There is
a hidden thin red thread connecting the recent US Congress’ sanctions against
Iran and now the Russian Federation, with the decision of Saudi Arabia and
other Gulf monarchies to sanction Qatar. That red thread has nothing to do with
a fight against terrorism and everything to do with who will control the
largest natural gas reserves in the world as well as who will dominate the
world market for that gas.
For more
or less the past Century, since 1914, the world has been almost continuously at
war over control of oil. Gradually with the adoption of clean energy policies
in the European Union and most especially in China’s agreeing to significantly
cut CO2 emissions by reducing coal generation, itself a political act not a
scientific one, as well as advances in natural gas transport technologies,
notably in the liquefaction of natural gas or LNG, natural gas has finally
become a globally traded market as is oil. With this development, we now are in
an era not only of wars for control of major oil reserves around the world. Now
we have the dawn of the age of natural gas wars. Fasten your seatbelts, ladies,
and gentlemen.
In terms
of geopolitical actors, no political power has been more responsible for
launching the recent undeclared gas wars than the corrupt Washington cabal that
makes policy on behalf of the so-called deep state interests. This began
markedly with the Obama Presidency and is continuing with a vengeance under the
current Trump-Tillerson dog-n-pony show. Donald Trump’s recent trip to Riyadh
and Tel Aviv to nudge along the idea of a Sunni Arab “NATO” to fight
“terrorism,” which Washington now defines as Iran, has ignited a new phase in
the emerging US global gas wars.
Burning
the house to roast the pig
The Trump
Administration policy in the Middle East–and there is a clear policy, rest
assured–might be compared to that of the ancient Chinese fable about the farmer
who burnt down his house in order to roast a pig. In order to control the
emerging world energy market around “low-CO2″ natural gas, Washington has
targeted not only the world’s largest gas reserve country, Russia. She is now
targeting Iran and Qatar. Let’s look more closely at why.
I’ve
written before about the infamous meeting on March 15, 2009, between then-Qatar
Emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani in Qatar with Syria’s President Bashar
al-Assad, at that time still considered a reliable friend of the Emir.
Reportedly when Sheikh Hamad proposed to Assad construction of a gas pipeline
from Qatar’s huge Persian Gulf gas field through Syria’s Aleppo Province on to
Turkey aimed at the huge EU gas market, Assad declined, deferring to his
long-standing good relations with Russia in gas issues and to not wanting to
undercut Russian gas exports to the EU with Qatari gas.
That
Persian Gulf gas field, the Qatari part called North Dome and the Iranian
called South Pars, is estimated to be the largest single gas field in the
world. As fate would have it, the field straddles the territorial waters
between Qatar and Iran.
Then in
July 2011, reportedly with Moscow’s nod of approval, the governments of Syria,
Iraq and Iran signed a different gas pipeline agreement called “Friendship
Pipeline.” That agreement called for the construction of a 1,500 km long gas
pipeline to bring the untapped vast Iranian South Pars gas to the emerging EU
market via Iraq, Syria and to the Mediterranean by way of Lebanon. That
pipeline is obviously on hold since NATO and the Wahhabite reactionary Gulf
states opted to destroy Syria after 2011. They opted to destroy Assad and a
unified Syrian state through various false flag terror entities they have
variously named Al Qaeda in Iraq and Syria, then called the Islamic State in
Iraq and Syria, then simply IS, or in Arabic DAESH. For NATO and the Gulf Arab
states an Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline would have changed the energy
geopolitical map of Eurasia, and the political influence of Iran over Saudi
Wahhabite domination.
Not
surprising, when the mysterious ISIS exploded onto the scene in 2014, it moved
to occupy Aleppo where the pipeline to Turkey from Qatar was planned. Coincidence?
Not very likely.
The
proposed Qatar-Syria-Turkey-EU pipeline (blue) would go through Aleppo Province
and the alternative Iran-Iraq-Syria (red) via Lebanon to the EU gas markets.
The year
2011 was the point that Qatar began pouring as much as $3 billion into her war
against Assad, backed then by Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni Gulf Arab
states, and then also by Turkey, which saw its geopolitical European and Asian
gas hub ambitions vanishing. The very next month after the announcement of the
Iran-Syria “Friendship Pipeline” agreement, in August, 2011, in the UN Security
Council the US demanded that Syria’s Assad step down. US Special Forces and CIA
began covertly training “Syrian opposition” terrorists recruited from around
the Sunni Wahabite-influenced world at secret NATO bases in Turkey and Jordan
to drive Assad out and open the door for a Saudi-controlled puppet regime in
Damascus friendly to their gas pipeline ambitions with Qatar.
Geopolitical
stupidity in Washington and Riyadh
How does
that all fit the demonization today by Trump and by Saudi Prince Salman of Iran
as “the number one sponsor of terrorism” and Qatar as a backer of terrorism?
