Syria, Turkey, Israel and a Greater Middle East
Energy War
By F. William Engdahl *
10 October 2012
On October 3, 2012 the
Turkish military launched repeated mortar shellings inside Syrian territory. The
military action, which was used by the Turkish military, conveniently, to
establish a ten-kilometer wide no-man’s land “buffer zone” inside Syria, was in
response to the alleged killing by Syrian armed forces of several Turkish
civilians along the border. There is widespread speculation that the one Syrian
mortar that killed five Turkish civilians well might have been fired by
Turkish-backed opposition forces intent on giving Turkey a pretext to move
militarily, in military intelligence jargon, a ‘false flag’ operation.[1]
Turkey’s Muslim
Brotherhood-friendly Foreign Minister, the inscrutable
Ahmet Davutoglu, is the government’s main
architect of Turkey’s self-defeating strategy of toppling its former ally Bashar
Al-Assad in Syria.[2]
According to one report
since 2006 under the government of Islamist Sunni Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his pro-Brotherhood AKP
party, Turkey has become a new center for the Global Muslim Brotherhood.[3]
A well-informed Istanbul source relates the report that before the last Turkish
elections, Erdogan’s AKP received a “donation” of $10 billion from the Saudi
monarchy, the heart of world jihadist Salafism under the strict fundamentalist
cloak of Wahabism.
[4] Since the 1950’s when the CIA brought
leading members in exile of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to Saudi Arabia
there has been a fusion between the Saudi brand of Wahabism and the aggressive
jihadist fundamentalism of the Brotherhood.[5]
The Turkish response to the
single Syrian mortar shell, which was met with an immediate Syrian apology for
the incident, borders on a full-scale war between two nations which until last
year were historically, culturally, economically and even in religious terms,
closest of allies.
That war danger is ever
more serious. Turkey is a full member of NATO whose charter explicitly states,
an attack against one NATO state is an attack against all. The fact that
nuclear-armed Russia and China both have made defense of the Syrian Bashar
al-Assad regime a strategic priority puts the specter of a World War closer than
most of us would like to imagine.
In a December 2011 analysis
of the competing forces in the region, former CIA analyst Philip Giraldi made
the following prescient observation:
NATO is already clandestinely engaged in the
Syrian conflict, with Turkey taking the lead as U.S. proxy. Ankara’s foreign
minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, has openly admitted that his country is prepared to
invade as soon as there is agreement among the Western allies to do so. The
intervention would be based on humanitarian principles, to defend the civilian
population based on the “responsibility to protect” doctrine that was invoked to
justify Libya. Turkish sources suggest that intervention would start with
creation of a buffer zone along the Turkish-Syrian border and then be expanded.
Aleppo, Syria’s largest and most cosmopolitan city, would be the crown jewel
targeted by liberation forces.
Unmarked NATO warplanes are arriving at Turkish
military bases close to Iskenderum on the Syrian border, delivering weapons from
the late Muammar Gaddafi’s arsenals as well as volunteers from the Libyan
Transitional National Council who are experienced in pitting local volunteers
against trained soldiers, a skill they acquired confronting Gaddafi’s army.
Iskenderum is also the seat of the Free Syrian Army, the armed wing of the
Syrian National Council. French and British special forces trainers are on the
ground, assisting the Syrian rebels while the CIA and U.S. Spec Ops are
providing communications equipment and intelligence to assist the rebel cause,
enabling the fighters to avoid concentrations of Syrian soldiers.
