Western Allies Scramble for Syrian Supplies

The new Cold War is heating up

Touted as liberation for the Syrian people, the fall of Assad may signal a huge win for Western powers seeking to alienate Russia and Iran, who were set to sign a “historic” partnership treaty later in the year. The sudden and explosive resource grab in Syria shows just how permeable geopolitical fault-lines truly are as Erdogan, who has been critical of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people, allowed Israeli tanks to roll into Syria for the first time in 50 years.

U.S sanctions against Syria which were due to expire this month may have also played a role in the sudden overthrowing of Assad’s regime. The economic sanctions which all but muzzled the country’s trade, and which Assad decried as crashing Syria’s currency, were due to expire on December 20th. This led to diplomats from the USA and the UAE to discuss allowing their expiration if Assad were to cut ties with Iran. Israel was also pushing for the sanctions to expire, which would have freed up Assad’s regime to trade in its well-endowed fossil fuel resources. Reported in December, this news came not four months after Turkey had expressed interest in “liberating” Syria’s hydrocarbon resources, after Putin facilitated meetings between Assad and Erdogan, whose close personal relationship became strained during the war in Syria. However, after allegedly being snubbed by Assad, Erdogan swiftly changed tact and supported the rebel opposition forces who swept Aleppo, capturing Syria from Assad and his Iran and Russia-backed allies. These Turkish forces then battled the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces—who have been controlling the country’s major oil fields—before the US and Turkey reached a deal at geopolitical lightning speed for the SDF to withdraw peacefully. And, amongst all this, Israel has rolled tanks into Syria for the first time in half a century, capturing land three times the size of the Gaza strip—without the Syrian HTS rebels firing a single bullet on them.

With Turkey, Israel and the U.S. still dropping bombs, a government official in the U.S. has warned that this renewed attention on Syria is due to Israel seeking to shore up the oil and gas fields for itself. Their military presence on the ground is a blow to Russia and Iran, two U.S. enemies in the new cold war as major powers scramble to shore up resources in an oil-depleting world. The deal struck by Turkey and the U.S. comes just one month after Turkey admitted that the BRICS coalition—which includes Iran—approached it, offering it partner country status, although details as to what this means are unclear. Erdogan was present at the BRICS summit in Russia in October, signalling the growing strength of the oil-strong and industrial group. Turkey would be the first NATO member to join BRICS, if it accepts the offer, signalling the wane of Western hegemony within its own territory. It could very well be that the U.S., seeing BRICS’ pull on major economies around the world, has offered Syria up to Turkey in a bid to keep the major military power onside, much as it offered West Papua up to Indonesia in 1969.

That Turkey is also allowing Israeli forces to enter Syria and annex sovereign territory is yet another clue as to the true nature of the country’s sudden regime change. Earlier this year, Turkey placed a trade embargo on Israel due to its genocide of the Palestinian people. However, satellite imagery shows that oil tankers have been shipping crude oil from the Turkish port of Ceyhan to a pipeline in Israel. This is in addition to the 40% of Israel’s crude oil which is imported through the BTC pipeline which flows from Azerbaijan through Turkey to Israel. I reported last year that Israel’s assault on Gaza was partly due to the desire to control the major gas fields off the Gazan coast. A U.S. government source now says that Israel, fearing the gas fields will take too long to explore and exploit, is now moving into Syria to secure fossil fuel resources. That it seems to be doing so in partnership with Turkey is at odds with their public relationship, but both countries stand to gain. Shares in Turkey’s construction industry soared with the announcement by Turkey’s Foreign Minister that the country will rebuild Syria.

It signals a huge win for the Western powers in the Middle East who are desperate to isolate Iran and alienate Russia from its Middle Eastern allies. Iran, who is blocked from the international finance system by the U.S. through the Financial Action Task Force and shackled with international sanctions, was supplying the Assad regime with oil. Those sanctions are ramping up, with the U.S. last week targeting Iran’s “shadow” oil fleet which it claims were supplying Iranian oil to the foreign market. Crucially, Iran and Russia were due to sign a treaty later this year which would ratify their defence cooperation, similar to the treaty signed with North Korea in June.

While details have yet to be made public, a Gulf think tank has speculated that Russia plans to invest billions in Iran’s oil and gas industry, particularly focusing on strengthening Iran’s capacity to export LNG. While, historically, most of the international focus has been on capturing crude oil supplies, Liquified Natural Gas has become a major focus since sanctions on Russia cut off Europe’s gas supply. This left the major economy dependent on the U.S. who, in a decade, went from producing nominally no LNG to becoming the world’s top exporter, furnishing political dependence among their allies. With LNG being falsely advertised as a “transition fuel” by both the fossil fuel industry and Western governments, countries are likely to move from oil, whose reserves are depleting around the world, to gas, making them dependent on the United States. Gas, then, has become the new gold. I reported in February how the UAE is backing a genocide in Sudan in order to both prop up the Russian ruble through controlling the country’s gold reserves, and build an enormous LNG terminal on the coast, thus controlling the supply of gas out of West Africa and onto the free market. Currently, Syria sits on 0.12% of the world’s gas and 0.2% of the world’s oil. It is the only significant oil and gas producing country along the Eastern Mediterranean.

Ultimately, the UAE, Iran and Russia would have benefited from the U.S. lifting its sanctions on Syria and allowing it to develop its petro-industry. All three countries have been involved in pro-government interventions on Syrian soil, and all are seeking to shore up fossil fuel supplies in the Middle East, and widen the scope of their geopolitical partnerships. A Turkish-Israeli partnership—if that is indeed what we’re seeing play out in Syria—signals an expansion of Western power in the Middle East and a shrinking of Eastern power in the West. What either signals to the Syrian people is unclear, although we only have to look at the recent military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan to get a glimpse of what may be to come. What is certain is Syria’s fossil fuels has been in Western crosshairs for decades. A 1986 report written by the World Bank urged increased exploration and exploitation of the country’s fossil resources, and demanded a 75% increase of domestic electricity prices. Of course, the Western corporate Empire was already controlling half of the nation’s supply: “At present, about 50% of the country is covered by production sharing contracts…Given the pragmatic attitude of the Government of Syria, additional production sharing contracts may well be concluded in the near future.”

They may very well be.

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