BY TYLER DURDEN
THURSDAY, OCT 08, 2026 – 03:35 AM
Syria’s geography has long given the country huge economic opportunities as a major energy transfer hub connecting Middle East states to the Mediterranean.
But as the last decade plus of proxy war which resulted in the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad demonstrated, Syria has also long been target of foreign machinations bent on seeing a puppet state installed in Damascus. The US-Gulf allies broadly waged war against the so-called ‘Shia crescent’ represented in the old Baghdad-Damascus-Hezbollah axis.
Henry Kissinger famously stated of its opportunity-rich geography, "you can’t make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can’t make peace without Syria." The historiographical term Pax Syriana also captures this concept: as goes Syria, so goes the whole region.
Prior file image: Long convoys of Iraqi diesel-laden tanker trucks line up along the Tartus-Baniyas highway, via AFP.
Of course, the external powers which have long sought to dominate the region both politically and on the energy front know this full well, which makes it all the more shameful and ironic that mainstream media and government officials had long derided as ‘conspiracy theorists’ anyone who connected a ‘pipeline wars’ theme with Washington’s covert war on Syria.
Widespread derision was the reaction of MSM punditry when back in 2016 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. penned the following excellent lengthy investigation:
Fast-forward to 2026, amid Trump’s Iran war and the Strait of Hormuz crisis, and another conspiracy theorybecomes conspiracy fact (as we’ve been documenting of the great crude transit ‘rewiring’ efforts to erode Iran’s leverage over the Hormuz passage).
Source:
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/iraq-formally-requests-syria-act-hormuz-bypass-route-its-crude