[6]
Little noted was the fact
that at the same day as Turkey launched her over-proportional response in the
form of a military attack on Syrian territory, one which was still ongoing as of
this writing, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) undertook what was apparently an
action to divert Syria’s attention from Turkey and to create the horror scenario
of a two-front war just as Germany faced in two world wars. The IDF made a
significant troop buildup on the strategic Golan Heights bordering the two
countries, which, since Israel took it in the 1967 war, has been an area of no
tension.[7]
The unfolding new phase of
direct foreign military intervention by Turkey, supported de facto by Israel’s
right-wing Netanyahu regime, curiously enough follows to the letter a scenario
outlined by a prominent Washington neo-conservative Think Tank, The Brookings
Institution. In their March 2012 strategy white paper,
Saving Syria: Assessing Options for
Regime Change, Brookings geo-political strategists laid forth a plan to
misuse so-called humanitarian concern over civilian deaths, as in Libya in 2011,
to justify an aggressive military intervention into Syria, something not done
before this.[8]
The Brookings report states
the following scenario:
Israel could posture forces on or near the Golan
Heights and, in so doing, might divert regime forces from suppressing the
opposition. This posture may conjure fears in the Assad regime of a multi-front
war, particularly if Turkey is willing to do the same on its border and if the
Syrian opposition is being fed a steady diet of arms and training.[9]
This seems to be precisely
what is unfolding in the early days of October 2012. The authors of the
Brookings report are tied to some of the more prominent neo-conservative
warhawks behind the Bush-Cheney war on Iraq. Their sponsor, the Saban Center for
Middle East Policy, includes current foreign policy advisers to Republican
right-wing candidate Mitt Romney, the open favorite candidate of Israel’s
Netanyahu.
The Brookings Saban Center
for Middle East Policy which issued the report, is the creation of a major
donation from Haim Saban, an Israeli-American media billionaire who also owns
the huge German Pro7 media giant. Haim Saban is open about his aim to promote
specific Israeli interests with his philanthropy. The
New York Times once called Saban, “a
tireless cheerleader for Israel.” Saban told the same newspaper in an interview
in 2004, "I'm a one-issue guy and my
issue is Israel."
[10]
The scholars at Saban as
well as its board have a clear neo-conservative and Likud party bias. They
include, past or present, Shlomo Yanai, former head of military planning, Israel
Defense Forces; Martin Indyk, former US Ambassador to Israel and founder of the
pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a major Likud
policy lobby in Washington. Visiting fellows have included Avi Dicter, former
head of Israel’s Shin Bet; Yosef Kupperwasser, former Head, Research Department,
Israeli Defense Force's Directorate of Military Intelligence. Resident scholars
also include Bruce Riedel, a 30 year CIA Middle East expert and Obama Afghan
adviser;
[11] Kenneth Pollack, another former CIA
Middle East expert who was indicted in an Israel espionage scandal when he was a
national security official with the Bush Administration.
[12]
Why would Israel want to
get rid of the “enemy she knows,” Bashar al-Assad, for a regime controlled by
the Muslim Brotherhood? Then Israel’s security would seemingly be threatened by
the emergence of hard-line Muslim Brotherhood regimes in Egypt to her south and
Syria to her North, perhaps soon also in Jordan.
The geopolitical dimension
The significant question to
be asked at this point is what could bind Israel, Turkey, Qatar in a form of
unholy alliance on the one side, and Assad’s Syria, Iran, Russia and China on
the other side, in such deadly confrontation over the political future of Syria?
One answer is energy geopolitics.
What has yet to be fully
appreciated in geopolitical assessments of the Middle East is the dramatically
rising importance of the control of natural gas to the future of not only Middle
East gas producing countries, but also of the EU and Eurasia including Russia as
producer and China as consumer.
Natural gas is rapidly
becoming the “clean energy” of choice to replace coal and nuclear electric
generation across the European Union, most especially since Germany’s decision
to phase out nuclear after the Fukushima disaster. Gas is regarded as far more
“environmentally friendly” in terms of its so-called “carbon footprint.” The
only realistic way EU governments, from Germany to France to Italy to Spain,
will be able to meet EU mandated CO2 reduction targets by 2020 is a major shift
to burning gas instead of coal. Gas reduces CO2 emissions by 50-60% over coal.[13]
Given that the economic cost of using gas instead of wind or other alternative
energy forms is dramatically lower, gas is rapidly becoming the energy of demand
for the EU, the biggest emerging gas market in the world.
Huge gas resource
discoveries in Israel, in Qatar and in Syria combined with the emergence of the
EU as the world’s potentially largest natural gas consumer, combine to create
the seeds of the present geopolitical clash over the Assad regime.
