The situation appears grim for the Syrian opposition in the wake of the Geneva meeting — which ended March 3 — with a delegation from President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The December loss of Aleppo to the regime followed by Russian-sponsored peace talks in the Kazakh capital of Astana in January have further divided a fragile rebel front and marked a turning point in the Syrian conflict.

Yet the major Gulf states (Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates), which have been the Syrian rebels’ main backers, have remained relatively mum on the significant shift taking place in the war-torn country. Have Gulf countries given up on Syria?

Since the war began six years ago, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has been heavily involved in Syria. In October 2015, one month after the launch of Russian military operations backing the regime, Gulf countries beefed up their military support to Syrian rebel groups ranging from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) to the Islamist Jaish al-Fatah. Yet military support has slowly dwindled, as seen in the relative freeze of the southern Syrian front and the fall of Aleppo in December.

“It seems as if Syria ceased being a priority for Saudi Arabia [after] the beginning of the Yemen conflict. Gulf countries have spent far more resources on Yemen than they have on Syria, because it represents a far greater threat to Gulf national security. The conflict in Syria [in the view of the Gulf] revolves around limiting what Saudi Arabia perceived as Iranian influence,” Mohamed Hineidi, a senior analyst at the UAE-based think tank Delma Institute, told Al-Monitor.