US Company Signs Deal for Syrian Oil

Putin’s Shadow Warriors Stake Claim to Syria’s Oil

A Russian company that recently struck a deal with the Syrian government for offshore oil and gas exploration is part of a network of companies that make up the shadowy Russian mercenary group known as Wagner, which has played a pivotal role in Moscow’s destabilizing activities around the world, according to emails and company records seen by Foreign Policy.

The deal with the previously unknown Russian company Kapital, which was ratified by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in March, will theoretically see the Russian company explore for oil and gas in a 2,250-square-kilometer area off the coast of southern Syria. It threatens to cause a dispute with neighboring Lebanon, which has argued the area includes some of its waters.

The deal comes as Moscow seeks to entrench its strategic foothold in Syria and, by extension, further expand its reach in the Eastern Mediterranean. It also underscores how Moscow continues to outsource its trickier foreign-policy objectives to private military contractors who offer a low-risk and versatile means of intervening around the globe while maintaining a thin veneer of plausible deniability. Best known for their mercenary activity, which spans the world from Sudan to Ukraine to Venezuela, Wagner operatives have also sought to exploit lucrative natural resource reserves in fragile states...

I'd love to see countries fight their own civil wars, and hopefully in time people will choose their right leaders...unless there is some strategic reason for us to favor a side, I say let them duke it out inside their own country...

The Inside Story of How Trump ‘Kept the Oil’ in Syria and Lost

When former President Donald Trump said U.S. troops would remain in Syria to “keep the oil” at the end of 2019, the Pentagon scrambled to deny it...

American forces only stayed in Syria to comprehensively defeat ISIS, a spokesman explained; any military presence around the oil fields was purely part of the mission to overcome the so-called Islamic State.

Two years later, the remnants of ISIS are diminished, but American troops are still on the ground, still helping to protect that oil.

The official stance of the White House, the State Department and the Global Coalition to Defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria was then—and remains now—that keeping the oil is not the reason American men and women are still stationed in one of the world’s most treacherous conflicts. U.S. forces and the coalition more broadly “does not provide assistance to any private companies, employees or agents in seeking to develop oil resources NE Syria,” a spokesperson said in March.

But that is not the full story...

Assad Is Friends With the Arab World Again

A vote in Syria is neither secret nor sacrosanct. On May 26, as the regime-orchestrated elections were held, there was little doubt over the return of the incumbent. President Bashar al-Assad would win a fourth term; no one in the country dwelled on the foregone conclusion...

It is, of course, a charade—but one to which Arab countries, especially in the Gulf, seem sympathetic. Syria’s Arab friends are even starting, now that the elections have strengthened Assad’s grip on power, to lobby for a loosening of sanctions in the United States. Assad’s isolation is already ending in the Arab world; the question remains whether rapprochement will follow elsewhere.

Until a few years ago, Assad was still persona non grata in the Arab world. Now he is almost entirely rehabilitated. It seems only a matter of time until he returns as a member of good standing to the Arab League, which suspended Syria’s membership in 2011. Lebanon, Iraq, Algeria, and Sudan had always been his supporters and sought revocation of the ban. But now Syria’s erstwhile opponents, which once rallied against Assad, are also treating him as an ally against the ambitions of non-Arab countries in the region, including Turkey and Iran...

US airstrikes target Iran-backed militias in Syria, Iraq

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military, under the direction of President Joe Biden, carried out airstrikes against what it said were “facilities used by Iran-backed militia groups” near the border between Iraq and Syria, drawing condemnation from Iraq’s military and calls for revenge by the militias.

Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said the militias were using the facilities to launch unmanned aerial vehicle attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq. It was the second time the Biden administration has taken military action in the region since he took over earlier this year.

Kirby said the U.S. military targeted three operational and weapons storage facilities on Sunday night — two in Syria and one in Iraq...

Iraq Condemns Biden's 'Unacceptable' Strikes, Discusses U.S. Military Withdrawal

In a statement sent to Newsweek, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi's office said Monday that Baghdad's National Security Council held an emergency meeting in the wake of Sunday's U.S. targeting of Iraq and Syrian territories on the basis of claims that armed groups backed by Iran used the sites to launch drone attacks against U.S. forces.

"The Ministerial Council for National Security expressed its strong condemnation and censure of the American bombing that targeted a site on our border with Syria," the statement said, "stressing that this attack represents a flagrant violation of Iraqi sovereignty, which is rejected by all international laws and covenants."

The council explained that it "is studying resorting to all available legal options to prevent the recurrence of such attacks that violate Iraq's airspace and territory, in addition to conducting a comprehensive investigation into the circumstances of the accident and its causes, and working to prevent it from recurring in the future."

The council also "affirmed that the government has continuous sessions of dialogue with the American side, which have reached advanced stages and to the level of discussing the logistical details of the withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq, the details of which will be announced later..."

US sanctions hit Syria prisons, abusers including opposition

The Biden administration announced Wednesday its first sanctions on Syria, targeting prison facilities and officials who run them, as well as armed groups, focusing on human rights abuses.

The sanctions announced by the U.S. Treasury are part of Washington’s policy to keep up pressure on the Syrian government led by longtime President Bashar Assad. But signaling a new approach, the administration also targeted two armed groups, widening the net of those impacted by the sanctions. One of the groups was implicated in violating a cease-fire in place since 2020...

The sanctions target eight Syrian prisons, most of them linked to the powerful general and military intelligence agencies, and the generals who administer them. They include one of Syria’s most notorious, the Saydnaya military prison, located in the town of the same name north of the capital, Damascus...