- Syrias return to oil exports after the fall of the Assad regime is seen by many as a sign that Irans Shia Crescent of influence is weakening.
- Despite Assads ousting, Beijing and Moscow continue to pursue long-term infrastructure projects.
- Iran, China, and Russia had been developing a strategic Land Bridge from Tehran to the Mediterranean for both economic and military purposes.
Until the U.S.- and U.K.-orchestrated removal of longtime Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from office in December, the Shia Crescent of Power held an extraordinary sway over the political, economic, and security trajectories of the Middle East. With Iran at its ideological centre, the Crescent comprised key strategic assets in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, with inroads being made in Azerbaijan (75% Shia and a Former Soviet Union state), Turkey (25% Shia and furious at not being accepted fully into the European Union), Bahrain (75% Shia), and Pakistan (up to 25% Shia and a home to multiple terrorist groups antagonistic to the West). Just over a week ago, Syrias largest oil refinery, Banias, restarted fuel shipments for the first time since the regime was changed. Many observers have cited this as marking a new era for the country, and a wider portent of things to come in the region as the power of Iran and its Shia Crescent wanes. But is this true?
While Iran was the prime mover on a day-to-day basis across the Crescent, the longer-term power players were China and Russia. For these two countries, this Iran-led alliance formed along sectarian religious lines was crucial to their multi-pronged, multi-generational strategic plans for the Middle East, for three key reasons. First, the Crescent could be used to hold the U.S. in check in those areas. Second, it offered several direct transport routes into Europe that could be utilised overtly or covertly as required. And third, some if its principal members heldhuge oil and gas reserves, much of which could be exploited very cheaply given the right sort of cooperation deals being agreed. A perfect example of these dynamics in place was the Iran-China 25-Year Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement first revealed anywhere in the world in my 3 September 2019 article on the subject, and analysed in full in my latest book on the new global oil market order. As part of this agreement, Irans then-First Vice President, Eshaq Jahangiri announced in August 2019 that his country had signed a contract with China to implement a project to electrify the main 900-kilometre railway connecting Tehran to the north-eastern city of Mashhad, close to the border with Turkmenistan. Adjunct to this was the plan to extend this upgraded network to the northwest through Tabriz, home to several key sites relating to oil, gas and petrochemicals, and the starting point for the Tabriz-Ankara gas pipeline. Ultimately, the Mashhad-Tehran high-speed train link would be a key part of the 2,300-kilometre New Silk Road that links Urumqi, the capital of Chinas western Xinjiang Province, to Tehran, and connecting Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan along the way. After that, the Chinese plan is to extend the railway links through Tabriz into Turkey and then Bulgaria, and then into the rest of southern Europe.
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A vital adjunct to these transport links running across the Shia Crescent countries was the China- and Russia-sponsored building out of a pan-Shia Crescent/Middle Eastern power grid, again with Iran at its centre. This was based around oil, gas and electricity supplies, which allow not just for the installation of permanent infrastructure linking one country to another but also for the on-site presence of permanent technical and security personnel, many of which would be Iranian and/or Chinese and/or Russian. In just the same way that Russias huge level of gas supplies to Europe gave it immense power across that continent up until changes to that arrangement were made after the invasion of Ukraine, so Irans electricity and other power supplies would do the same across the Middle East. Towards this end, 2020 saw Irans Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian state that Iran and Iraqs power grids had become fully synchronised to provide electricity to both countries by dint of the new Amarah-Karkeh 400-KV transmission line. He added that Iranian and Iraqi dispatching centres were fully connected in Baghdad, the power grids were seamlessly interlinked, and that Iran had signed a three-year co-operation agreement with Iraq. In the meantime, Iraqs then-Electricity Minister, Majid Mahdi Hantoush, announced that Iraq working on connecting its grid with Jordans electricity networks through a 300-kilometre-line, and that plans were also being finalised for the completion of Iraqs electricity connection with Egypt within the next three years. This, in turn, he added, would be part of the overall project to establish a joint Arab electricity market.
However, it was perhaps in Syria that Chinas and Russias grandest ambitions for the Shia Crescent of Power lay. Moscow had already laid extensive groundwork in the country through several deals aimed at resuscitating the countrys once very significant oil and gas sectors, as also analysed in full in my latest book on the new global oil market order. It should be remembered that before the removal of longstanding leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Syria had been producing around 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil from proved reserves of 2.5 billion barrels. Prior to that before the recovery rate started to decline due to a lack of enhanced oil recovery techniques being employed at the major fields -- it had been producing nearly 600,000 bpd. The countrys gas sector was at least as significant as its oil one, with output of about 316 billion cubic feet per day (bcf/d) of dry natural gas, and proven reserves of 8.5 trillion cubic feet (tcf). This involvement on Syrias key revenue-generating sector allowed Russia to establish the country as its premier military and intelligence base in the Middle East. This included one major naval base (Tartus and Russias only Mediterranean port), one major air force base (Khmeimim) and one major listening station (just outside Latakia).
Most curiously of all was that just before the removal of al-Assad from power by Washington and London, Iran, Russia and China had been putting the final touches to a plan that would see the long-anticipated Land Bridge come into being. This would run from Tehran to Syrias Mediterranean Sea coastline and crucially was aimed at exponentially increasing the scale and scope of weapons delivery into southern Lebanon and the Golan Heights area of Syria for use in attacks on Israel. Additional support for these plans along much of the Land Bridge route had come from plans agreed between Iraq and China to construct the US$17 billion Strategic Development Road. This would create its own transport corridor from Basra to southern Turkey (close to the Syrian border), and link in with Chinas Belt and Road Initiative. The aim on Irans part was to attempt to unite the worlds Islamic countries against what it sees as an existential battle against the broadly Judeo-Christian democratic alliance of the West, with the U.S. at its centre. This neatly fitted into the Chinese and Russian push towards a multi-polar world in which the U.S. is the core of just one of three main spheres of influence the others dominated by Beijing and Moscow. This idea has also been at the centre of Chinese President Xi Jinpings more aggressively anti-U.S. policy in the Middle East in recent years as seen in a series of meetings held with Middle East leaders in December 2022 and January 2023. The principal topics of conversation were to finally seal a China-Gulf Cooperation Council Free Trade Agreement (comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) and to forge a deeper strategic cooperation in a region where U.S. dominance is showing signs of retreat.
Given the extraordinarily high stakes for China and Russia in Syria, it seems highly unlikely that either of them are going walk away from this critical phase in the development of the post-al-Assad regime. It should be remembered that it was Russia in the shape of Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov that paid the first high-level international visit to Damascus on 28 January after the coup. There he met with the new President of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, together with his Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani and Minister of Health Maher al-Sharaa. The very recent visit to Damascus of an Iraqi delegation led by the head of its National Intelligence Service, Hamid Al-Shatri, is part of this ongoing push by Moscow, a senior security source in the European Union (E.U.) exclusively told OilPrice.com. Russia is quietly laying the groundwork for an eventual re-mergence in Syrias oil and gas sector as it has considerable experience there, and China is not going to abandon its BRI-related plans involving Syria or the [Shia] Crescent either, he said. Both are just playing a waiting game, until Trumps attention switches to something else, or until he is no longer president they can afford to wait as long as it takes, he concluded.
By Simon Watkins for Oilprice.com
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