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As US troops continue to quietly occupy Syria’s oil fields, Russia-
Turkey talks could help bring calm to nation devastated by war
27 Sep, 2021 09:32
American and Turkish soldiers walk together during a joint U.S.-Turkey patrol, near Tel Abyad, Syria
September 8, 2019. © REUTERS/Rodi Said
By Julian Fisher, a policy analyst at the Russian Public Affairs Committee (Ru-PAC). He writes about Russia-US relations, American foreign policy, and national security.
After more than a decade of fighting, Syria’s Civil War still grinds on. With the West’s military missions on the slide, other rivalries and conflicts of interest are opening up on the ground between a range of different players.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to meet with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Sochi, on Wednesday, for a showdown over the current situation in the Middle Eastern nation. Over the past few days, both Russia and Turkey have stepped up military operations in and around the tense Idlib province, where the Russia-backed Syrian government continues to fight Turkish-backed militant rebels.
The who’s who of the Syrian Civil War that has pitted Russian concerns in Idlib against Turkish ones comes against a backdrop of increasingly tense relations between the two countries. As recently as September 22, during his address to the 76th UN General Assembly, Erdogan re-affirmed Ankara’s position on Crimea, saying it does not recognize Moscow’s sovereignty over the peninsula.
That’s not to say the two sides can’t be useful to each other, however. Erdogan has committed to purchasing additional Russian S-400 missile systems despite the threat of sanctions from the US. Meanwhile, Turkey’s state gas company BOTAS is currently negotiating a new contract with Russia’s Gazprom to secure gas deliveries via the Turkstream pipeline.
While the decade-long conflict in Syria continues to induce geopolitical headaches, America’s involvement has seemingly escaped the public’s headspace. Contrary to US Senator Tim Kaine’s assessment that “[the US] is not a nation now that is [in] a ground war in the Middle East”, there has been and continues to be a US occupation of Syria.
While Russia was invited by Damascus to come into the country, the USA never was. Their presence is basically an act of war. Their control of Syria's natural resources borders on human rights criminal activity.
The US invasion of Afghanistan may have encapsulated the totality of America’s post-9/11 military expeditions in some sense, but President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from that theater has not ended the global “war on terror”. Like previous administrations, the Biden White House has renewed the national emergency in response to terrorism, which was first declared in 2001 and serves as justification for the extraordinary steps the government has taken in the name of combatting threats.
Part of the global war on terror, which remains very much in progress, is Operation Inherent Resolve, the Pentagon’s military intervention in Iraq and Syria since 2014 to ostensibly defeat ISIS. According to a POLITICO report from July 2021, the US contingency in Syria today officially consists of around 900 troops tasked with “supporting Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in their fight against ISIS”, though no American troops have actually patrolled alongside local Syrian forces in over a year. Moreover, the Islamic militant group (a prohibited terrorist organization in Russia) continues to mainly concentrate on Syrian government targets, such as in the recent September 18 attack on a pipeline in Deir Ali, southern Syria. Still, the Biden Administration’s interim strategy pending a review of long-term Syria policy remains, at least on paper, the fight against ISIS. Such stances are echoed by NATO lobby group The Atlantic Council, which wrote of America’s 900 troops in Syria as “contributing to post-ISIS stabilization”.
That the US occupation of Syria doesn’t receive a lot of attention bodes well for the Pentagon, which has all but conceded that this sustained US military presence does not, in fact, serve the fight against scattered ISIS remnants. Instead, the objective is to maintain control over strategic sections of Syria’s vital oil and agricultural sector concentrated in the northeast of the country, where the SDF have their strongest presence.
In 2019, Trump openly stated that the US mission in Syria, which he initially sought to end, was to “keep the oil”, a statement of policy that provoked the ire of some in the Washington Foreign Policy establishment who thought it gave the wrong impression to the American public.
Actually, it appears that the truth is definitely the wrong impression as far as the WFP establishment is concerned.
But Trump was not the only one touting oil as the reason for keeping troops in Syria.
As highlighted in a comprehensive analysis by Aaron Maté earlier this month, Dana Stroul, former co-chair of the Congressional ‘Syria Study Group’ and currently Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, confirmed in a 2019 speech that the US “owned” approximately 1/3 of Syria, the aforementioned northeastern corner, giving Washington leverage to “hold a line on preventing reconstruction aid” if Syrian President Bashar Assad doesn’t demonstrate “behavioral changes.”
This same Biden official, Dana Stroul, went before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in August this year – around the same time that the Afghanistan withdrawal dominated the news cycle – to justify America’s military presence as part of Washington’s commitment to “addressing the humanitarian crisis in Syria”. Apart from confirming that the Biden administration, as of yet, shows no sign of backing out of Syria, the stated intention of aiding the civilian population is dubious when considering the far-reaching sanctions the US has imposed on the Syrian government and its backers, as some critics have noted of the controversial Caesar Act that went into effect in June 2020.
Ultimately, barring Assad’s compliance with a political solution favorable to Washington, the US will maintain sanctions and pressure to the point of restricting Syria’s access to its own natural resources and severely stunting the possibility of a humanitarian recovery.
As Russia and Turkey seek out dialogue to restore some semblance of cohesion and a desire for stabilization, the US will resume its quiet occupation around those Middle Eastern oil fields.
Iran and Venezuela strike oil swap deal in the face of US sanctions
28 Sep, 2021 14:05
© AP
According to these sources, the swaps are set to begin this week and last for six months, although they could be extended. The imports of Iranian superlight crude will help Venezuela revive its falling oil exports amid US sanctions that, among other problems, have cut off the country's access to the light oil that is used to blend with its superheavy to make it exportable.
