Regional Powers and the Wars in Iraq
The geopolitical objectives of the US, Russia and China in the Persian Gulf, which I just described, is the first geopolitical axis that should be taken into account in order to understand the Middle East. The second geopolitical axis that must be taken into account are the objectives of the rich in oil and natural gas countries of the region. The very rich countries of the Persian Gulf are Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Qatar, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates, as you can see in the two following tables of the US Energy Information Administration.
Richest Countries in Natural Gas Reserves (Page 21 of the following link.
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http://www.eia.gov/countries/analysisbriefs/Iran/iran.pdf
Richest Countries in Oil Reserves (page 10 of the following link)
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http://www.eia.gov/countries/analysisbriefs/Iran/iran.pdf
Until about a decade ago, before Saddam Hussein was overthrown, there were three main blocks in the Persian Gulf. The first one was Saudi Arabia with her allies i.e. the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait. These countries were participating in the Gulf Cooperation Council, which among other things, was a military doctrine against Iran and Iraq.
The second block was Iraq. In Iraq the majority of the population are Shia Muslims, but Saddam Hussein, the country's former dictator, was a Sunni Muslim. Saddam Hussein did not care too much about religion, because he was a national socialist leader, like Qaddafi in Libya, Assad in Syria, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and others. National socialists believe in a secular state, contrary to the Islamist leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iran, who believe in a religious state and the Islamic law. National Socialism is a combination of nationalism and socialism, while communism, at least in theory, believes in socialism without national borders. National socialists believe in the dominance of a national working class, while communists believe in the dominance of an international working class.
The third main block in the Persian Gulf were the Iranian Islamists, with Syria as their main ally.
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The Saudis were in very bad terms with Iraq and Saddam Hussein, but Iran was an even greater enemy for them. Saddam Hussein was the Iraqi leader during the brutal Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988. The Saudis and their allies were funding Saddam Hussein during this war, because they considered Iran as their main enemy. Actually that was the reason that in 1991, during the military operation Desert Storm, after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the Americans, the Saudis and their allies, did not overturn Saddam Hussein, literally stopping outside Bagdad.
As you can read at the following CNN article, titled “Massive firestorm targets Iraqi leadership”, March 2003, the Americans and their allies had destroyed the Iraqi army, and needed 2 to 4 days to enter Bagdad. And yet they decided to stop without overturning Saddam.
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With Iraqi resistance nearing collapse, Bush declared a ceasefire on February 28, ending the Persian Gulf War. According to the peace terms that Hussein subsequently accepted, Iraq would recognize Kuwait‘s sovereignty and get rid of all its weapons of mass destruction (including nuclear, biological and chemical weapons). In all, an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 Iraqi forces were killed, in comparison with only 300 coalition troops.
Rodgers, who is accompanying the 3rd Squadron of the 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment, lead element of the 3rd Infantry Division, said the U.S. forces could reach Baghdad in two to four days. (Slide show, On the scene)
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/03/21/sprj.irq.war.main/
Why did the US and their allies decide not to overturn Saddam Hussein? The reason was that by overturning Saddam Hussein, it would be easier for Iran to gain influence in Iraq, because the majority of the Iraqi population are Shia Muslims, and the same is true for Iran. If Iraq was to fall in the Iranian sphere of influence, the Iranians would reach the Saudi borders, since Iraq and Saudi Arabia are neighbouring countries.
I believe this is also the main reason that Saddam Hussein had the nerve to ignore the U.S., the Saudis and their allies and invade Kuwait. He knew that it would simply make things worse for the Americans and the Saudis to overturn him. He also had a strong army and he decided to take his chances and go for the oil of Kuwait. And Saddam was right. He did not manage to control the oil of Kuwait for more than a year, but his opponents did not overturn him even though he set Kuwait's oil fields on fire before retreating, and even though he spilled tons of oil in the Persian Gulf, in order to burn any American troops that would attempt to invade Iraq from the sea. And yet the Americans and their allies decided not to touch him.
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As you can read in the following CNN article, titled “Kuwait still recovering from Gulf War fires”, January 2003, Saddam Hussein sent engineers to set Kuwait's oil fields on fire, and it took seven months before these fires were finally extinguished. Over 1 billion barrels of oil were burnt in these fires. Saddam was accusing Kuwait of producing too much oil in order to keep the price of oil low, which he perceived as an oil war on Iraq.
