These are images that Bashar al-Assad likes: at the side of the crown prince and strongman of the United Arab Emirates, Muhammad bin Zayed Al-Nahyan.

In conversation with the ruler of Dubai, Muhammad bin Raschid Al-Maktoum.

Or with the owner of the Manchester City football club, Mansour bin Zayed Al-Nahyan.

As if he, Assad, were a normal president.

The reactions to the state visit of the Syrian dictatorship in the Gulf on Friday showed that he is not.

Christopher Ehrhardt

Correspondent for the Arab countries based in Beirut.

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A US State Department spokesman said Washington was "deeply disappointed and concerned by this apparent attempt."

The Syrian ruler is responsible for the “death and suffering of countless Syrians, the war-related displacement of more than half of the Syrian population and the arbitrary detention and disappearance of more than 150,000 Syrian men, women and children”.

He forgot to mention the use of poison gas against civilians.

First visit in eleven years

It was Assad's first visit to an Arab country since an initially peaceful uprising began in Syria eleven years ago. It was brutally suppressed by the regime and escalated into a long war of attrition.

Since then, the Syrian ruler has rarely traveled.

If so, then for visits by his protecting powers Iran and Russia.

Militias directed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which also threaten Israel from Syrian soil, and Russian bombers have been instrumental in helping Assad defend his rule.

The price is a devastated, drained country, squeezed further by the regime in Damascus.

The Emirates, which had already reopened their embassy in 2018, have formed the spearhead of a number of Arab countries that are steering a rapprochement course, at the latest since Assad's visit.

The Egyptian regime is one of them, as is Jordan, and Saudi Arabia has also intensified its contacts.

Mixed signals had recently come from Washington.

The Biden administration had made it clear that it wanted to focus on humanitarian issues.

She had sent out the message not to encourage anyone to get closer to the regime, but not to do anything to prevent it either.

Washington was also open to being more flexible in enforcing sanctions against the Syrian regime.

But Washington's stance could harden again in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in which Assad presents himself as a loyal ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Emirates, which are ambiguous in this conflict, have already felt American displeasure.

When high-ranking diplomats from the “small group” on Syria recently met in Washington, no Emirati representative was there.

The leadership in Abu Dhabi has now sent out a clear message with Assad's visit.

According to the Emirati state press, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Zayed expressed hope that the visit would "be the beginning of peace and stability for Syria and the entire region".

Western observers and diplomats, however, consider such hopes to be fallacious given the regime's long history of not reciprocating accommodation with good behavior in the past.

So far, only Assad has been diplomatically upgraded in the course of the Arab rapprochement.

The secret services of the Syrian despot are currently helping to destabilize Europe.

They support Russian efforts to recruit Syrian militiamen to the war in Ukraine.

In light of the Syrian realities, the hint of the Arab rapprochement advocates that they want to bring Assad back into the bosom of the Arab states, not least in order to push back Iranian influence, sounds more like wishful thinking.