Syria-Iran-Iraq Gas pipeline
In July 2011, as the NATO
and Gulf states’ destabilization operations against Assad in Syria were in full
swing, the governments of Syria, Iran and Iraq signed an historic gas pipeline
energy agreement which went largely unnoticed amid CNN reports of the Syrian
unrest. The pipeline, envisioned to cost $10 billion and take three years to
complete, would run from the Iranian Port Assalouyeh near the South Pars gas
field in the Persian Gulf, to Damascus in Syria via Iraq territory. Iran
ultimately plans then to extend the pipeline from Damascus to Lebanon’s
Mediterranean port where it would be delivered to EU markets. Syria would buy
Iranian gas along with a current Iraqi agreement to buy Iranian gas from Iran’s
part of South Pars field.
South Pars, whose gas
reserves lie in a huge field that is divided between Qatar and Iran in the Gulf,
is believed to be the world’s largest single gas field.
[14] De facto it would be a Shi’ite gas
pipeline from Shi’ite Iran via Shi’ite-majority Iraq onto Shi’ite-friendly
Alawite Al-Assad’s Syria.
Adding to the geopolitical
drama is the fact that the South Pars gas find lies smack in the middle of the
territorial divide in the Persian Gulf between Shi’ite Iran and the Sunni
Salafist Qatar. Qatar also just happens to be a command hub for the Pentagon’s
US Central Command, headquarters of United States Air Forces Central, No. 83
Expeditionary Air Group RAF, and the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing of the USAF.
In brief Qatar, in addition to owning and hosting the anti-Al-Assad TV station
Al-Jazeera, which beams anti-Syria propaganda across the Arab world, Qatar is
tightly linked to the US and NATO military presence in the Gulf.
Qatar apparently has other
plans with their share of the South Pars field than joining up with Iran, Syria
and Iraq to pool efforts. Qatar has no interest in the success of the
Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline, which would be entirely independent of Qatar or
Turkey transit routes to the opening EU markets. In fact it is doing everything
possible to sabotage it, up to and including arming Syria’s rag-tag “opposition”
fighters, many of them Jihadists sent in from other countries including Saudi
Arabia, Pakistan and Libya.
Further adding to Qatar’s
determination to destroy the Syria-Iran-Iraq gas cooperation is the discovery in
August 2011 by Syrian exploration companies of a huge new gas field in Qara near
the border with Lebanon and near to the Russian-leased Naval port of Tarsus on
the Syrian Mediterranean.[15]
Any export of Syrian or Iranian gas to the EU would go through the Russian-tied
port of Tarsus. According to informed Algerian sources, the new Syrian gas
discoveries, though the Damascus government is downplaying it, are believed to
equal or exceed those of Qatar.
As
Asia Times’ knowledgeable analyst
Pepe Escobar pointed out in a recent piece, Qatar’s scheme calls for export of
its huge gas reserves via Jordan’s Gulf of Aqaba, a country where a Muslim
Brotherhood threat to the dictatorship of the King is also threatening. The Emir
of Qatar has apparently cut a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood in which he backs
their international expansion in return for a pact of peace at home in Qatar. A
Muslim Brotherhood regime in Jordan and also in Syria, backed by Qatar, would
change the entire geopolitics of the world gas market suddenly and decisively in
Qatar’s favor and to the disadvantage of Russia, Syria, Iran and Iraq.
[16] That would also be a staggering negative
blow to China.
As Escobar points out,
“it's clear what Qatar is aiming at: to kill the US$10 billion Iran-Iraq-Syria
gas pipeline, a deal that was clinched even as the Syria uprising was already
underway. Here we see Qatar in direct competition with both Iran (as a producer)
and Syria (as a destination), and to a lesser extent, Iraq (as a transit
country). It's useful to remember that Tehran and Baghdad are adamantly against
regime change in Damascus.” He adds, “if there's regime change in Syria - helped
by the Qatari-proposed invasion - things get much easier in Pipelineistan terms.
