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Syria Conflict and the Oil Market: Best and Worst Case Scenarios (+video)

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Photo Credit: US Navy

Photo Credit: US Navy

Western military strikes on Syria present a complex set of possible outcomes, and all of them make problems for energy markets to one degree or another. But some scenarios are worse than others.

Despite an abundance of oil supplies—and the fact that Syria is a minor oil producer, at best—the global market for crude has been dominated for a week by worries about the Middle Eastern country. U.S. oil hit a two-year high above $112 on Wednesday, after closing below $104 on Aug. 21, the day that the Syrian military is believed to have used chemical weapons against rebels fighting the regime of President Bashar Assad. Hundreds of civilians died in the attacks.

Since then the United States has intensified its naval presence in the region, and increasingly hostile rhetoric has spilled from allied capitals, including Washington, London, Paris and Ankara, Turkey. Given Syria’s geographical location and the multitude of countries and non-national actors with interests in Syria’s brutal 2½-year-old civil war, market watchers and others are asking themselves, where is this conflict headed?

CNBC asked a group of Middle East, economic and energy experts for their opinions, and came away with possible worst-case and “least bad-case” scenarios.

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Does Obama Know he’s Fighting on al-Qaeda’s Side?

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

If Barack Obama decides to attack the Syrian regime, he has ensured – for the very first time in history – that the United States will be on the same side as al-Qaeda.

Quite an alliance! Was it not the Three Musketeers who shouted “All for one and one for all” each time they sought combat? This really should be the new battle cry if – or when – the statesmen of the Western world go to war against Bashar al-Assad.

The men who destroyed so many thousands on 9/11 will then be fighting alongside the very nation whose innocents they so cruelly murdered almost exactly 12 years ago. Quite an achievement for Obama, Cameron, Hollande and the rest of the miniature warlords.

This, of course, will not be trumpeted by the Pentagon or the White House – nor, I suppose, by al-Qaeda – though they are both trying to destroy Bashar. So are the Nusra front, one of al-Qaeda’s affiliates. But it does raise some interesting possibilities.

Maybe the Americans should ask al-Qaeda for intelligence help – after all, this is the group with “boots on the ground”, something the Americans have no interest in doing. And maybe al-Qaeda could offer some target information facilities to the country which usually claims that the supporters of al-Qaeda, rather than the Syrians, are the most wanted men in the world.

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Military Strikes on Syria ‘as Early as Thursday,’ US Officials Say (+video)

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Photo Credit: NBC

Photo Credit: NBC

The U.S. could hit Syria with three days of missile strikes, perhaps beginning Thursday, in an attack meant more to send a message to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad than to topple him or cripple his military, senior U.S. officials told NBC News on Tuesday.

The State Department fed the growing drumbeat around the world for a military response to Syria’s suspected use of chemical weapons against rebels Aug. 21 near Damascus, saying that while the U.S. intelligence community would release a formal assessment within the week, it was already “crystal clear” that Assad’s government was responsible.

Vice President Joe Biden went even further, bluntly telling an American Legion audience in Houston: “Chemical weapons have been used.”

“No one doubts that innocent men, women and children have been the victims of chemical weapons attacks in Syria, and there’s no doubt who’s responsible for this heinous use of chemical weapons in Syria: the Syrian regime,” Biden said.

White House press secretary Jay Carney repeated Tuesday that the White House isn’t considering the deliberate overthrow of Assad.

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NYT, Twitter and HuffPo Attacked by Syrian Electronic Army

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By Danny Yadron, Shira Ovide and William Launder.

A pro-Syrian government group appeared to attack more than 10 websites, including Twitter, the New York TimesNYT -2.93% and HuffingtonPost.com, said security researchers citing digital evidence.

The attacks by the Syrian Electronic Army, a group of hackers that supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, come as the U.S. is considering action against Syria. In the past, the group has taken action against media organizations and websites it believes are sympathetic to Syrian rebels.

