Saudi Arabia is leading efforts to rehabilitate Bashar al-Assad in the Arab world, a policy at odds with the West’s attempts to isolate the Syrian leader and his inner circle with sanctions.

The kingdom wants Syria to be readmitted to the Arab League, a regional bloc, in time for a meeting in Riyadh next month, in a potential reversal of its suspension in 2011 over Damascus’ killing of civilians early in the civil war.

The UAE, which led normalisation efforts with Assad by reopening its Damascus embassy in 2018, is understood to support the plan.

Syria’s readmission to the 80-year-old Arab League would show that Assad — who presides over a shattered state after surviving a brutal civil war — is no longer an international pariah.

His return to the fold of the Arab world will also represent the culmination of the West’s failed policy towards Syria and a diplomatic victory, not just for Assad, but also his backers in Russia and Iran who propped up Damascus through over a decade of strife. With regional arch-rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia entering into a detente, a new axis is also emerging with regard to Syria. Until last year Assad’s only trips abroad since the war had been to Russia and Iran, his main two military backers.

But since March last year, Assad has made two trips to the UAE, a close ally of Saudi Arabia, in addition to visiting Oman. Following last month’s surprise restoration of ties with Iran, Riyadh now wants to be at the forefront of initiatives to calm regional conflict zones, according to Okaz, the Saudi daily newspaper.