A more than probable Muslim Brotherhood (MB) post-Assad regime would more than
welcome a Qatari pipeline. And that would make an extension to Turkey much
easier.”
[17]
The Israeli Gas dilemma
Further complicating the
entire picture is the recent discovery of huge offshore Israeli natural gas
resources.
The Tamar natural gas field
off the coast of northern Israel is expected to begin yielding gas for Israel’s
use in late 2012. The game-changer was a
dramatic discovery in late 2010 of an enormous natural gas field offshore of
Israel in what geologists call the Levant or Levantine Basin. In October 2010
Israel discovered a massive “super-giant” gas field offshore in what it declares
is its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
[18]
The find is some 84 miles
west of the Haifa port and three miles deep. They named it Leviathan after the
Biblical sea monster. Three Israeli energy companies in cooperation with the
Houston Texas Noble Energy announced initial estimates that the field contained
16 trillion cubic feet of gas—making it the world’s biggest deep-water gas find
in a decade, adding more discredit to “peak oil” theories that the planet is
about to see dramatic and permanent shortages of oil, gas and coal. To put the
number in perspective, that one gas field, Leviathan, would hold enough reserves
to supply Israel’s gas needs for 100 years.[19]
Energy self-sufficiency had
eluded the state of Israel since its founding in 1948. Abundant oil and gas
exploration had repeatedly been undertaken with meager result. Unlike its
energy-rich Arab neighbors, Israel seemed out of luck. Then in 2009 Israel’s
Texas exploration partner, Noble Energy, discovered the Tamar field in the
Levantine Basin some 50 miles west of Israel’s port of Haifa with an estimated
8.3 tcf (trillion cubic feet) of highest quality natural gas. Tamar was the
world’s largest gas discovery in 2009.
Israel discovered huge gas in Levantine Basin
with Noble Energy. Source: Noble Energy map
At the time, total Israeli
gas reserves were estimated at only 1.5 tcf. Government estimates were that
Israel’s sole operating field, Yam Tethys, which supplies about 70 percent of
the country’s natural gas, would be depleted within three years.
With Tamar, prospects began
to look considerably better. Then, just a year after Tamar, the same consortium
led by Noble Energy struck the largest gas find in its decades-long history at
Leviathan in the same Levantine geological basin. Present estimates are that the
Leviathan field holds at least 17 tcf of gas. Israel went from a gas famine to
feast in a matter of months.[20]
Now Israel faces a
strategic and very dangerous dilemma. Naturally Israel is none too excited to
see al-Assad’s Syria, linked to Israel’s arch foe Iran and Iraq and Lebanon,
out-compete an Israeli gas export to the EU markets. This could explain why
Israel’s Netanyahu government has been messing inside Syria in the anti-al-Assad
forces. However, a Muslim Brotherhood rule in Syria led by the organization
around Mohammad Shaqfah would confront Israel with far more hostile neighbors
now that the Muslim Brotherhood coup by Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi has put
a hostile regime on Israel’s southern border.
It is no secret that there
is enmity bordering on hate between Netanyahu and the Obama Administration. The
Obama White House and US State Department openly back the Muslim Brotherhood
regime changes in the Middle East. Hillary Clinton’s meeting with Turkey’s
Davutoglu in August this year was reportedly aimed at pushing Turkey to escalate
its military intervention into Syria, but without direct US support owing to US
election politics of wanting to avoid involvement in a new Middle East debacle.[21]
State Department Deputy
Chief of Staff Huma Abedin has been accused by several Republican Congress
Representatives of ties to organizations controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Dalia Mogahed, Obama’s appointee to the
Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, also a member of
the US advisory council of the Department of Homeland Security, is openly linked
to the Muslim Brotherhood and an open foe of Israel as well as calling for the
toppling of Syria’s al-Assad.
[22] Obama’s Washington definitely seems to
be backing the Muslim Brotherhood horse in the race for control of the gas flows
of the Middle East.