The websites, including the Huffington Post’s U.K. website, appeared to be compromised Tuesday by the group, said a security researcher who had seen digital evidence. HuffingtonPost confirmed the attack and said there was a “minimal disruption of service.”

The hackers, meantime, repeatedly claimed they had taken over Twitter’s Internet address, though they appeared to be unsuccessful.

The social media site never appeared to lose service. (The hackers used their own Twitter account to claim they had hacked the social-media website.)

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Photo Credit: Adam Jeffery

Photo Credit: Adam Jeffery

New York Times website likely taken down by malicious attack

By Eamon Javers and Cadie Thompson.

The New York Times said its website has been taken down, in what was likely an external malicious attack Tuesday.

Eileen Murphy, VP of corporate communications, initially reported the outage via Twitter.

While the Times was down, Twitter also experienced some hiccups on its website. A Twitter account for the group of hackers called the Syrian Electronic Army claimed that it had attacked the social media website and changed the ownership listing of Twitter’s domain name registration.The same account later posted to Twitter that it had also taken over the registrations for the Times website and for the Huffington Post UK domain.

Twitter told CNBC that it was investigating the issue.

Twitter later issued a status update saying that its Domain Name System (DNS) provider had “experienced an issue in which it appears DNS records for various organizations were modified, including one of Twitter’s domains used for image serving, twimg.com.” As a result, “Viewing of images and photos was sporadically impacted.”

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Syrian Chemical Weapons Attack Work of Obama Allies?

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syria_NEW YORK – As the U.S. considers a response to what it calls a chemical weapon attack by Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime that killed hundreds of civilians, reliable Middle Eastern sources say they have evidence the culprits actually were the rebel forces trying to take over the government.

Secretary of State John Kerry accused the Assad government Monday of covering up the use of chemical weapons in “a cowardly crime” and a “moral obscenity” that shocked the world’s conscience. Kerry claimed the Obama administration had “undeniable” evidence “that the Assad government was culpable in the use of chemical weapons on civilians” in the Aug. 21 attack in Damascus suburbs.

Reports that the Obama administration is considering a military strike against the Assad government continued to circulate Monday. Meanwhile, U.N. weapon inspectors in Syria were fired upon by snipers as they attempted to investigate the site of the Aug. 21 attack.

Assad has rejected charges that his government forces used chemical weapons as “preposterous” and “completely politicized,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

He argues Syrian forces were in the targeted area.

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On Hill, Deep Skepticism about Syria Entanglement

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Despite mounting evidence that President Bashar Assad used chemical weapons on his people, many members of Congress still don’t see a role for the United States military in Syria.

A raft of Republican and Democratic lawmakers — including those directly involved in intelligence oversight — think the U.S. would be wise to take a pass on military intervention in the war-torn country.

Their line of thinking goes like this: Sending in U.S. troops now is too late, too dangerous, too pricey and not guaranteed to be successful. And a bombing campaign won’t do enough. There’s also the fear that the U.S. does not know who would lead Syria if Assad falls.

“Syria is too far gone to pick sides,” said Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee who taught at West Point. “The rebels are infiltrated with Al Qaeda. Assad has joined the ranks of history’s most evil despots in what he’s willing to do to stay in power. And Russia won’t help us find a solution because relations [between Washington and Moscow] are as bad as they have been in 30 years. I don’t see a way forward, but U.S. boots on the ground is out of the question in my opinion.”

Rep. Loretta Sanchez of California, the No. 2 Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said that the situation in Syria is “as complicated as it could be” but added that military intervention in Syria could “have unintended consequences that could, in fact, make the situation worse.”

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Where Did Syria’s Chemical Weapons Come From?

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syria_WMDAs the news stories mount regarding Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s decision to move his chemical weapons stockpile from storage to areas closer to rebel locations, there is one thing the mainstream media is not commenting on: How Syria acquired what is reported to be one of the world’s largest arsenals of bio-chemical WMD? More to the point, what they are not reporting is this: From where did the Assad regime acquire their bio-chemical WMD?

