Three-way imperialist share-grabbing contest in the Middle East

On closer inspection, visits made of late to the region (Middle East) that at first glance appear to be mutually unrelated provide us with a snapshot of the imperialist share-grabbing contest in the region.

The ongoing tension and conflict in the region from Syria to Libya and from the Suez to the Bab-el-Mandeb (Yemen) and the Strait of Hormuz is intricately tied up with the contest between the imperialists to control what continues to be the world’s most important energy reserves and their transit routes.

Hence, the visits made to the region of late are cloaked with meaning as moves by three imperialist powers, the USA, France and Russia, to strengthen their positions in the regional share-grabbing contest.

Let us start with the most recent.

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov conducted a visit, said to be a “surprise” one, to Syria in recent days. This visit by Lavrov comes notably on the heels of talks that he held in Moscow at the invitation of the Putin administration with Syrian Democratic Council Co-Chair Ilham Ehmed and Popular Will Party Leader Kadri Cemil, who were representing the Kurdish autonomous administration in Syria and signed an agreement.

Even if the statements made following the talks Lavrov held with head of state Assad and Foreign Minister Walid Muallem point to continued disagreement between the two countries on certain matters, they also drive home Russia’s determination to implement its strategy.

It is common knowledge that, through the effective intervention it staged in 2015, Russia saw to it that the Assad administration stayed in place and, more importantly, regained sovereignty over a large part of the country. Russia’s concern was clearly its own interests rather than Assad’s because the fall of Syria, the only country where it had a military base outside former Soviet territory (the naval base at Tartus), would amount to defeat from the word go in the contest for sovereignty in the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean. This intervention ended up with Russia not only setting up an air base in the Syrian city of Latakia, but also strengthening its hand in the contest for sovereignty in Libya.

However, despite this support from Russia and the cooperation between the two countries, certain disagreements prevail over particular matters.

Were these to be summarized, in the first place the Syrian administration is troubled by the dragging out of the process in Idlib. However, Russia, not wishing to court confrontation with the Erdoğan administration in Turkey in the regional contest for sovereignty, appears to favour the continuation of the current situation under prevailing conditions.

Secondly, deriving from its relations with Israel, Russia wishes for an ending of Iran’s military presence, especially in the south of Syria. The Syrian administration opposes this out of concerns that this will weaken Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah and thus the strategic cooperation it is pursuing with these forces.

Thirdly, as I have previously pointed out in my articles “Russian Move 1 Against the US Plan in Rojava” and “Russian Move 2 Against the US Plan in Rojava”, Russia wants the Syrian administration to consent to the holding of negotiations with the Kurds and a solution based on autonomy to thwart US efforts to intervene in Syria via the Kurds and moreover to unite the Syrian and Iraqi Kurds on its own political axis. The Syrian administration opposes such a solution for fear of partition in common with other regimes in the region experiencing a Kurdish problem.

As such, Lavrov’s visit can be construed as an effort to bring the Syrian administration, which is enduring hard times especially due to the economic sanctions it faces, round to its own strategy.

France is another force which has courted attention with Macron’s recent string of visits and is trying to steal a lead in the imperialist share-grabbing contest in the region

However much, in common with the US, it supported the forces headed by the Erdoğan administration in Turkey in the initial phases of the intervention in Syria, it has tried and is trying to gain clout through the support it gives the Kurds in its former mandate of Syria in alignment with the shift in the balance of forces in the region and the anti-ISIL position adopted by coalition forces.

On the other hand, Macron visited Lebanon, another ex-French mandate country, in the immediate aftermath of the explosion that hit Beirut on 4 August. Macron staged his second visit avowedly to “support the refounding of Lebanon” on 1 September, the centenary of Lebanon’s coming under French mandate.

A further meeting by Macron that can be subsumed under efforts to intervene in the region was the meeting held a few days ago with the King of Jordan, Abdullah II, at the Elysée Palace where the Palestinian issue was on the table.

One of North Africa’s former colonial countries, France is known to support the Haftar forces in Libya. Over and above being a cheap and easily accessible energy country for France, Libya is also of significance as an important gateway to Africa from the Mediterranean. France continues to be an imperialist force with enduring influence in the strip known as the Sahel traversing Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Sudan south of the Saharan belt. Consequently, Libya and the cooperation it maintains here with Haftar is also of importance to France in terms of combatting radical Islamist forces that it perceives as a threat to its own interests in the region – and France has in fact been cooperating and staging joint operations with the Haftar forces against these groups since 2016.

At the same time, through the energy monopoly Total, France is making its presence felt in the contest to control energy exploration, extraction and transit routes in the Eastern Mediterranean in conjunction with the agreements it has made with the South Cyprus administration. On this basis, it is mired in serious tension with the ruling body in Turkey, with which it has a conflict of interests in Libya and the Eastern Mediterranean.

The pronouncement Macron made last year, “Europe cannot continue to be a ‘minority shareholder’ in the Middle East” actually drives home with abundant clarity what lies behind these efforts of late.

The endeavours and plans of the USA, which does not wish to lose its largely unabated sovereignty in the region, can be summed up as besieging Iran and halting Russia’s advance.

This plan is pursued through efforts to prevent a solution that will weaken it through cooperation with the Kurds in Syria.

However, the crucial point is that the USA wants to develop relations-cooperation between collaborative Arab regimes and Israel and on this basis to stop the Palestine issue from acting as a hindrance to this. Trump’s son-in-law and Consultant Kushner and Foreign Secretary Pompeo made visits to many regional countries during August to foster the implementation of this plan. The agreement reached on “normalization” between the United Arab Emirates and Israel carries great importance for this endeavour. Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia are expected to follow the UAE.

It will be recalled that in January Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu proclaimed a “peace plan” whereby Palestine was recognized as a symbolic statelet, dubbed the “agreement of the century”, and the ambassadors of the UAE, Bahrain and Oman attended this proclamation.

The foundations of this plan were actually laid when Trump visited Saudi Arabian King Salman and made a 350-billion-dollar arms-military cooperation agreement. According to this plan, the Gulf Arab Sunni regimes would be organized into an anti-Iran block around Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and obstacles to cooperation with Israel would be removed.

On just this basis, the increased flow of visiting US officials and the quest for “normalization” between Israel and the Arab regimes in question tie in with US efforts to preserve its position in the regional share-grabbing contest.

In conclusion, lurking behind imperialists’ visits made to the region’s countries and the messages of “peace”, “friendship” and “solidarity” issued on these visits are attempts by the imperialists to strengthen their own positions in the regional share-grabbing contest. Until the peoples of the region align unified in anti-imperialist and democratic-secular struggle, it appears impossible for them to prevent their fates being determined by these reactionary forces.

(Translated by Tim DRAYTON)