With the plight of thousands of Syrian refugees trying to reach Europe bringing renewed Western attention to the 4-year-old Syrian conflict, prospects for intensified diplomatic efforts to try to resolve the war remain deadlocked after a flurry of recent consultations between Moscow, Washington and Riyadh, diplomats and analysts tell Al-Monitor.

“Nothing is moving; everything is stuck,” UN Syria envoy Steffan de Mistura told an NGO analyst working on regional security issues at a meeting last week, the analyst, speaking not for attribution, told Al-Monitor Sept. 7.

Though the United States, Russia and European Union had hoped to try to build on the momentum of reaching the Iran nuclear deal in July to pursue multiparty diplomacy on a Syria political transition and countering the Islamic State, efforts to persuade the Saudis to let Iran be part of some sort of Syria international contact group have been rebuffed to date by Riyadh.

A flurry of diplomacy in the wake of the reaching of the Iran nuclear deal July 14, including a rare three-way meeting between US Secretary of State John Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir in Doha on Aug. 3, has not led to a breakthrough on how to move the process forward. A key hitch, multiple sources briefed on the discussions say, is that the Saudis have told the Russians and the Americans that they would only accept involving Iran in the contact group discussions on Syria if Iran agrees in advance that Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has to go. Iran has rejected such preconditions.