Sharaa, met Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh on Sunday in his first foreign trip as Syrian leader, in a sign of the major shifts under way in regional alliances.

Syria’s interim president has made his first trip abroad, traveling to Saudi Arabia in a move likely trying to signal Damascus’ shift away from Iran as its main regional ally.

The kingdom has also reoriented its spending from overseas into its domestic market. One indicator of this was that in 2024, the UAE’s Mubadala surpassed Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) as the world’s most active sovereign wealth fund.