[xzins]

Russia and China are not the point. We were in a cold war with them for years, and no one questions the validity of that cold war against them.

My point is that a trade between Iraq & Syria — oil in exchange for weapons storage — would be absolutely sensible. Not only would Syria be able to handle it with no questions asked, but they would also be able to handle it with proper technology & handling procedures.

And not only “could” handle it; they could have EASILY handled it.

[George W. Bush]

Russia and China are not the point. We were in a cold war with them for years, and no one questions the validity of that cold war against them.

My point was that Russian/China being communist was no guarantee of cooperation between the two any more than was the two Ba'athist regimes in Iraq/Syria.

My point is that a trade between Iraq & Syria...

My recollection is that is was the Jordanians who did much more to help evade oil-for-food restrictions on Saddam. And of course Europe and Asia were the customers and trading partners.

[cake_crumb]

The Mideast is not Russia or China and you compare them at your own risk. Iraq and Syria were not enemies. They had a lot of higher level interaction. There WAS an illegal oil pipeline running millios of barrels or oil into Syria for years...UN inspectors somehow missed that.