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In the waning days of the Persian Gulf War, as Iraqi forces retreated to Baghdad, Saddam Hussein sent a team of engineers into the Kuwaiti oil fields and blew up hundreds of wells. Over the next seven months, more than 1 billion barrels of oil went up in flames, and Kuwait and much of the Persian Gulf was engulfed in a poisonous smoke, creating a large-scale environmental disaster.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/01/03/sproject.irq.kuwait.oil.fires/
Even though the United Stated decided not to overturn Saddam in 1991, they had no problem of doing so in 2003. Why? What was different in 2003? The difference in 2003 was that Saudi Arabia was no longer the ally she used to be for the Americans in 1991. The Americans blame the Saudis for the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Centre. Fifteen out of nineteen terrorists of the 9-11 attack were Saudis as you can read at the last part of the following CNN article, titled “September 11th Hijackers Fast Facts”, September 2014.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/27/us/september-11th-hijackers-fast-facts/
The Americans are not the good customer they used to be for the Saudis. They do not buy as much oil as they did in the past. At the same time, due to Saudi Arabia's alliance with US, China has stronger connections with Iran. Iran has been the traditional US rival in the region, and as expected Iran was the country mainly approached by China. This is a very big problem for Saudi Arabia, a country that counts on China for her future sales, and therefore seeks a stronger connection with China. As you can read in the following article from the site of the state owned China Network Television CNTV, titled “Closer military ties between China, Saudi Arabia”, February 2012, the Saudis are looking for closer military ties with the Chinese.
http://english.cntv.cn/program/newsupdate/20130402/106790.shtml
As you can read in the following article of the Wall Street Journal, titled “Saudi Arabia, China Sign Nuclear Cooperation Pact”, January 2012, Saudi Arabia wants China to develop her nuclear program. This has very important implications in the American-Saudi relations, since China will be the major rival of the US in the 21st century.
http://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970204468004577164742025285500
The Saudis and the Chinese have jointly made multi-billion dollar investments in the energy sector, as you can read in the following Bloomberg article, titled “Sinopec Buys Saudi Yanbu Refinery Stake for $562 Million”, October 2014.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-30/sinopec-to-buy-saudi-yanbu-refinery-stake-from-parent.html
What I am saying is that since the US is no longer the best customer for Saudi Arabia, and with China's role as a buyer and as an investor in the region increasing, the Saudi-American relations cannot be what they once were. It should be very natural to expect some members of the Saudi elites to see the US as an obstacle to their relations with the Chinese. Moreover the Saudis always accuse the Americans for not solving the Arab-Israeli conflict, something that the Iranians have always used in order to attack Saudi Arabia as a US ally, thus increasing the Iranian appeal in the Arab and Muslim populations.
Therefore the Americans did not hesitate to take Saddam Hussein out, since they care much less about Saudi Arabia. The American military bases have been moved to Qatar in 2003. By overturning Saddam Hussein, a strong autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan was created in Northern Iraq. Iraqi Kurds are the majority of the population in Northern Iraq, and they are very friendly towards the West. Moreover in the past they have been severely oppressed by Saddam Hussein. Kurdistan lies in four countries, Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria (see following map).
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In addition, an Iraqi Kurdistan not controlled by the Iraqi government, could in the future supply the Nabucco pipeline and Europe with natural gas and oil, reducing the Russian influence in Europe. The region of Iraqi Kurdistan is one of the richest regions in the world in terms of oil and natural gas. As long as Saddam Hussein was in power, the West could not buy Iraqi oil, because Saddam would use the revenues to buy Russian arms. That's the reason the West introduced the “oil for food programs”, according to which the West was buying Iraqi oil in exchange for food and medicine, so that Saddam could not use the money to buy Russian arms.
But nobody cares if the Iraqi Kurds use their oil revenues to buy arms, since they are allies of the Western world. Iraqi Kurds are already exporting oil through Turkey, something that infuriates the Iraqi government of the south, as you can read at the following Reuters article, titled “Iraqi Kurds sell third major oil cargo, fourth heads to Croatia”, August 2014.
