After 12 years of diplomatic isolation imposed on Damascus , several Arab countries, led by Saudi Arabia, are opening their arms once again to President Bashar al-Assad , paving the way for Syria's return to the Arab fold and seeming to be an acknowledgment of his victory in an endless war.

On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia received Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, on his first official visit to the kingdom since the start of the conflict.

The visit comes before a meeting to be held in Saudi Arabia on Friday that brings together the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq. On its agenda is the return of Syria to the Arab League after it suspended its membership in it since 2011, and about a month before the convening of an Arab summit in Saudi Arabia.

This coincides with the change of the political map in the region after the Saudi-Iranian agreement announced last month.

"Assad simply refused to compromise and waited for his enemies to surrender, and he succeeded," Aaron Lund, a researcher on Syria at Century International, told AFP.

He considered that this "sends to the opposition a message that Assad will eventually win and that its allies have betrayed it."

Since the beginning of the conflict in Syria, Arab countries, headed by Saudi Arabia, have severed their relations with Damascus and withdrew their ambassadors from it, and a number of them have provided support to the armed and political opposition. During an Arab summit in 2013, a delegation from the Syrian opposition coalition participated in the meetings in Doha as a "representative" of the Syrian people.

Within 12 years, more than half a million people have been killed and more than half of Syria's population has been displaced inside and outside the country, and the country has turned into an arena for settling scores between regional and international powers. And all this left its mark on the tired economy. But Assad, who is now looking forward to reconstruction funds, remained in his presidential palace.

His forces have regained most of the areas that were lost at the beginning of the conflict, with the support of his two main allies: Russia and Iran.

The first signs of Arab openness towards Damascus emerged in 2018 with the resumption of relations between Syria and the United Arab Emirates, and the devastating earthquake that struck Syria and Turkey in February constituted a remarkable turning point. Al-Assad received a torrent of calls from the leaders of Arab countries, and even Saudi Arabia sent aid planes, the first of its kind since severing its relations with Damascus.

Attracting funds for the reconstruction phase is a priority for the Syrian regime today, after the war destroyed infrastructure, factories, and production.

While Al-Assad realizes that obtaining the money of the international community is difficult outside a political settlement, he is pinning hopes, perhaps on the Gulf states.

There is no doubt that the Gulf openness would activate the commercial and economic movement in Syria to some extent, but several obstacles impede any real reconstruction, including, according to Lund, the US and Western sanctions imposed on Syria, which "will deter Saudi and Emirati investments."

Likewise, "any serious investment in Syria today is considered an adventure, as the economy is devastated, corrupted to the point of chaos, and controlled by a dangerous and violent regime," as he put it.

The Arab countries also impose sanctions on Syria, including freezing commercial exchanges with the Syrian government and freezing the Syrian government's bank accounts in Arab countries. It is likely that these sanctions will be lifted if Damascus returns to the Arab embrace, but the effect of this remains limited if the country remains under the influence of Western sanctions.

The researcher on Syrian affairs, Sam Heller, believes that opening up to Syria also means "more security cooperation, especially in the field of combating drug smuggling", which is one of the biggest sources of concern for Saudi Arabia, especially in terms of Captagon pills that are mainly manufactured in Syria and find a large market for them in Saudi Arabia. According to various reports.

A joint statement issued following the meeting of the Saudi and Syrian foreign ministers on Wednesday touched on the issue of drug smuggling.

This rapprochement would also, according to Heller, "reduce the importance of the Syrian-Syrian negotiations in Geneva (...)", noting that the Syrian government "originally refuses to recognize opposition representatives, insisting on negotiating at the level of the countries" that support it.

"Therefore, the agreement with Saudi Arabia and other countries is exactly what Damascus wanted," he added.

Several rounds of negotiations between the regime and the opposition, led by the United Nations in Geneva, in an attempt to establish a political settlement, failed.

Lund says, "I do not think that there is a political solution for Syria on the table, and basically there was no solution. There is also no military solution" due to the deployment of forces from several countries in it.

The return of Syria to the Arab embrace may not change the political and field map in the short term, as there are other parties that must be taken into account, from Russia and Iran to the United States, which is deploying forces in Syria in support of the Kurdish fighters, to Turkey, which controls border areas.

Lund says, "Syria as a country has changed in irreversible ways just because about a quarter of the (pre-war) population is watching Assad's return to the Arab bosom from exile."

Activists who raised their voices against the regime in Syria speak of "expected disappointment" from the Arab countries.

The Syrian dissident and CEO of the Syrian Center for Justice and Accountability, Muhammad al-Abdullah, said, "Al-Assad's return to the Arab League, albeit unfortunate, appears as if the Arab region is being controlled to return it to what it was before 2011."

"But it will not work because it is simply based on many grievances: the refugees, the displaced, the missing and the detainees," he added.