Syria denies sending troops to fight Houthis in return for Saudi loans

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani refuted reports on Monday that Syrian forces had been deployed to Yemen to help Saudi Arabia fight Iran-backed Houthis.

Speaking at a joint news conference with his Jordanian counterpart, Ayman Safadi, at Damascus’ Tishreen Palace, Shibani said, “There is no deployment of forces in Yemen and there is not even a plan in the near future for that. We today have an agreement with Saudi Arabia, and any military plan outside of the borders will be announced and will be spoken of and won’t be hidden.”

Shibani continued, “Our military agreement with Saudi Arabia focuses on rebuilding Syria’s armed forces.”

The rebuttal follows news reports over the past three days about the alleged deployment of Syrian troops to the kingdom and to Yemen.

Citing “multiple” Yemeni officials, Agence France-Presse reported on Nov. 7 that “thousands” of Syrian troops were set to deploy to Saudi Arabia and Yemen, with “some already on the ground.”

The Associated Press reported on Nov. 8 that Syria was preparing to send 600 special forces personnel to Saudi Arabia only. Unnamed officials familiar with the arrangement said the Syrians would be deployed to the Saudi-Yemeni border and that Syrian military advisers were already in Saudi Arabia.

Shibani did not address the claims concerning Syrian military personnel in Saudi Arabia. Nor did he raise Syria’s potential accession to the Mecca Pact. He told a security forum in Bahrain last month that discussions were underway to evaluate Syria’s entry into the alliance.

Quid pro quo 

The claims of a deployment come on the heels of a military cooperation agreement signed in Riyadh on Nov. 4 between Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

More than $403 million in concessional loan agreements were signed between the Saudi Fund for Development and Syria’s Finance Ministry during the visit, prompting widespread speculation that Sharaa had agreed to provide military support for Saudi Arabia in exchange for urgently needed financial support for his war-shattered country’s teetering economy. The loans are being touted as the first tranche of a total of $1.5 billion pledged in financial assistance, separate from other large amounts in investment, humanitarian and developmental aid and other economic packages under discussion between the two countries.

There is no concrete evidence pointing to the presence of Syrian forces inside Yemen at this time. “We don’t have any evidence that they are in Yemen,” Amr al-Bidh, a senior official in Yemen’s Southern Transitional Council, a UAE-backed group seeking a separate state in southern Yemen, told Al-Monitor.

Any such deployment would likely be on the Saudi side of the border, where Pakistani forces are thought to be positioned under the terms of a defense pact between Riyadh and Islamabad that was signed last year. “Saudi Arabia’s main concern now is to defend its own territory, to ensure that the Houthis don’t expand their foothold into the kingdom proper,” Bidh told Al-Monitor.

“And for that they need more boots on the ground.”

Saudi Arabia finds itself increasingly squeezed ever since the Houthis seized effective control of the Bab el Mandeb Strait, linking export terminals in Yanbu via the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. The waterway assumed heightened importance as an alternative export route after Iran imposed its own partial blockade of the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for Israel and the United States’ Feb. 28 attacks on its soil.

Despite military assistance from Turkey, France, Britain and the United States, Saudi Arabia has failed to shield itself from Houthi drone and ballistic missile attacks targeting its energy infrastructure and civilian airports.

It will take a comprehensive diplomatic deal between the United States and Iran, and one that encompasses the Houthis, for the Saudis to emerge from the morass, a senior official based in the region told Al-Monitor on background. “The Houthis are doing in the Bab el Mandeb exactly what Iran did in the Hormuz. After eight to nine months of effort, the United States is unable to dislodge Iran from Hormuz,” the official observed.

“The trouble is that the Bab el Mandeb is not a strategic priority for the United States. It’s an intractable problem, and getting more so by the day,” the official said. Moreover, Iran does not hold as much sway over the Houthis as is often claimed.

This has left Saudi Arabia weighing the possibility of launching a major counteroffensive against the Houthis from the ground, using mainly Syrians alongside Yemeni forces, according to a Yemeni analyst who asked not to be identified by name. “But it’s not necessarily a winning strategy, because the Houthis are still a few steps ahead despite the Saudis’ huge air campaign. The Houthis are winning,” the analyst contended.

Keep the boys home

Reports of a planned transfer of Syrian fighters to Saudi Arabia are not new. Yet, Sharaa has long made clear his aversion to getting his army involved in foreign military adventures. He notably did not respond to indirect pressure from President Donald Trump to potentially fight Iran’s top ally, Hezbollah in Lebanon. In a June 21 interview with Lebanon’s Al-Mashad TV, Sharaa said Syria did not “adopt any military options beyond its own borders.”

Sharaa’s “main foreign policy strategy is ‘zero problems’ with neighbors,” Haid Haid, a Syrian consulting fellow at Chatham House, told Al-Monitor. Getting involved in the Yemen conflict would potentially invite retribution from Iran-backed Shia militias in Iraq and elsewhere, Haid said. Moreover, unless Syrian forces are able to make substantial gains against the Houthis, “this will have negative reputational effects as a strong actor and a military force,” Haid added.

Saying no to the Saudis may prove a lot harder, according to Malik al-Abdeh, the editor-in-chief of Syria in Transition, a monthly publication that covers Syria in depth. This is mainly due to the dire financial straits that the country finds itself in amid mounting public disaffection. “The mood is shifting,” even among its allies, including Turkey, because of his mishandling of the Druze, allowing Israel to expand its footprint, among other factors, Abdeh explained.

However, prior to Sharaa’s toppling of the Assad regime in December 2024, thousands of Sunni rebel forces, lured by the promise of higher pay, went to fight in Azerbaijan’s war against Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh and against the Eastern Libyan warlord Khalifa Hifter in support of Libya’s internationally recognized government in Tripoli.

Many of these battle-hardened militias, united under the banner of the Syrian National Army, were closely linked to Turkey, which provided bases, training and equipment to them in their war against Assad and also against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. Their participation helped turn the tide in favor of Turkey’s allies in both conflicts.

Some also established a reputation for criminal activities, including theft, drug trafficking, looting and extortion in Libya, while others, notably the Sultan Murad Division and the Hamza Brigade, committed war crimes against civilians inside Syria, according to the United Nations.

Many of those militias have since been incorporated into the new national army that Syria is seeking to build. An unnamed official told the Associated Press that Khaled Khattab, the commander of the Syrian Army’s 82nd Division and a former jihadi rebel, had recently spent two weeks in Saudi Arabia. There were no further details.