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Iraqi Kurdistan has delivered its third major cargo of crude oil out of a Turkish port and a fourth is sailing to Croatia, showing the autonomous region is finding more buyers despite legal pressure from Baghdad and setbacks in the United States.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/08/15/iraq-security-oil-kurds-idUKL6N0QL31Q20140815
Moreover the overturn of Saddam Hussein, and his replacement with a pro-Western government, allowed the economic sanctions against Iraq to be abolished, something that greatly increased the Iraqi oil production and kept oil prices low. The Americans had always counted on Saudi Arabia for keeping oil prices low. With the relations between the two countries deteriorating, the Americans could no longer count on the Saudis. An increase in Iraqi oil production would help the cause of low oil prices. One should never forget that Al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister of the period 2006-2014, was pro— American, even though he was an Iranian ally, and the Saudis were accusing him of being an Iranian agent.
Moreover the increase in Iraqi oil production, reduced competition between USA and China. As you can read in the following article of the New York Times, titled “China Is Reaping Biggest Benefits of Iraq Oil Boom”, June 2013, China has greatly benefited from Saddam's overturn, since state owned Chinese energy companies are taking 50% of the Iraqi oil production.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/world/middleeast/china-reaps-biggest-benefits-of-iraq-oil-boom.html?pagewanted=all
At the following article of the Washington Post, titled “Why it's good news for the U.S. that China is snapping up Iraq's oil”, June 2013, you will read that even though China is taking the biggest part of the Iraqi oil, the US is still better off, because the Iraqi oil helps in keeping oil prices down, and because the increased oil production reduces competition between USA and China in other rich in oil countries.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/06/03/why-its-good-news-for-the-u-s-that-china-is-snapping-up-iraqs-oil/
Therefore the overturn of Saddam Hussein was a very positive thing for the Americans. The only negative consequence was that a large part of Iraq came under Iranian influence, but since the Saudis were not a reliable US ally anymore, that was not a big problem for the Americans. Actually it cannot be a coincidence that it was in 2001, after the 9-11 attack, that the US tried for the first time the Qatari air bases, and in 2003 the Americans moved their headquarters from the Saudi base Prince Sultan to the Al Udeid base in Qatar.
In the 16th paragraph of the following New York Times article, titled “U.S. to Move Air Base to Qatar”, April 2003, you can read that the Americans used the Qatari bases for the first time in 2001. The article also says Qatar paid 1 billion dollars built its air bases, in order to lure the US to move its headquarters there.
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The United States is shifting its major air operations center for the Middle East from Saudi Arabia to Qatar, the first step in what is likely to be a significant reduction of American forces in Saudi Arabia and a realignment of American military presence in the region, senior military officials said today.
The day-to-day responsibility for overseeing hundreds of air missions in Iraq and the Middle East will be transferred this week from Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to a backup headquarters the United States built last year at Al Udeid Air base in Qatar, senior officials said.
A formal decision about whether to make this arrangement permanent has yet to be made by President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
But with the war in Iraq winding down and continued unease in Saudi Arabia about a large American military presence in the kingdom, American commanders believe that the time is right to see if the Qatar base can serve as the United States Central Command's air operations center of the future.
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Senior Bush administration officials sought to emphasize that shifting the location of the command center should not be interpreted as an indication that the United States was ending its military relationship with Saudi Arabia, which has involved efforts to train Saudi forces, as well as the use of Saudi air bases.
'We are not leaving Saudi Arabia,' a senior administration official said today.
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Qatar built Al Udeid Air Base in 1996 at the cost of more than $1 billion. The nation did not have an air force at the time, but it wanted to encourage the United States military to base its aircraft there.
The United States did not begin to use the base until Sept. 29, 2001, when the Air Force needed to get aircraft in position for its war against the Taliban and the Al Qaeda terrorist network in Afghanistan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/28/international/worldspecial/28BASE.html
In his article, titled “The real target of the war in Iraq was Saudi Arabia”, August 2003, Jeffrey Sacks, a professor at Columbia University, writes that the US secret services take it for granted that behind the 9-11 attack were the Saudis, and they attacked Iraq in order to find new grounds that were friendly to them, in order to overcome their problems with the Saudis. The friendly region to the US could be the Iraqi Kurdistan.
