Ensuring national security, increasing influence among its Arab neighbours and securing the return of the Golan Heights, have been the primary goals of the Syrian Arab Republic's foreign policy. At many points in its history, Syria has seen tension with its neighbours, such as Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon. Syria enjoyed an improvement in relations with several of the states in its region in the 21st century, prior to the Arab Spring and the Syrian Civil War.
The Arab League, formally the League of Arab States, is a regional organization in the Arab world, which is located in Northern Africa, Western Africa, Eastern Africa, and Western Asia. The Arab League was formed in Cairo on 22 March 1945, initially with six members: Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Yemen joined as a member on 5 May 1945. Currently, the League has 22 members, but Syria's participation has been suspended since November 2011.
The Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf, also known as the Gulf Cooperation Council, is a regional, intergovernmental, political, and economic union comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The council's main headquarters is located in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. The Charter of the GCC was signed on 25 May 1981, formally establishing the institution.
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani is the Emir of Qatar.
The 1978 Arab League summit was meeting held between Arab leaders between 2–5 November in Baghdad as the 9th Arab League Summit. The summit came in the aftermath of the Egypt's Anwar Sadat's unilateral peace treaty with Israel. On 31 March 1979, five days after the ratification of the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, Arab leaders again convened in Baghdad in the absence of Egypt and decided to expel it from the Arab League. Consequently, the secretariat of the League was moved out of its Cairo headquarters to Tunis. This decision was slowly reversed in the 1980s after president Hosni Mubarak ascended to power. Egypt, which regained strong influence in the region as rival nation Syria was suffering setbacks during the Lebanon Civil War, returned to the Arab League on 23 May 1989 and the headquarters, which never saw completed construction in Tunis, return to Cairo on 12 March 1990.
The 2008 Arab League summit was held in Damascus on March 29, 2008. The summit was marred by inter-Arab differences, mainly over the political deadlock in Lebanon, with relations between Syria and the Saudi-Egypt coalition reaching an all-time low. Saudi Arabia and Egypt snubbed the summit by sending low-level representatives. Lebanon's majority government boycotted the summit
Qatar established trade relations with the State of Israel in 1996, the first amongst all nations of the Arabian Peninsula after Oman reportedly did, concurrently with Israel–Jordan peace treaty. Until 2009, Qatar and Israel maintained diplomatic and financial relations, but due to Operation Cast Lead, Qatar broke ties with Israel. Since then there have been no diplomatic relations though there have been other links.
The Arab League has 22 member states. It was founded in Cairo in March 1945 with six members: the Kingdom of Egypt, Kingdom of Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syrian Republic, and Transjordan. North Yemen joined on 5 May 1945. Membership increased during the second half of the 20th century. Seven countries have observer status. The headquarters are located in Cairo, Egypt.
The Syrian National Council, sometimes known as the Syrian National Transitional Council or the National Council of Syria, is a Syrian opposition coalition, based in Istanbul, Turkey, formed in August 2011 during the Syrian civil uprising against the government of Bashar al-Assad.
The Syrian opposition is the political structure represented by the Syrian National Coalition and associated Syrian anti-Assad groups with certain territorial control as an alternative Syrian government.
The Group of Friends of the Syrian People is an international diplomatic collective of countries and bodies convening periodically on the topic of Syria outside the U.N. Security Council. The collective was created in response to a Russian and Chinese veto on a Security Council resolution condemning Syria.
The National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces (Arabic: الائتلاف الوطني لقوى الثورة والمعارضة السورية), commonly named the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) (Arabic: الائتلاف الوطني السوري), or the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC) is a coalition of opposition groups in the Syrian civil war that was founded in Doha, Qatar, in November 2012. Former imam of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Moaz al-Khatib, considered a moderate, was elected the president of the coalition, and resigned on 21 April 2013. Riad Seif and Suheir Atassi, both prominent democracy activists and the latter a secular human rights advocate, were elected vice presidents. The post of a third vice president will remain vacant for a Kurdish figure to be elected. Mustafa Sabbagh was elected as the coalition's secretary-general. The coalition has a council of 114 seats, though not all of them are filled.
Suheir al-Atassi is the leading female secular activist in the Syrian opposition, and co-vice-president of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces between November 2012 and December 2013. She has been called the "Lady of the Revolution" and is widely respected in secular and intellectual circles within the Syrian opposition structure. She had previously run the media wing of the banned Jamal Atassi Forum, which was named after her father, a founding member of the Ba'ath Party who later left and founded the Democratic Arab Socialist Union.
Saudi Arabia–Syria relations refer to diplomatic and economic relations between Saudi Arabia and Syria. Diplomatic ties between these two countries of the Middle East have long been strained by the major events in the region. Relations between Saudi Arabia and Syria deteriorated further following the Syrian Civil War and Saudi Arabia's numerous calls for Bashar Assad to be removed from power. Saudi Arabia cut off relations with Syria after they decided to close its embassy in Damascus and expel the Syrian ambassador in 2012.
Osama Al-Samman is a Syrian civil society activist. He moved to Egypt to pursue higher education, during which time the Tunisian revolution started.
The 2016 Arab League Summit was held in Nouakchott, Mauritania from 25 to 27 June 2016. The summit focused mostly on Yemen, as well as discussing the Arab Military Joint Coalition and having a bigger role in the region.
The foreign relations of Syrian Opposition refers to the external relations of the self-proclaimed oppositional Syrian Arab Republic, which sees itself as the genuine Syria. The region of control of Syrian opposition affiliated groups is not well defined. The Turkish government recognizes Syrian opposition as the genuine Syrian Arab Republic and hosts several of its institutions on its territory. The seat of Syria in the Arab League is reserved for the Syrian opposition since 2015.
The Qatar diplomatic crisis was a diplomatic incident in the Middle East that began on 5 June 2017 when Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt severed diplomatic relations with Qatar and banned Qatar-registered planes and ships from utilising their airspace, land and sea routes, along with Saudi Arabia blocking Qatar’s only land crossing, as a de facto blockade. The crisis ended in January 2021 following a resolution between Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The Qatar–Saudi Arabia diplomatic conflict refers to the ongoing struggle for regional influence between Qatar and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), both of which are members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). It is sometimes called the New Arab Cold War. Bilateral relations are especially strained since the beginning of the Arab Spring, that left a power vacuum both states sought to fill, with Qatar being supportive of the revolutionary wave and Saudi Arabia opposing it. Both states are allies of the United States, and have avoided direct conflict with one another.
