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Syria’s Bashar al-Assad has been on a diplomatic comeback tour this year, rebuilding ties with many ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌ 
 
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May 19, 2023
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Jay Solomon
Jay Solomon

Hello and welcome to Semafor Security, where we dive into the forces and personalities defending, defining, and destabilizing the world.

The health of the international order is often gauged by the leaders ruling it. In the post-Cold War world, there was a hope that we’d see a decline in the role of despots, dictators, and military strongmen.

But the recent rehabilitation of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad signals a worrying trend backwards. As I write in my main story today, a bipartisan coalition of U.S. lawmakers are attempting to hold the line against Assad’s normalization through legislative action. But in this case, Assad’s backers aren’t only sitting in Russia and Iran, but also the capitals of U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Hopeful signs, however, are emerging in Ukraine, where Karina Tsui writes Kyiv’s forces shot down a string of purported Russian hypersonic missiles and made gains in the meatgrinder battlefield of Bakhmut. I also explore the strange case of John Herbst: A former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who may have been poisoned by Vladimir Putin’s agents.

Let me know what you think of this newsletter, and please send tips to jsolomon@semafor.com.

Sitrep

Port Moresby: Papua New Guineans have reportedly been feeling disappointed since Joe Biden canceled what would have been the first-ever trip by an American president to their country due to debt ceiling negotiations. They’ll get a consolation prize next Monday, however, when U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is set to make the journey in his boss’s place. The White House also invited Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape to visit Washington this year. On Thursday, Marape confirmed that he plans to sign a pair of defense-related agreements with the U.S. during Blinken’s visit that could give the Pentagon a major presence in the Pacific nation — and which Jay wrote about at length last week.

Hiroshima: Thursday brought us yet another new defense agreement between countries worried about Chinese aggression in the East. Ahead of the big G7 meeting, Britain and Japan announced “the Hiroshima Accord,” which will double the number of British troops participating in military exercises in Japan and commit the U.K. to deploying a naval fleet including an aircraft carrier to the Pacific in 2023. It will also create a new tech partnership between London and Tokyo on — what else? — semiconductors.

Xi’an: China offered a bit of counterprogramming to the G7 on Thursday by hosting its own security and economic summit with the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Beijing is positioning itself as an alternative partner to the Central Asian countries as Russia remains occupied with its war with Ukraine.

– Karina

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Jay Solomon

The plan to stop Bashar al-Assad’s global comeback

Hamad Al Kaabi/UAE Presidential/Reuters

THE NEWS

Syria’s Bashar al-Assad has been on a diplomatic comeback tour this year, rebuilding ties with many of the Arab neighbors who had previously shunned the dictator over his criminal civil war tactics.

But now, lawmakers in Washington are eying legislation aimed at ending his regime’s international rehabilitation.

The Assad Anti-Normalization Act would formally bar any U.S. administration from recognizing the Syrian strongman’s government, and would tighten sanctions meant to isolate him from the world stage.

The bill is backed by a bipartisan group that includes Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the influential chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. On Tuesday, it unanimously won a key subcommittee vote.

“The United States must use all of our leverage to prevent normalization with the war criminal Bashar al-Assad,” McCaul said in a statement to Semafor. “We remain committed to ensuring the Syrian people receive justice and have a say in mapping their own future.”

JAY’S VIEW

The new bill may in fact be the last, best hope to reverse recent steps countries have taken toward normalizing a leader who’s guilty of overseeing some of the worst atrocities against civilians since the Second World War.

In March, the ruler of the United Arab Emirates greeted Assad with 21-gun salute; today, the Arab League is formally welcoming him back to its ranks during a summit in Jeddah.

Meanwhile, the UAE announced this week that it had invited Assad to the December COP28 UN conference on climate change in Dubai, where Syria’s dictator could be potentially mixing with President Joe Biden and other Western leaders who repeatedly called for his removal over the past decade.

But the legislation could also place Washington on a collision course with key Middle East allies who now argue that engaging Assad is the only way to end the Syrian civil war and support millions of displaced Syrians still at risk from the conflict.

The new bill seeks to strengthen the Caesar Act, which Congress first enacted in 2019 to deny Assad’s regime funding for its rehabilitation. A particularly onerous provision in the new bill would require the U.S. government to scrutinize any financial dealings with Syria of more than $500,000 by entities in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey — whether they involve reconstruction aid or business transactions — and potentially sanction them.

For now, members of Congress don’t seem to be worried about ruffling feathers in the Arab world.

“We appreciate our allies and partners in the Middle East but we believe they are going down the wrong path,” Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., one of the bill’s lead authors, told Semafor in a statement. “I hope this legislation sends the message fast to our Arab partners and dissuades them from further engagement before it is too late.”

THE VIEW FROM THE WHITE HOUSE

The Biden administration has yet to take a position on the anti-Assad bill, but has been notably muted in its criticism of the Arab states’ outreach to the despot.

“While we are skeptical of Assad’s willingness to take the steps necessary to resolve … Syria’s crisis, we are aligned with our Arab partners on the ultimate objectives,” White House spokeswoman, Karine Jean-Pierre, said at a briefing last week.

The Biden administration itself has held secret meetings with Syrian officials in recent months, according to U.S. and Arab diplomats, specifically aimed at finding a kidnapped American journalist, Austin Tice — who is believed to be held by Assad’s regime. One of these meetings was in Oman, according to The Wall Street Journal. Assad is seeking to use these talks, according to Syria analysts, to force the U.S. to pull back its remaining forces from northern Syria and relax American sanctions.

