Syria uses Lebanon’s energy crisis to break international isolation

The protocol was well oiled for the first visit of a Lebanese government delegation to Damascus, Saturday, September 4, after ten years of hiatus during the Syrian war. If it’s not “Forgetting” of the Lebanese flag during the meeting between the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Zeina Akar, and her Syrian counterpart, Fayçal Mekdad. Sure of his actions since he reconquered two-thirds of Syria, President Bashar Al-Assad could savor the beginning of the concretization of the efforts made, with his Russian ally, to extricate himself from his international isolation.

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The energy crisis that Lebanon is going through, long treated as a vassal by Damascus, has opened a breach. In giving the green light to the project to bring Egyptian gas and Jordanian electricity to Lebanon, via Syria, with the support of the World Bank, Washington signaled its willingness to adjust the sanctions provided for, within the framework of the “Caesar” law of 2019, against any natural or legal person doing business with the Damascus regime or contributing to the reconstruction of the country. The four Arab partners met again on Wednesday in Amman to discuss the technical aspect and establish a roadmap.

“Signals from the Gulf”

“The vector of reconstruction, the increasingly weakened European will to condition it on a political solution, the question of refugees, the collapse of Lebanon which makes Syria a substitute market: all of this is crystallized here. It is the crowning of a certain Syrian resilience, of signals from the Gulf in favor of a re-engagement with Damascus, which the Lebanese have finally integrated, and of a fundamental movement in the region since the change of administration in Washington and the disengagement from Afghanistan, which gives rise to more American permissiveness ”, analyzes Joseph Bahout, director of the Issam-Fares Institute for Public Policy, at the American University of Beirut.

On August 22, 2021, the leader of the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, promises Iranian oil shipments to Lebanon in a televised speech.

The coup of the head of Hezbollah gave a boost to the project. Realizing his calls to turn to the East to counter the “American embargo” which, according to him, was the source of the Lebanese crisis, Hassan Nasrallah announced on August 19 that an Iranian fuel freighter was heading for Lebanon. In response, the Lebanese presidency revealed that the Americans were ready to help Lebanon import Jordanian electricity through Syria. The confirmation provided, on the Saudi channel Al-Arabiya, by the American ambassador in Beirut, Dorothy Shea, that “The will was there so that [le projet] to become true “, has taken on the appearance of a war of words that the pro-Iranian Shiite movement has been able to exploit to its advantage.

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