Posted on 05/14/2025 1:22:30 PM PDT by RandFan
Donald Trump has said his administration is now exploring the possibility of normalising relations with Syria - his comments coming shortly after he met Syria's interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, whose forces ended the decades-long dictatorship of the Assad family.
The extraordinary encounter, unthinkable just months ago, was short but significant.
"I think he has got the potential," Trump remarked after his meeting in Riyadh, 37 minutes long, with the former Syrian fighter formerly linked to Al-Qaeda.
The $10m US bounty on his head was only lifted in December.
Video footage of their conversation in a lavish Saudi royal palace showed some initial awkwardness as they spoke through a translator.
A beaming Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammad bin Salman, sat next to them. The Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan joined them by telephone.
Trump acknowledged it was these two leaders who had convinced him to also lift the US's punishing Syria sanctions.
His sudden announcement on Tuesday night at a major US-Saudi investment forum in Riyadh won him a standing ovation. It was a volte-face after his many previous posts on social media that the US had "no interest in Syria".
"Tough guy, very strong past," is how Trump later described Sharaa to journalists travelling with his high-powered American delegation on his first official four-day tour.
It was a very Trump gloss about Sharaa's old links to al-Qaeda. His Islamist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), was al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria until he severed ties in 2016. HTS is still designated as a terrorist organisation by the UN, US and UK.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Facts:
Syria — oil reserves 2.5 billion barrels, roughly same as Yemen, tiny fractions of most of the Middle east. Very small potatoes
Output 40K barrels/day. 14 million/year. 2.5B/14M = 178 yrs. Ramp production X 10, 17 yrs remaining — and 400K/day is also small potatoes. You get that from a few wells offshore Louisiana. Syria’s oil is inconsequential
Gas reserves — 0.3 Trillion cubic meters. 1/2 Israel’s offshore Leviathon field. Output 3 billion cubic meter/yr.
Context, US consumption is 1.1 TRILLION cubic meters/yr
About 15 yrs ago Ukraine hated Syria. Syria was the only obstacle to a gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkey (and onwards to Europe). This would erase the Ukraine transit fee of Gazprom flow to Europe. So Ukraine hated that Assad sometimes tried to tease his willingness blah blah.
But now, times changed. Now the Leviathon offshore Israel is in progress. It will ship direct to Europe, bypassing Turkey and Syria both.
So Syria . . . just can’t win.
Brought to you by the democrats.
https://res.cloudinary.com/aenetworks/image/upload/c_fill,w_1920,h_960,g_auto/dpr_auto/f_auto/q_auto:eco/v1/syria-civil-war-getty-462518530?_a=BAVAZGDX0
It certainly helps to build cities if you have a small population and a $gazillion worth of oil to build it with.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.