He writes in the first paragraph:
“The crucial question regarding Iraq is not whether the motives for war were disguised, but why. The argument that Iraq posed a grave and imminent threat was absurd to anybody not under the spell of round-the-clock White House and 10 Downing Street spin. But the actual reasons for launching the war remain obscure. The plot thickened with the release last month of the US Congressional investigation into September 11. It seems increasingly likely that Iraq was attacked because Saudi Arabia was deeply implicated in the terrorist attacks”.
And he continues in the 6th paragraph:
―Second, a substitute had to be found for the US military bases in Saudi Arabia. Like Saudi oil, the bases too were now under threat, especially because the US presence in the Saudi kingdom was known to be the principal irritant for al-Qaeda. Iraq would become a new base of US military operations. Paul Wolfowitz, deputy defence secretary, has already explained during an interview with Vanity Fair‖.
http://www.earth.columbia.edu/sitefiles/file/Sachs%20Writing/2003/FT_2003_RealTargetWarwithSaudiArabia_08_13_03.PDF
Iraq, after Saddam Hussein, should not be seen as an independent block but as an Iranian ally. However a third block was created and that was Qatar. Qatar is the third richest country in the world in terms of natural gas reserves, and it also has some descent quantities of oil. Once the Americans moved their military bases there, Qatar started following an independent foreign policy without having to consult Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates anymore.
Qatar is in the middle of Saudi Arabia and Iran, both geographically and metaphorically. Qatar and Iran share the richest natural gas field in the world, namely the South Pars/North Field. The Qatari part of the field is the North Fields, which holds almost all of Qatar's natural gas, and South Pars is the Iranian part, which holds about 2/3 of the Iranian natural gas reserves.
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As you can read at the following Reuters article, titled “Gas-rich Qatar annoys Arabs with pro-Iran policy”, April 2009, the Arab countries are annoyed with Qatar's good relations with Iran. Moreover the article says that due to the geography of the South Pars/ North Field, the Iranians could easily knock out the Qatari economy if they wanted to.
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With its liquefied natural gas investments now paying dividends, Qatar has the second highest per capita income in the world, although its population has doubled in five years to 1.5 million. Only 250,000 of those are nationals.
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'Inviting Ahmadinejad was promotion, not mediation. But you only have to look at the map of the north fields to understand it: the Iranians could knock the economy out for 10 years easily,' the diplomat said.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2009/04/01/us-qatar-iran-arabs-idUKTRE53035W20090401
But we should not see Qatar as an ally of Iran. The two countries have many differences too, as we recently saw with the Qatari funding of the Syrian rebels, in order to overthrow the Syrian dictator Bassar al Assad, the strongest Iranian ally in the Middle East, as you can read in the following Financial Times article, titled “Qatar bankrolls Syrian revolt with cash and arms”, May 2013.
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The gas-rich state of Qatar has spent as much as $3bn over the past two years supporting the rebellion in Syria, far ex ceeding any other government, but is now being nudged aside by Saudi Arabia as the prime source of arms to rebels.
The cost of Qatar‘s intervention, it s latest push to back an Arab revolt, amounts to a fraction of its international investment portfolio. But its financial support for the revolution that has turned into a vicious civil war dramatically overshadows western backing for the opposition.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/86e3f28e-be3a-11e2-bb35-00144feab7de.html
Qatar is an Arab country, and has a lot in common with the other Arab countries of the Persian Gulf, but it also shares with Iran the South Pars/North Field. Note that Iran is not an Arab country. The Iranians are Persians.
Qatar is also investing heavily abroad, in order to buy political influence. If you google the words “Qatar Foreign Investments”, or “Qatar Investment Authority”, you will be very impressed about the magnitude of Qatari investments, especially in Europe. Only to host the World Cup of 2022, Qatar promised to invest 200 billion dollars in infrastructure, as you can read in the following Yahoo article, titled “Qatar reportedly spending $200 billion to build infrastructure necessary for 2022 World Cup”, July 2013. Qatar will be the first Arab country, and the first country of the Middle East, to host the World Cup.