It all
fits together when we realize that the current Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin
Hamad Al Thani, son of Sheikh Hamad, being a more pragmatic sort and realizing
that Qatari dreams of a pipeline through Aleppo into Turkey on to the EU had
gone up in flames once Russia stepped into the Syrian war, quietly began talks
with…Teheran.
This past
spring, Qatar began talks with Teheran about finding a compromise on the
exploitation of the shared South Pars-North Dome gas field. Qatar lifted its
moratorium on exploiting the field and carried out discussions with Iran over
its joint development. Reportedly Qatar and Iran had come to an agreement on
joint construction of a Qatar-Iranian gas pipeline from Iran to the
Mediterranean or Turkey that will also carry Qatari gas to Europe. In exchange,
Doha agreed to end its support for terrorism in Syria, a huge blow to the
Trump-Saudi plans to balkanize a destroyed Syria and control the gas flows of
the region.
To
prevent that geopolitical catastrophe as Washington and Riyadh and Tel Aviv
view it, the unholy three have teamed up to blame Iran and Qatar, ironically
home to the Pentagon’s most important bases in the entire Middle East. Qatar
they announced is the ‘Evil Knievel’ of world terrorism, with US Defense
Secretary “Mad Dog” Mattis actually declaring that Iran was the world’s “biggest
state sponsor of terrorism,” while Qatar’s crime allegedly was as a key financier of
Hamas, Al Qaeda and ISIS. That was maybe then. Today Qatar is pursuing
other aims.
Washington
conveniently whitewashes the role of Wahhabite Saudi Arabia which has
reportedly funneled more than $100 billion in recent years to build networks of
fanatic Jihadi terrorists from Kabul to China, from Bosnia-Herzegovina to
Kosovo and Syria and even in Iran and Russia.
Doomed to
Fail
Like most
recent neo-con Washington strategies, the Qatar-Teheran demonization and
sanctions is blowing back in the faces of its backers. Iran responded
immediately with offers of emergency food and other aid to break the blockade,
reminiscent in a very different context of
the 1948-49 Berlin Airlift.
As well
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has just met with the Qatari Foreign
Minister in Moscow and China and the Chinese
Navy has just landed in an Iran port to engage in joint Iran-China naval
exercises in the hyper-strategic oil chokepoint at the Strait of Hormuz. The
Strait of Hormuz between Oman and Iran at the opening from the Persian Gulf to
the Sea of Oman is undeniably the most strategic water choke-point in today’s
world with more than 35% of all seaborne oil passing through it to China and other
world markets.
Iran is a
candidate to become a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization now
that US and EU sanctions have been semi-lifted, and is already an invited
strategic participant in China’s One Belt, One Road, earlier known as the “New
Economic Silk Road,” far and away the world’s most impressive infrastructure
project to create economic linkages across the states of Eurasia including the
Middle East.
Qatar too
is no stranger to either China or Russia. In 2015 Qatar was officially
recognized by the Peoples’ Bank of China as the first Middle East center
for clearing transactions in the Chinese currency, the yuan, now accepted by
the IMF in its SDR basket of currencies, a major boost to international
acceptance of the renminbi or yuan. That renminbi clearing status allows Qatari
companies to settle their trade with China, for example in natural gas,
directly in renminbi. Already Qatar exports significant LNG to China.
According
to recent reports out of Amsterdam, Qatar is already selling China gas
denominated in renminbi rather than US dollars. If true, that spells a major
tectonic shift in the power of the US dollar, the financial basis of its
ability to wage wars everywhere and run a federal deficit and public debt over
$19 trillion. Iran already refuses dollars for its oil and Russia sells its gas
to China in rubles or yuan. Were that to significantly shift in favor of
international bilateral trades in renminbi or Russian rubles and other
non-dollar currencies, that would be Twilight for America’s global superpower.
Lights out, basta!
It ain’t
easy to be the world’s Sole Superpower today, not at all as it was, say, in the
1990’s. Not even psychopathic generals with nicknames like Mad Dog can scare
others into falling back in line when Washington barks her orders. Back as
recent as the 1990s it was, so to say, a piece of cake. Run a war in
Yugoslavia, destabilize the Soviet Union after a long war in Afghanistan, loot
the former Communist economies of all Eastern Europe. Worse still, the world
seems not to appreciate Washington’s wars of destruction anymore. Now that’s
real ingratitude after all that Washington has done for them in recent years…
Could it
be that the American Century, viewed by future historians, will have its
obituary written around the time in 2017 when Washington lost control of the
“strategic prize” as Dick Cheney called the energy-rich Middle East?
Electronic analytical journal New Eastern Outlook 2010-2017.
Republishing of the articles is welcomed with reference to NEO. The views of
the authors do not necessarily coincide with the opinion of the editorial
board.
