Oil markets have been tetchy of late, seeing sharp upticks on the back of the Israel-Palestine conflict. But oil bulls are watching the wrong war. Forget Arab-Israeli antics, it’s the continuing deterioration in Syria and the prospect of regional quagmire, that poses far greater threats to Middle East oil supplies.
The lazy assumption that the Assad regime would go the same way as other Arab Nationalist Republics and fall under the weight of its own military contradictions simply hasn’t happened. Despite widespread territorial losses to the opposition ‘Free Syrian Army’, Assad’s hold on Damascus remains strong; his grip on the Syrian military, even stronger. Neither side can win – and neither side is willing to lose – let alone negotiate to end the 19 month long conflict. With stalemate likely to ensue, it comes as no surprise that Syria increasingly resembles a medieval battleground for regional influence, rather than an internal dispute for Syrian’s to work out.
On one side, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Libya all want Assad gone, providing splintered opposition groups with cash and arms to keep pressure on Damascas.Egypt is hedging its bets by doing the ‘diplomacy thing’; while Iran (and a deeply pernicious Russia), continues to directly support the Assad regime. In what’s become a fully-fledged battle for the Levant, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are more than happy to spin the conflict into a Sunni-Shia issue, directly pitting Gulf Monarchies against the regional influence of Iran. Salafist Islamist foot soldiers are doing most of the internecine fighting. And true enough, a sectarian angle is certainly in play, but it shouldn’t be overhyped from Tehran’s perspective. Theocracy is ‘nice’, but power politics holds the Iran-Syria relationship together with the Ba’ath party. Syria has become the ‘swing state’ where regional ascendancy will be won or lost across the Middle East. No one is in any doubt of that geopolitical fact.
As brutal as the indirect battles have been (the UN places the death toll at over 30,000 people and 1.3 million displaced), no one can really take the upper hand. The Arab League is never going to stage a direct invasion, any more than a sanctions stricken Iran is going to make any drastic move before its own presidential elections are out the way in June 2013. The Israelis will moan about chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria, but they’d hardly want to open a ‘war’ on two (or more) fronts. That’s while America and Europe are going to sit this one out, exhausted from Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. That doesn’t leave much, other than the one state that stands to lose most from the Syrian imbroglio: Turkey.
Turkey was supposed to be ‘the way of the future’ for post-revolutionary Arab states, but Syria’s demise has given Ankara a ‘bad neighbourhood’ problem. As long as Assad stays in power, President Erdogan’s plans for economic integration with its southern Arab neighbours will not only be a non-starter, Ankara could end up with a failed state along its southern border. Instability will spread into Lebanon and Iraq, not to mentioned renewed vigour of the Kurdish campaign in Turkey as a direct result of Syrian military withdrawal along its border. Simply put, protracted war in Syria is a core concern to Turkish sovereignty.
Take a look at the energy map, and things get markedly worse. As President Assad ironically picked up, Turkey was always going to be the vital regional energy hub, linking up energy trade across the ‘Four Seas’ spanning the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf / Arabian Sea, and the Caspian. It was the transit key to getting hydrocarbons out of the Caspian via the Caucuses; unlocking Iraqi potential to feed multiple markets; bringing Iranian supplies towards Europe; and even offering Russia gas outlets towards the Pacific Basin. But for this ‘energy continuum’ to work, Turkey not only needs to be internally secure, it needs to be on good terms with all the states involved. The current state of play in Damascus makes that structurally impossible. Scorched earth equals stranded energy. Everyone loses out.
How long this unedifying game goes on remains to be seen. But given NATO has agreed to place Patriot missiles on Turkey’s southern border, gives us an idea of the stakes involved. That’s principally as a defensive measure against Syria mortars, but if things continue to take a turn for the worse, how long Turkey keeps its powder dry and troops at bay, is anyone’s guess. No one wants to open Pandora’s Box by invading Syria, but Turkey may eventually be left with no choice. Not if it wants to be a beneficiary of Levantine regional power, rather than a perennial casualty, as events in Palestine and far more importantly, Syria, currently attest. That’s the real Middle East crisis oil markets need to be watching right now: Damascus, Damascus, Damascus…
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