Syria’s new position: How Maliki bought Syria’s support?

Con­trary to Sami Moubayed’s arti­cle “Al-Watan:

Dam­as­cus wel­comed the offi­cial sign­ing of an agree­ment between Bagh­dad and Dam­as­cus, enabling the trans­fer of Iraq’s crude oil and gas to the Mediter­ranean coast, through the Syr­ian territory.

Even the government’s spokesman Ali Al-Dabagh before he announced that there is an impor­tant sur­prise in the com­ing days, hinted the pos­si­bil­ity of Maliki’s visit to Dam­as­cus, he stressed on the exten­sion of the oil and gas pipeline link­ing the oil fields of Iraq to the Syr­ian coast.

Syria is in a real cri­sis in liq­uid­ity, fuel-sources, and market-decline, after a Syrian-State deci­sion to smug­gle a huge cap­i­tal abroad for the fear of a “com­ing war”, at the same time weak­en­ing Syria’s econ­omy due to the embargo imposed on Iran (read the scary fig­ures of Syr­ian econ­omy on Kas­sioun).

Since last April, Syr­ian econ­omy has become a “war econ­omy”, to cut costs under the aus­ter­ity program.

How impor­tant is the Syr­ian role?

Add to the report pub­lished today on Egypt­ian news­pa­per Al-Mesryoon:

From Wash­ing­ton Kuwaiti Al-Rai’s cor­re­spon­dent, Hus­sein Abd Al-Hussein wrote the following:

21 months ago, since Obama elected as the new U.S. pres­i­dent, and the U.S. embassy in Dam­as­cus is still with­out an ambas­sador, even after the U.S. admin­is­tra­tion has pro­posed the name Robert Ford. Obama bypassed the Sen­ates in the sum­mer ses­sion to install four nom­i­na­tions blocked by the Con­gress, but he didn’t put the same effort to install Robert Ford ambas­sador in Syria.

Obama’s admin­is­tra­tion real­ized that Syria has no influ­ence in the region, there­fore, the admin­is­tra­tion in Wash­ing­ton con­cluded that there is no point in spend­ing any polit­i­cal efforts, in order to attract Damascus.

Only politi­cians in Riyadh and Beirut are the ones who believe in Syria’s regional role today, which is far from reality.

Syria’s new posi­tion and Maliki

Kuwaiti news­pa­per Al-Jarida, revealed the following:

The new Syr­ian posi­tion is noth­ing more than lift­ing the ban on Maliki, while still sup­port­ing Iyad Allawi for prime minister.

Iran­ian diplo­macy played a role in the flex­i­bil­ity shown by Syria towards Maliki’s nom­i­na­tion, the visit of Ali Akbar Velay­ati, the senior adviser of the supreme leader in mid-August made Syria to accept Al-Maliki.

Prob­a­bly Iran wants to get rid of the bur­den of the large finan­cial aid pro­vides annu­ally to Syria, but the truth is; those who say that Maliki needs Syria (like Sami Moubayed) are wrong, because Maliki has bought the Syr­ian sup­port by mov­ing one of the strate­gic items which Maliki can­celed after the bomb­ings in the Iraqi For­eign Min­istry and other facil­i­ties, which led to cut the rela­tions between the Iraqi gov­ern­ment and Syria.

Yet, the new Syr­ian posi­tion will make the Iraqi sit­u­a­tion more complicated.