In the lead up to the US-Russia summit in Helsinki on Monday, there is much speculation in Washington, as well as in many Middle Eastern and European capitals, about the prospects of presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin striking a grand bargain that involves a trade-off over Syria and Ukraine. The alleged quid pro quo would have Russia exercise its influence in Syria to rollback Iran's military footprint in return for the White House scaling back the sanctions placed on Russia for its seizure of Crimea and its destabilisation of eastern Ukraine.
The speculation is partly being fueled by the recent refusal of US National Security Advisor John Bolton, who met President Putin recently, to rule out the possibility of dropping current sanctions. Furthermore, President Trump himself left the door to recognising Russia’s annexation of Crimea open, telling reporters that “we’re going to have to see,” that Russia has “spent a lot of money rebuilding it,” and that he and Mr Putin will indeed be talking about Ukraine and Syria.
The purported deal reportedly has the support of America’s closest Middle Eastern allies. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Moscow three times this year, including this week, to secure Russian guarantees against further Iranian entrenchment in Syria. He, and some of America’s Arab Gulf allies, are said to have independently promised their Russian counterparts to use their good offices with Washington to push for a US-Russian rapprochement along similar lines.
Yet, despite all the above, a more sober examination of the political and military constraints indicates that such a bargain, if at all on the table, is unlikely to succeed. For one, any understanding premised on a trade-off between Ukraine and Syria will run into stiff resistance in the US Congress and will be almost impossible for President Trump to deliver on. US sanctions against Russia for its activities in Ukraine and Crimea were originally enacted as executive orders by former President Barack Obama following Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, but were swiftly legislated into law by Congress and are nearly impossible for the president to reverse.
Fears that President Trump would try to overturn or delay sanctions led to additional legislation making the implementation of the Russia sanctions compulsory. While the law does allow the president to issue some individual waivers on national security grounds, these would still have to be reviewed by the relevant congressional committees.
President Trump would also have to contend with the anticipated uproar from European allies, let alone stiff domestic opposition, who consider any American legitimisation of Russia’s military actions in Ukraine as undermining Europe’s security framework and the post-World War II order on which it relies.
The Europeans may have little pull with the Trump administration, but at a time when the president has locked horns with them over trade, financial and military contributions to NATO, and a host of multilateral treaties, such a brazen move could push cross-Atlantic relations into the realm of the unknown, triggering alarm bells even within his own administration.
A much more politically plausible, and perhaps more prudent, understanding that could emerge from Helsinki is one that is limited to US-Russian trade-offs in Syria where, contrary to conventional wisdom, Washington continues to have some significant cards to play. Although Syrian regime forces, backed by the Russian air force and Iranian proxies, are scoring significant victories in various parts of the country, the United States and its local allies still hold territory east of the Euphrates river equivalent to about twenty per cent of the country. These include the majority of Syria's oil fields, large swaths of rich farmland considered to be the country's breadbasket, and the strategically important Euphrates dam.
President Putin appears eager to cap what has so far been a remarkably successful military intervention in Syria by securing a political settlement that legitimises and reflects his achievements, but he has yet to succeed in doing so. He has repeatedly announced Russia’s version of “mission accomplished” and troop drawdowns from Syria only to have conditions on the ground, and the ambitions of his local partners, entangle him in yet another military campaign. Without the United States and the Syrian assets currently under its control he will be hard-pressed to insure the political and financial sustainability of any allied regime in Damascus.
The challenge for what may otherwise be a short-term confluence of US-Russian interests over Syria lies in the powerful realities on the ground, which will make such a deal difficult to implement. Just as many underestimate the current US leverage in Syria, they also tend to exaggerate Russian power, particularly when it comes to delivering on its end of the bargain, of reigning in Iran. President Putin can order his air force to stand down as Israeli jets regularly pound Iranian positions in Syria, but he has neither the troops nor the inclination to take on tens of thousands of Iranian-backed proxies fighting alongside regime forces.
How, if at all, Russia can compel Iran to scale back its growing grip over Syria, one which it paid for dearly in blood and treasure, is unclear. Mr Netanyahu may now be realising this first hand as Iranian proxies continue their push towards Israel' borders despite reported Russian assurances to the contrary.
These hard-hitting geopolitical realities notwithstanding, President Trump, ever a showman who craves the spotlight and big deals, may still defy conventional wisdom by announcing that a grand bargain with President Putin over Syria has in fact been reached. If so, the specific elements of such a deal, let alone the prospects of carrying them through, may leave most observers as puzzled about Helsinki as they were about the recent US-North Korea summit.
Firas Maksad is the Director of Arabia Foundation, a Washington think tank. He is also adjunct professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School for International Affairs. He tweets at @FirasMaksad.
Company profile
Company: Verity
Date started: May 2021
Founders: Kamal Al-Samarrai, Dina Shoman and Omar Al Sharif
Based: Dubai
Sector: FinTech
Size: four team members
Stage: Intially bootstrapped but recently closed its first pre-seed round of $800,000
Investors: Wamda, VentureSouq, Beyond Capital and regional angel investors
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The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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