IF ONLY he knew which way to turn. Last week King Abdullah of Jordan went to Moscow to meet Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, to discuss how to stabilise Syria under the continued rule of Bashar al-Assad. This week he has been in Washington, DC, anxious to explore how Jordan might help President Donald Trump to implement his idea for carving up Syria into safe zones.
Playing great powers off against one another has long been a Hashemite trademark. King Abdullah’s great-great-grandfather, the Sharif of Mecca, dallied with both the Ottoman and British empires, before going for British gold. Before the invasion of Iraq in 2003 King Abdullah received envoys from both Saddam Hussein and President George W. Bush, auctioning his backing to the highest bidder. Now, as funding from Saudi Arabia dries up, the king (via the Russians) is in contact with the Saudis’ arch-rival, Iran, whose forces operate on his borders with Syria and Iraq. He once sounded the alarm over a “Shia crescent” extending Iran’s influence to the Mediterranean; now that it is materialising he is coming to terms with it.
Such realism goes against...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2jHBL7L
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