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Raphaël Lefèvre is a Gates Cambridge Scholar and Ph.D. candidate in international relations at the University of Cambridge. He is currently a visiting fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, where his research focuses on Sunni Islamist groups in Lebanon and Syria. He is the author of Ashes of Hama: The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria (Hurst, 2013).
The openly difficult relationship between Saudi Arabia and Muslim Brotherhood chapters across the region has become a salient feature of Middle East politics since the advent of the “Arab Spring.” This mutual mistrust has increased in the wake of the Kingdom’s recent support for the military takeover in Cairo and the generals’ subsequent repression of the Brotherhood there. But how is the Islamist organization affected by this dynamic in Syria, where the Muslim Brothers and the Saudis both battle against Bashar al-Assad?
