MELTDOWN In Syria As The Cost Of Al Jolani SPARKS CHAOS!

Right, so the folly of the new Syrian regime of Ahmed Al Saraa, formerly known as Al Jolani, may have finally reached an impasse, his trust in the West, his determination to ally himself to Israel and the US, to sellout in a lot of respects is leaving him with egg on his face as the reality of life post Assad for the people of Syria isn’t quite turning out how many of them thought it would, I mean for starters it’d be quite nice to just be able to see for one, but for that you need light and for light you need oil and for an oil rich nation, that’s become an increasingly tough because they don’t control their own oil and sanctions placed upon them makes getting it from elsewhere rather tough too.
If Al Saraa thought himself a world leader now, what he really is, is a convenience to other leaders, with no real power, and to run his country is having to take diktat from others and will likely continue to have to do that going forwards and there is all manner of reasons why this is, Syria no longer functionally its own country. The fall of Assad is coming at a very heavy price for the people of Syria and one they didn’t expect to have to pay either.
Right, so the Syrian government of Ahmed Al Sharaa, of HTS, is rapidly turning out to be less an independent government and more a branch office for other nations able to lean them in all manner of different ways, from Israel, to the US, to Turkey and still Al Sharaa is pretending he is some kind of statesman, rather than somebody who will have to jump when the likes of Trump, or Netanyahu or Erdogan tell him to.
He has gushed congratulations to Donald Trump upon becoming President again, he has sent his finance minister off to Davos to become the latest whipping boy for the World Economic Forum, he’s doing the optics, but the reality is massively different.
Let’s start with just keeping the lights on.
Back in 2011 as many of you will be aware, Syria became embroiled in a civil war as Bashar Al Assad cracked down on people’s right to protest, to hold rallies as part of the Arab Spring protests that were happening across the region, a civil war that didn’t end until HTS seized control and deposed Assad last month.
Well during that civil war, the extremely valuable oil fields Syria has in the East in the Deir Ezzor governate were lost by Assad to a number of different entities, firstly in 2013 to the Al Nusra Front, which later became Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, or HTS, then in 2014 Islamic State seized them and this was then followed by the US backed and Kurdish led Syrian Democratic Forces, who took control of Syria’s oil in 2017. It remains under their control to this day.
Now as you can imagine, Al Sharaa would love to have this oil back because precious little of it since it came under US/SDF control ends up in Syria itself. They wanted Assad out, they held the oil to ransom, Syria had to circumvent this by getting its oil for its refineries, for its energy supplies from elsewhere and keeping the lights on then, was a challenge, state electricity only ever available for a couple of hours a day domestically, consumers reliant on their own generators or just going without outside of that time. The oil Assad sourced to get around the loss of his own oil fields came chiefly from Iran, some from Iraq, US sanctions preventing them from sourcing oil on the open market, so the already sanctioned to the hilt Iran became one of the only options available to them and of course Iran and Syria under Assad got on well, Syria was able to be used as a conduit for Iran through to Lebanon and Hezbollah and so on and so forth.
But then came the end for Assad, fled to Russia and in came Al Sharaa and HTS, kissing Israel’s posterior, threatening Iran and oh look, Iran turned off the taps, or rather turned the boat around. They literally did this, an Iranian oil shipment on it’s way to Syria, was turned around the minute the regime change was confirmed.
So this has left Al Sharaa in a predicament, because his country was reliant on Iranian oil, the US controls his oilfields still, and taps are running dry, oil prices and petrol prices are ballooning and it’s got even darker than ever before, with complete blackouts becoming the norm. He’s left Syria at the mercy of the US and the lifting of their sanctions and can’t ever go against their word for as long as they control Syria’s oilfields, oil which has mostly been going to the US and Europe since it fell under US control.
If Al Sharaa were to do anything to displease the US, the lights will go out again, the sanctions will come back and they have lifted the sanctions on energy at least as Syria’s first oil tender in years has now been issued. Who will supply the oil though?
3 million barrels of light crude and 1.2million barrels of heavy crude have been requested. Saudi Arabia has agreed to help for a short period, Qatar may be prepared to help, but the third player in this oil supply business is Turkey.
Now Turkey is more than happy to work with HTS, Erdogan is helping HTS draw up a new Syrian constitution, HTS were aiding Turkey from their base in Syria’s northwest, in the Idlib region to help project their power and help fight the Kurds in the north, that Turkey have historic beef with. This highlights some of the mess before us that Al Sharaa is now going to have to deal with.