In 2006, former Iraqi general, Georges Sada, who served under Saddam Hussein before he defected, wrote a comprehensive book detailing how the Iraqi Revolutionary Guard moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria, before the US-led action to eliminate Saddam Hussein’s WMD threat, by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed.

As reported in the New York Sun on January 26, 2006:

“‘There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands,’ Mr. Sada said. ‘I am confident they were taken over.’”

“Mr. Sada’s comments come just more than a month after Israel’s top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam ‘transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria.’

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Russia Warns U.S. Over Syria, Says Obama Like Bush

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Photo Credit: Forbes

Photo Credit: Forbes

Will anyone ever push the reset button on Russia-U.S. relations? With the current imbroglio over Syria, the answer to that question at the moment is decidedly nyet.

Moscow urged Washington on Sunday not to repeat “past mistakes” in the Middle East when dealing with the alleged use of chemical weapons by Syrian President Bashar Assad. Washington said Assad used it before. Russia said they did not.

Doctors Without Borders and Syrian opposition say that more than 300 people died after the alleged toxic gas attack in an eastern Damascus suburb on Wednesday, but Syrian authorities denied the claim.

Of course. Why make this black and white?

Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Sunday that President Barack Obama has told him to “prepare options for all contingencies” while the White House is deciding whether to use military force against Syria, according to various U.S. news agencies.

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U.S. Attack Would Spark ‘Ball of Fire’ in ‘Whole Middle East,’ Syrian Official Warns

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The Syrian government warned the United States not to launch any military action against Damascus over an alleged chemical attack, saying such a move would set the Middle East ablaze.

“The basic repercussion would be a ball of fire that would burn not only Syria but the whole Middle East,” said Syria’s Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi in an interview with Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen TV, dismissing the likelihood of American military intervention. “An attack on Syria would be no easy trip.”

The Syrian government also accused rebels of using chemical weapons Saturday. The accusations by the regime of President Bashar Assad against opposition forces came as an international aid group said it has tallied 355 deaths from a purported chemical weapons attack on Wednesday in a suburb of the Syrian capital known as Ghouta.

Syria is intertwined in alliances with Iran, Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas and Palestinian militant groups. The country also borders its longtime foe and U.S. ally Israel, making the fallout from military action unpredictable.

Violence in Syria has already spilled over the past year to Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Battle-hardened Hezbollah fighters have joined the combat alongside Assad’s forces.

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Syria: Cameron and Obama Move West Closer to Intervention

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

David Cameron and Barack Obama moved the west closer to military intervention in Syria on Saturday as they agreed that last week’s alleged chemical weapon attacks by the Assad regime had taken the crisis into a new phase that merited a “serious response”.

In a phone call that lasted 40 minutes, the two leaders are understood to have concluded that the regime of Bashar al-Assad was almost certainly responsible for the assault that is believed to have killed as many as 1,400 people in Damascus in the middle of last week. Cameron was speaking from his holiday in Cornwall.

The prime minister and US president said time was running out for Assad to allow UN weapons inspectors into the areas where the attack took place. Government sources said the two leaders agreed that all options should be kept open, both to end the suffering of the Syrian people and to make clear that the west could not stand by as chemical weapons were used on innocent civilians.

A spokesman for No 10 said: “The prime minister and President Obama are both gravely concerned by the attack that took place in Damascus on Wednesday and the increasing signs that this was a significant chemical weapons attack carried out by the Syrian regime against its own people. The UN security council has called for immediate access for UN investigators on the ground in Damascus. The fact that President Assad has failed to co-operate with the UN suggests that the regime has something to hide.

“They reiterated that significant use of chemical weapons would merit a serious response from the international community and both have tasked officials to examine all the options. They agreed that it is vital that the world upholds the prohibition on the use of chemical weapons and deters further outrages. They agreed to keep in close contact on the issue.”

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