And the Russian role
Washington is walking a
temporary tightrope hoping to weaken al-Assad fatally while not appearing
directly involved. Russia for its part is playing a life and death game for the
future of its most effective geopolitical lever—its role as the leading natural
gas supplier to the EU. This year Russia’s state-owned Gazprom began delivery of
Russian gas to northern Germany via Nord Stream gas pipeline under the Baltic
Sea from a port near St. Petersburg. Strategically vital now for the future role
of Russia as an EU gas supplier, is its ability to play a strategic role in
exploiting the new-found gas reserves of its former Cold war client state,
Syria. Moscow has long been engaged in promoting its South Stream gas pipeline
into Europe as an alternative to the Washington Nabucco pipeline which was
designed to leave Moscow out in the cold.
[23]
Already Gazprom is the
largest natural gas supplier to the EU. Gazprom with Nord Stream and other lines
plans to increase its gas supply to Europe this year by 12% to 155 billion cubic
meters. It now controls 25% of the total European gas market and aims to reach
30% with completion of South Stream and other projects.
Rainer Seele, chairman of
Germany’s Wintershall, the Gazprom partner in Nord Stream, suggested the
geopolitical thinking behind the decision to join South Stream: "In the global
race against Asian countries for raw materials, South Stream, like Nord Stream,
will ensure access to energy resources which are vital to our economy." But
rather than Asia, the real focus of South Stream lies to the West. The ongoing
battle between Russia’s South Stream and the Washington-backed Nabucco is
intensely geopolitical. The winner will hold a major advantage in the future
political terrain of Europe.[24]
Now
a major new option of Syria as a major source for Russian-managed gas
flows to the EU has emerged. If al-Assad survives, Russia will be in the
position as savior to play a decisive role in developing and exploiting the
Syrian gas. Israel, where Russia also has major cards to play, could
theoretically shift to back a Russian-Syrian-Iraqi-Iran gas consortium were
Israel and Iran to reach some modus vivendi on the nuclear and other issues, not
impossible were the political constellation in Israel to change after the coming
elections. Turkey, which is presently in a deep internal battle between
Davutoglu and President Gül on the one side and Erdogan on the other, is
dependent on Russia’s Gazprom for some 40% of gas to its industry. Were
Davutoglu and his faction to lose, Turkey could play a far more constructive
role in the region as transit country for Syrian and Iranian gas.
The battle for the future
control of Syria is at the heart of this enormous geopolitical war and tug of
war. Its resolution will have enormous consequences for either world peace or
endless war and conflict and slaughter. NATO member Turkey is playing with fire
as is Qatar’s Emir, along with Israel’s Netanyahu and NATO members France and
USA. Natural gas is the flammable ingredient that is fueling this insane
scramble for energy in the region.
Endnotes:
[1] Reuters,
Turkish artillery strikes on
Syria continue for second day: Several Syrian soldiers killed in
overnight attack; Turkey launched artillery strikes after mortar bomb
fired from Syria killed five Turkish civilians, October 4, 2012.
Accessed in
http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/turkish-artillery-strikes-on-syria-continue-for-second-day-1.468142
[2]
Hüsnü Mahalli, Davutoglu
Betting on the Fall of Assad, Al Akhbar English, August 7,
2012, accessed in
http://english.al-akhbar.com.
[3] Steven G. Merley,
Turkey, the Global Muslim
Brotherhood, and the Gaza Flotilla, Jerusalem Center for Public
Affairs, 2011, accessed in
http://www.jcpa.org/text/Turkey_Muslim_Brotherhood.pdf. See also for
more ties between Erdogan’s Turkish AKP and the Musllim Brotherhood,
GlobalMB, Syrian Ambassador Names
Associate Of Turkish Prime Minister As Muslim Brotherhood Leader,
May 25, 2011, accessed in
http://globalmbreport.org/?p=4496
[4] The figure of $10 billion was
relayed in a private discussion with the author by a Turkish businessman
and political figure who asked to remain anonymous. Indian diplomats,
including H.E. Gajendra Singh, former Ambassador to Ankara, have
independently confirmed Saudi funding of the Turkish AKP. Presumably
like most $10 billion cash grants, it came with heavy strings attached
from Riyhad.