The SDF are US backed and have control of Syria’s oil fields. Al Sharaa has to keep the US sweet in order to keep those oil sanctions lifted now, yet Turkey are one of those they hope to secure oil supplies from and Turkey hate the US backed Kurds.
Where Turkey want the Kurds out of the north so they can secure it for themselves, taking advantage of the fractured HTS led Syria, those same Kurds are guarding thousands of former Islamic State prisoners, IS having made two attempts since Assad fell to free their people and HTS want them handed over into their control. Well, given that HTS are themselves an assemblage of Al Qaeda and IS castoffs, the thought of handing over those prisoners to people the Kurds may see as just as bad isn’t going down well. Now to be fair, the US can step in here if interested, they’re on SDF’s side as well as making moves in that way towards HTS, though not enough to give them their oil fields back it seems and the US is on good terms with Erdogan too. Functionally HTS lack the clout and the trust to mediate this mess, if it’s to be mediated and a way found to placate Turkey, the Kurds and the US, a price will end up being paid and it’ll probably be paid in oil.
Throwing all of this into even more disarray though is Israel, who have still maintained their newly seized Syrian territory, HTS want to keep Israel onside despite this, still Al Sharaa refuses point blank to consider attacking Israel for invading, so you can imagine the Syrian people right now, see Al Sharaa as an Israel and US flunkie. On the other hand, to keep the US sweet as Syria now must to keep the lights on, there’s no way they can attack Israel, Israel can do what it likes and they absolutely are.
Not only are Israel hanging onto the land they’ve seized, they’re now building a new military outpost right smack bang in the middle of it in Quneitra governate, bulldozing hundreds of trees in the Jabatha al-Khashab forest – you don’t think of Syria having many of those – as well as over agricultural land and orchards in order to build it. New roads have been built leading to it from the already occupied Golan Heights to permanently tie this area to Israel, there is no intention of Israel retreating from this land and how much further they encroach, well what is HTS going to do about it? Nothing. They can’t. They’re too weak, they’re too vulnerable and unless they are prepared to change their allegiances, this appears to be a Syrian government indentured to external forces and cannot do a thing about it, no matter how much Al Sharaa says Israel have no need to occupy that land whilst at the same time saying he won’t attack them to drive them out of his territory either.
There’s another complication going on here too, one that isn’t getting paid much attention to but one that requires keeping an eye on certainly, is Lebanon.
They’ve been cut off, or Hezbollah have been cut off in theory, due to the fall of Assad. In practice the destabilised Syria has enabled supplies from Iran to reach Lebanon at an even greater rate, since where under Assad Israel had contacts within the country to flag up any such shipments, and attempt to intercept them, under HTS they’ve lost those. However a more sinister outcome as has been resurgence in Lebanon of other extremist groups linked to the likes of Al Qaeda and HTS, kept in check by Hezbollah, but weakened as they have been with the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah and the invasion of Lebanon by Israel, combined with an influx of weapons stolen from Syrian caches as Assad’s regime fell, flooding into Lebanon, there could be significant destabilisation there now as well, assuming the new President there Joseph Aoun doesn’t get on top of it fast.
The Cradle have published a good map of Syria which exemplifies all of the problems I’ve outlined for Al Sharaa quite nicely. The Israeli incursion in the far southwest in blue where a new military installation is being built and where Israel may spread further from there, the Kurdish controlled areas encompassing Syria’s oil fields going up to the Turkish border in the north of Syria in green, US occupation dotted throughout that area plus on the Jordanian border around Tanf, a military base there, Islamic State present in the centre of the country in areas HTS now purport to control, their stronghold of Idlib in the north marked on there as well. This is the mess Syria is now in and it is to all appearances unable to truly be independent and free to make it’s own way post Assad, under the regime now acting like it is in charge but truth be told, really isn’t and never can be for as long as kissing up to the US, Turkey and Israel remains their plan.
Speaking of Lebanon, the ceasefire that Israel haven’t taken the blindest bit of notice of is due to come to an end very shortly, that is, if the 30 day extension Israel have had the nerve to ask for doesn’t get granted, a farce if it does given they’ve ignored it, but with the US and France deciding on it, who knows? At any rate, the war of words is ratcheting up once more, and Israel’s flagrant disregard for it isn’t something they’re likely to get away with for long, extension nor no.
Get all the details of that story in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch. Please do also hit like, share and subscribe to the channel if you haven’t done so already to help support the work I do here as well as ensure you don’t miss out on new daily content which I know you’d absolutely hate and I’ll hopefully therefore see you on the next vid. Cheers folks.