STEP BACK

The U.S., Europe, and the Middle East had been united for much of the past decade in their shared belief that the international community should never accept Syria’s ruler, due to his use of chemical weapons, bombings of civilian hospitals, and other war crimes. Washington even collaborated with the Saudis and Emiratis to back anti-Assad rebels after their revolution gained momentum in 2011.

This consensus frayed as the Syrian civil war dragged on and Iran, Russia, and China expanded their influence across the Middle East. Confidence in U.S. leadership also buckled after President Barack Obama’s 2013 backtracking on his pledge to strike Assad’s forces if they used chemical weapons.

Syrian rebels actually appeared close to capturing Damascus in 2015. But these advances prompted Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Russia to jointly deploy their militias and air force to rescue Assad, their long-standing ally. Russian fighter jets and Iranian-backed militias remain in Syria to this day.

China’s growing diplomatic role in the Middle East has also bolstered Assad and begun to insert a wedge between Arab states and the West. In recent months, Beijing brokered a normalization of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia. According to officials briefed on the talks, Tehran pressed for Assad’s rehabilitation as part of this broader diplomatic pact.

Experts involved in the anti-normalization legislation told Semafor that it’s about much more than just Syria. They argue that if Russia, China and Iran can bend the international community to their will by normalizing a war criminal like Assad, they could seek to strong-arm countries into accepting Moscow’s actions in Ukraine or a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

“The United States must hold accountable all those who normalize and empower the criminal Assad regime, otherwise we send a message to every dictator in the world that they too can commit mass atrocities and be accepted by the international community,” said Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, which helped in the drafting of the bill.

ROOM FOR DISAGREEMENT

Emirati and Saudi leaders publicly argue that the past decade of confronting Assad divided Arab nations, led to the dismemberment of Syria, and caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians. The U.S. has also signaled its intent to lessen its military footprint and commitments in the Mideast. As a result, engaging Assad directly presents the best option, they say.

“Syria has been absent from its brothers for too long, and the time has come for it to return to them and to its Arab surroundings,” the UAE’s ruler, Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, told Assad during their March meeting, according to state media.

The UAE and Saudi embassies didn’t respond to requests from Semafor for comment on Capitol Hill’s anti-Assad legislation. But Arab officials involved in U.S. policy said it’s unclear if the bill will pass Congress and that they don’t believe it will seriously undermine relations with Washington long term, due to shared interests in collaborating on issues like energy policy, climate change, and the threat of Iran’s nuclear program. One senior Arab official told Semafor the process of normalization with Assad is irreversible.

NOTABLE

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One Good Text

Tom Karako is the Director of the Missile Defense Project at The Center for Strategic and International Studies.

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Stat

The value of arms and other material the Myanmar junta has imported since it staged a military coup in February 2021. Russia and China were the regime’s biggest suppliers, a United Nations investigation found.

– Karina

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Advance/Retreat

REUTERS/Sofiia Gatilova

⋉ ADVANCE: Ukraine’s air defenses. The Ukrainian military shot down 29 of 30 missiles launched by Russia in overnight air strikes from sea, air, and land bases on Thursday. Two Iran-made Shahed attack drones and two reconnaissance drones were knocked out, as part of the counterstrike.

⋊ RETREAT: Russia’s ground forces. The Ukrainian military and Russia’s Wagner paramilitary group both reported Russian retreats on the outskirts of Bakhmut Thursday. Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin has repeatedly complained about Russian forces abandoning key ground on the north and south flanks of the city. Moscow has admitted to some withdrawals but denies that their flanks are deteriorating.

— Karina

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Person of Interest
Wikimedia Commons

John Herbst. Did the Kremlin poison a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine? The Atlantic Council raised this possibility on Tuesday when it released a statement describing how the 70-year-old career diplomat John Herbst grew acutely ill in April 2021 “and experienced symptoms that could have been consistent with poisoning, including elevated levels of toxins in his blood.” Herbst recovered and continues to serve as senior director of the Council’s Eurasia Center. But he also hasn’t toned down his criticism of Vladimir Putin or his public calls for the West to up its supplies to Ukraine.

The Atlantic Council statement was precipitated by a story this week by the independent Russian news site Agencytvo, translated as The Agency, which claimed Herbst was one of four Kremlin critics targeted over the past two years, purportedly by Russia’s intelligence services. Some experienced burglaries and break-ins, but others believe they may have been poisoned too.

Natalya Arno, a U.S.-based head of the Free Russia Foundation, visited the Czech Republic this spring to attend a conference and found that someone had broken into her hotel room. The smell of “cheap perfume” permeated the space, according to The Agency story, and she returned to her home in the U.S. feeling acutely ill. Arno confirmed the story in a Tuesday post on her Facebook page, saying she still has “neuropathy symptoms, but overall I feel much better.”

Herbst spent much of his State Department career working on Russia and the former Soviet states that were attempting to transition to democracy from communist rule. He served as ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2000 to 2003 and Ukraine from 2003 to 2006.  While in Kyiv, the “Orange Revolution” seeking to distance Ukraine from Russia’s orbit gripped the country. This experience informed his post-State Department career. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Herbst has emerged as a leading critic of the Kremlin, penning opinion pieces, appearing regularly on cable TV, and speaking at rallies.

The Atlantic Council said medical professionals treated Herbst after he fell ill but couldn’t determine conclusively whether he’d been poisoned. The think tank also brought in U.S. law enforcement to investigate and take blood samples, but they failed to detect “toxic compounds.” The Council didn’t say where Herbst may have been poisoned or if the investigation was ongoing.

“The health and safety of our staff is the highest priority,” said Frederick Kempe, president and CEO of the Atlantic Council, in the statement. “We were in touch with authorities immediately at the time of Ambassador Herbst’s illness, but due to the results of the test we decided not to make the incident public.”

Jay

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— Jay

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