chinese camp for that matter, they are the ones that brokered the deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia in the first place). 

The sad thing is that I doubt the war will end anytime soon. Even though Assad isn't going anywhere and relationships in the region are normalizing, the war will continue as long as there are foreign troops in Syria. Some of that is on the Turks, but much of it is on the United States. And sanctions will continue to slow the process of rebuilding...