For Iran, the deal will bring in heavy crude it could sell in Asia, the Reuters sources also said. The diluted Venezuela crude will also likely go to Asian buyers.
Reuters also reported that, according to the US Treasury Department, the deal could constitute a breach of sanctions, to which both Venezuela and Iran are subjects.
"Transactions with NIOC by non-US persons are generally subject to secondary sanctions," the Treasury Department said in response to a Reuters request for comments on the deal. It added that it "retains authority to impose sanctions on any person that is determined to operate in the oil sector of the Venezuelan economy."
From whence do they derive that authority?
Despite the sanction noose, Venezuela has been ramping up its oil exports, generating vital revenue. According to a recent Reuters report, the country, which is home to the world's largest oil reserves, exported more than 700,000 bpd of crude in July—the highest daily export rate since February.
Most of the oil went to China and Malaysia, although the latter is usually only a stop along Venezuelan oil's trip to China. The same report noted that three of the five crude oil blending facilities in the Orinoco Belt (Venezuela) were operational, and another crude upgrader was preparing to restart operations after a year's pause.
Iran, meanwhile, recently revealed plans to attract some $145 billion in oil and gas investments from both local and foreign sources.
"We plan to invest $145 billion in the development of the upstream and downstream oil industry over the next four to eight years, hence I welcome the presence of domestic and foreign investors in the industry," Javad Owji, Iran's new oil minister, said during a meeting with executives from China's oil giant Sinopec.
Jordan fully reopens main border crossing with Syria,
expects trade to begin recovering after war & sanctions
29 Sep, 2021 15:46
© Reuters / Alaa Al Sukhni
A Syria-Jordan border checkpoint is allowing vehicles and goods to flow between the two nations once again. Officials in Amman hope the move will help boost trade relations, which have been ravaged by war and US sanctions.
Dozens of vehicles lined up at the Nasib-Jaber crossing on Wednesday, when the border checkpoint was officially fully reopened for the first time in years. Announcing the reopening of the crossing, Jordan’s trade and industry minister, Maha Al Ali, expressed hope the move will boost trade between the two nations.
“The aim of these understandings is to boost trade exchange between the two countries to achieve the interests of every party,” the minister told Jordanian state-owned Al-Mamlaka TV.
The border crossing was defunct for years while large swaths of territory in southern Syria remained under militant control. Before the war, the Nasib-Jaber crossing was a major transit hub, seeing hundreds of trucks passing each day.
The Nasib-Jaber checkpoint was partially reopened in 2018 when Syrian government troops liberated the surrounding areas. The unstable security situation, as well as coronavirus-related restrictions, however, prevented the crossing from operating at full capacity.
“The security situation is now stable on the Syrian side and we hope it remains stable,” the head of the Jordanian part of the crossing, Colonel Moayad Al Zubi, told Reuters.
Crippling Western sanctions against Damascus heavily affected trade between Jordan and Syria as well. Before the years-long war in Syria, the two nations enjoyed bilateral trade worth around $1 billion each year.
The most serious sanctions package against Damascus, known as the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, was adopted by the US in 2019 under the Donald Trump administrations. The package, which came into force last June, has effectively prohibited foreign businesses from trading with Damascus. Now, however, Jordanian businessmen hope the US will ease the sanctions on Syria, particularly in dealing with its southern neighbor.
“We now are feeling there is a US move to give a bigger space for Jordanian businessmen to deal with Syria,” vice chairman of the Jordan Chamber of Commerce, Jamal Al Refai, has said.
Saudi Arabia & Iran may re-establish relations after
series of discrete meetings
29 Sep, 2021 18:11
FILE PHOTO: Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi © president.ir
Riyadh and Tehran may soon formally resume relations severed in 2016, one report said as officials from Saudi Arabia and Iran quietly met this week. The series of contacts is reportedly mediated by the Iraqi government.
Saudi and Iranian officials met in Baghdad this week, Axios reported on Wednesday, citing Iraqi sources. The meeting’s agenda was “dominated by efforts to repair the bilateral relationship and by regional issues concerning both sides,” according to the US outlet.
Journalist and researcher Elijah Magnier went a step further, tweeting that the two countries are preparing to reopen diplomatic missions.
Saudi Arabia broke off relations with Iran in January 2016, after protests in Tehran over the execution of Nimr al-Nimr, a dissident Shia cleric. Iranians are mainly Shia Muslims, while the Saudis follow the Wahhabi Sunni branch of Islam.
This week’s meeting was reportedly the fourth in a series that began in August, thanks to the efforts of Mustafa al-Kadhimi, the prime minister of Iraq. A personal friend of the Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman, al-Kadhimi apparently reached out to Tehran following the Iranian presidential election, and hosted a regional meeting in Baghdad that included Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates as well. Bilateral contacts followed.
Axios has blamed former US President Donald Trump – who took a hard line on Iran and openly sided with the Saudis – for the hardening of the conflict between Riyadh and Tehran that predated his election.
The regional meeting in Baghdad took place as the US was evacuating from Afghanistan, following the collapse of the US-backed government in Kabul to the Taliban.
President Joe Biden’s national security advisor Jake Sullivan visited Saudi Arabia on Monday for talks with the crown prince, officially about Yemen and the Saudi human rights situation – but “de-escalation of regional tensions with Iran” was also on the agenda, according to Axios.
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