By Peter Lvov
It’s been reported that the leaders of Russia, Turkey and Iran are going to meet in Sochi on November 22 to discuss Syrian conflict settlement matters. This meeting is no way connected with the Syrian National Dialogue Congress, that is going to be held in the future, even though the exact date remains unannounced.
As a matter of fact, the upcoming trilateral meeting looks pretty logical, since Moscow has to inform Ankara and Tehran that it has a new position on the Syrian settlement. This shift became noticeable after the summit in Da Nang, where Trump refused to hold a bilateral meeting with Vladimir Putin. But Foreign Ministers of Russia and US agreed to issue a joint statement on the situation in Syria, that had no mention of Astana talks in it. However, Russia, Turkey and Iran have been both the guarantors sponsors of the peaceful talks that were being held in the capital of Kazakhstan.
But the Russian-American statement says a lot about the Geneva process and the withdrawal of foreign troops from Syria. Namely, Russian, Iranian and Turkish troops. Washington has no intention to leave, even though its troops have no permission to enter Syria’s territory, so they’ve been operating inside Syria illegally. The only excuse they could have to be in Syria could be provided by a UN resolution allowing them to enter Syria, but in the absence of such they are acting in the status of illegal invaders. It must also be remembered that on November 15 the United States announced its intention to create a military base in Syria in the lands controlled by the SDF, following the assumption that all of Syria’s oil fields will fall under the control of Kurdish militants Washington has been sponsoring.
It’s no wonder that Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan was talking with Putin for four hours during his visit to Sochi in mid-November in a bid to clarify the joint US-Russian statement on Syria, asking rhetorical questions about the stay of Russia troops and the motivation behind the six years of Syria’s continuous resistance to the Islamist onslaught?
There’s yet another aspect of the upcoming meeting – the economic one. While ISIS is on its last legs, the process of rebuilding Syria’s economy and infrastructure has to be started, but is going to pay the bills?
Where could Russia find up to a hundred billion dollars to restore the deescalation it is in charge of when this zone has no oil reserves. The reason is quite obvious Russia’s treasury has no spare resources due to the recent fall in oil prices and anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the West.
There is no doubt that Turkey, Iran and Russia were counting on Syria’s oil and gas fields to come under the control of Damascus. But this did not happen, and they were captured by the SDF that are sponsored and supported by the United States.
Similarly, Turkey has resources to restore Syria, especially when at the initial stage there’s going to be a ton of reconstruction expenditures. So Ankara is in no position to restore the norther provinces of Syria that it controls.
Iran also has had financial difficulties lately too, but Tehran has finished products that can be delivered directly to Syria. And acting both from the sense of Shia solidarity and a number of strategic calculations, Iran will help Syria.
Should the EU and the Persian Gulf monarchies are allowed to take part in the restoration of Syria, then the natural question arises: for whose interests has Russia, Iran and Turkey been fighting in Syria? Will Russia be forced to surrender Syria to those states that have done everything to destroy it, namely to pro-Washington and pro-Saudi forces. They have the money, technology, products to invest in Syria and then cash in big on it.
So the leaders of Russia, Turkey and Iran have a lot to discuss in Sochi. And Erdogan is in the most advantageous situation among three – he will get his piece of the pie due to Turkey’s status of a NATO state.
The concerns of those who are about to meet in Sochi clear and easy to understand. They have a lot in common and a lot to argue about. Russia wants to gain a foothold in Syria, given the peculiar geographic location of the country. It could also be beneficial to build a stretch of a gas pipeline, stretching to the Iranian South Pars deposits. This stretch could transport Russian gas to Europe through the Mediterranean via the so-called Turkish flow, along with the gas from Iraq and Azerbaijan. And then Moscow would finally be able to kiss the major headache of transporting gas via Ukrainian goodbye. While being more firmly entrenched in Syria, Russia could more actively cooperate with Iraq, Jordan, Israel and even Saudi Arabia. And, of course, with Lebanon.
But the problem of the joint statement in Da Nang is now looming on the horizon, since it has once again shown that Washington’s is after Russia, and that it would do anything to replace President Vladimir Putin and his entourage with a regime loyal to Washington. It applies its pressure through sanctions, Ukraine, North Korea and Syria – from all directions. They want Putin to surrender his right to be elected on the elections of 2018 or even try to block from within by a pro-American Russian elites, that grew dissatisfied with the possibility of their accounts being arrested in the West. The White House can also try to exploit the frustration of Russia’s military, that is dissatisfied with the developments in Donbass and Syria.
And the Russian leader, especially after Da Nang, understands this perfectly. Washington is equally eager to destroy pro-Iranian elites in Damascus ever since Assad’s brother Maher al-Assad was relieved of command of the Republican Guards.
The failure of the upcoming meeting in Sochi will only be beneficial to the United States and its allies, primarily Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Syrian Kurds. Should Russia withdraw its troops from Syria now, then Iran and Hezbollah will not last for long. In such a scenario, Iran will have to send several divisions of its elite troops armed with heavy military equipment to Syria. And Tel-Aviv will do anything to prevent this scenario from taking place, literally everything. Should things go south, Turkey won’t support Iran in Syria without Russia’s presence since it is the only link between Ankara and Tehran today. It is clear that can result in the rapid fall of Assad’s government and Syria will fall into the hands the armed opposition, sponsored by the United States and Saudi Arabia. Turkey could still count on maintaining its presence in the north in the Turkoman regions. The Alawites will not be allowed to create their enclave in Latakia and along the Mediterranean coast – since they do not have enough forces to do so. And the Kurds will be able to create autonomy in the north-east of the country, while retaining oil deposits. As for Israel, it will be allowed to control the Golan Heights for centuries to come. Saudi Arabia and the GCC will take this as payment for the military support of Tel-Aviv.
So the upcoming discussions in Sochi are going to be tough. And, taking into account the format of the meeting, it is clear that difficult decisions are to be made. Otherwise, why would Russia fight for Syria for so long, spending billions of dollars on this struggle, only to allow the US to create a military base and occupy Syria’s oil field? But not to return to the past. Mistakes were made during military operations in Syria and mistakes were made in Astana. As the factor of the SDF and Washington was not properly taken into account. This all delayed the military operation. It was imperative to destroy the terrorists and the armed opposition, instead of engaging them in all sorts of negotiations.