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/soccer-dirty-tackle/qatar-reportedly-spending-200-billion-build-infrastructure-necessary-183809206.html
Many people believe that what determines the political influence of a country abroad is its military potency. They are very wrong. European socialists do not care about whether Qatar or Iran has a stronger army. What they care about is who is going to invest more in their country and who is going to pay them more. And the champion in foreign investments is Qatar. Qatar has only 300.000 Qatari citizens to support, since the rest of the population are foreigners who simply work there. Moreover Qatar hosts the largest American military bases in the Middle East, and it does not have to worry too much about its defence. Therefore Qatar has plenty of cash to buy socialists in foreign parliaments and Jihadists in the battlefields.
Therefore the three main blocks of the Middle East today, are Saudi Arabia, Iran and Qatar, instead of Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq that used to be the case until 2003. As I already said the relations between the countries of the Persian Gulf are very simple. They are competing with each other about who is going to sell more oil and natural gas. The rich in oil and natural gas countries also compete for influence in the neighbouring countries, not only to sell their oil and natural gas there, but also to use them to construct their pipeline networks.
All these countries want to sell their oil and natural gas to Europe and Asia. Africa is a poor client and it also has its own resources. The Gulf countries are currently selling more oil and gas to the Asian countries, because the Europeans import mainly from Russia. As you can see in the following map, Iran has a great geographical advantage over Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
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Syria, Iraq and Lebanon belong to the Iranian sphere of influence, and therefore Iran can construct the Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline, sending natural gas and oil to the Mediterranean Sea and Europe, avoiding Red Sea and the Straits that increase transport costs. Moreover Iran can send natural gas and oil to Europe through Turkey with pipeline networks. Finally Iran can send natural gas and oil to China through Pakistan and India.
Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar do not have these options, and they can only sell to these regions by using the sea lanes. As long as Iran is in bad terms with the West, this is not a very big problem, because many countries cannot buy from Iran. Moreover the Western oil and natural gas multinationals are not allowed to invest in Iran. Therefore the Iranian production is low, and Iran is also excluded from many markets.
But now all this is changing because Iran is in a process of normalizing its relations with the West, because the US and the EU want to send Iranian oil and natural gas to Europe in order to reduce the Russian influence. This is very dangerous for all Arab countries, but the situation is a bit better for Qatar, since Qatar and Iran can jointly exploit the South Pars/North Field and send its gas to Europe and Asia.
It must also be taken into account how the countries of the Middle East behaved during the Arab Spring. To a large extent, the Arab Spring was financed by Qatar. The major protagonist of the Arab Spring was the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is an organization of Islamists that has supporters in all countries of the Middle East and North Africa, and its main financial supporter is Qatar, while Turkey is its main adviser in military issues.
The Arab Spring and the Muslim Brotherhood attacked the national socialist dictators of the Middle East and North Africa, that were either pro-Russian, as was the case with Qaddafi in Libya and Assad in Syria, or that were controlled by Saudi Arabia as was the case with Mubarak in Egypt. As you can read in the following Times article, titled “Saudis told Obama not to humiliate Mubarak”, February 2011, the Saudis asked Obama to support Mubarak. I do not think that Obama paid much attention to the Saudis' request.
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Saudi Arabia has threatened to prop up President Mubarak if the White House tries to force a swift change of regime in Egypt.
In a testy personal telephone call on January 29, King Abdullah told President Obama not to humiliate Mr Mubarak and warned that he would step in to bankroll Egypt if the US withdrew its aid programme, worth $1.5 billion annually.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/middleeast/article2905628.ece
Islamists and national socialists have many years of clashes in these countries. During the Arab Spring, the Islamists, with Qatari funding, Turkish military training, American tolerance, and the pretext of elections, managed to cause major problems to the local dictators. I refer to the issue of elections as a “pretext”, because it was not about a true democratic reform. Hamas, the Brotherhood's subsidiary in Gaza, won with Qatari funding the elections in 2006 but never organized elections again. Similarly, the Brotherhood's candidate in Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, won with Qatari funding the elections in 2012, and then gave himself powers that put him above the country's judicial system.
The same is true in Turkey, where the Islamists Erdogan and Davutoglu, the Turkish President and Prime Minister, two supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, are gradually reducing whatever rights and freedoms Turkish people enjoyed under the national socialist regime that existed before Erdogan came to power in 2003.
Even though the Arab Spring made a good start for Qatar and Turkey, it finally went sour. In