[5] F. William Engdahl,
Salafism+CIA: The winning formula
to destabilize Russia, the Middle East, Voltairenet.org, 13
September, 2012, accessed in
http://www.voltairenet.org/article175801.html
[6] Philip Giraldi,
NATO vs Syria, December 19,
2011, The American Conservative, accessed in
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/nato-vs-syria/.
[7] Linda Gradstein,
Israel fears Syrian violence
spilling over Golan Heights border, October 4, 2012, accessed in
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/04/israel-fears-syrian-violence-spilling-over-golan-heights-border/
[8] Daniel Byman, Michael Doran,
Kenneth Pollack, and Salman Shaikh,
Saving Syria: Assessing Options
for Regime Change, The Brookings Institution, Washington D.C., March
2012, accessed in
http://www.scribd.com/doc/108893509/BrookingsSyria0315-Syria-Saban
[9] Ibid., p. 6.
[10] Andrew Ross Sorkin, Schlepping
to Moguldom, September 5, 2004, accessed in
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/05/business/yourmoney/05sab.html?ei=5088&en=9eb8c2a72c2b5e7d&ex=1252123200&partner=rssnyt&pagewanted=print&position&_r=0;
see also Source Watch, Haim Saban,
accessed in
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Haim_Saban.
[11] M. J. Rosenberg,
AIPAC Cutout: The Rise & Fall Of
The Washington Institute For Near East Policy, Talking Points Memo
(TPM), 11 April 2010, accessed in
http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=126218
[12] Nathan Guttman,
Bush officials subpoenaed in
AIPAC trial, Jerusalem Post, March 13, 2006, accessed in
http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=15860
[13] Alexander Medvedev,
Role of Gas in a Sustainable
Energy Future, 2nd Ministerial Gas Forum, Doha, Qatar, 30
November, 2010.
[14] Hassan Hafidh and Benoit Faucon,
Iraq, Iran, Syria Sign $10
Billion Gas-Pipeline Deal, The Wall Street Journal, July 25, 2011,
accessed in
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903591104576467631289250392.html
[15] Daily Star,
Syria Announces Gas Discovery, August 17, 2011, accessed in
http://www.naturalgasasia.com/syria-homs-gas-discovery.
[16] Pepe Escobar,
Why Qatar Wants to Invade Syria,
Asia Times, September 27, 2012, accessed in
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NI28Ak03.html.
[17] Ibid.
[18] F. William Engdahl,
The New Mediterranean Oil and Gas
Bonanza - Part 1: Israel’s Levant Basin—a new geopolitical curse?,
VoltaireNet.org, 20 February, 2012, accessed in
http://www.voltairenet.org/article172827.html
[19]
Ibid.
[20] Ibid.
[21] The Economist,
Turkey’s political in-fighting:
Erdogan at bay: The Turkish prime minister faces new enemies both at
home and abroad, Feb 25th 2012; see also Hillary Clinton,
Remarks With Foreign Minister Davutoglu After Their Meeting, Conrad
Hotel Istanbul, Turkey, August 11, 2012, accessed in
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2012/08/196358.htm
[22] CSP,
Center Report Reveals
Radical Islamist Views and Agenda of Senior State Department Official
Huma Abedin's Mother, Washington, Center for Security Policy, July
22, 2012, accessed in
http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/p19045.xml?genre_id=3. See
also Aaron Klein,
Muslim Brotherhood endorses Obama
faith adviser: Gives thumbs up to 'Sister Mogahed' for Twitter post on
dead journalist, WorldNetDaily, April 29, 2012, accessed on
http://www.wnd.com/2012/04/muslim-brotherhood-endorses-obama-faith-adviser/.
[23] F. William Engdahl,
Moscow’s High Stakes Energy
Geopolitics, Voltairenet.org, 15 November, 2011, accessed in
http://www.voltairenet.org/article171902.html
[24]
Ibid.