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Syrians Queue to Buy Bread and Fuel: Why Aren’t Russia and Iran Supporting Us?

Heating fuel, petrol and cooking gas have been in short supply in government-held areas of Syria for years, and motorists have grown used to long queues to fill up. (AFP)
Heating fuel, petrol and cooking gas have been in short supply in government-held areas of Syria for years, and motorists have grown used to long queues to fill up. (AFP)
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Syrians Queue to Buy Bread and Fuel: Why Aren’t Russia and Iran Supporting Us?

Heating fuel, petrol and cooking gas have been in short supply in government-held areas of Syria for years, and motorists have grown used to long queues to fill up. (AFP)
Heating fuel, petrol and cooking gas have been in short supply in government-held areas of Syria for years, and motorists have grown used to long queues to fill up. (AFP)

As the fuel, diesel and bread crisis continues to deepen, the Syrian government announced additional reductions of gasoline and diesel subsidies for the second time this month. Observers see that Damascus “is bitterly disappointed and quietly suffering because of its allies’ failure to intervene to rescue it from its latest crisis.” Syrians are questioning Russia and Iran as massive queues overwhelm government-subsidized bakeries amid the acute grain shortage.

On Monday, the Ministry of Internal Trade and Consumer Protection issued a sudden decree raising the price of a liter of industrial and commercial gas to 650 Syrian pounds after being priced at 296 pounds. It also raised the price of a liter of Octane 95 gasoline to 1,050 pounds, after having had already raised the price from 450 to 850 pounds earlier this month.

With its decision, the ministry confirmed that the price of gas for heating, 180 pounds per liter, has not been changed. The same applies to other sectors, like transportation, agriculture and the public sector. It also maintained the price (135 Pounds per liter) at which gas is sold to bakeries that distribute bread rations.

The ministry justified its decision to raise the price at which gas is sold to manufacturers and businesses with the high cost of supplying petroleum derivatives in light of the “unjust blockade” imposed by the American administration on the Syrian people, adding that the measure will help to curb smuggling.

Car owners told Asharq Al-Awsat that they still spend hours, sometimes a whole day, waiting to buy 30 liters of gas at the subsidized price of 250 pounds, while others resort to the black market and buy it at astronomical prices.

Meanwhile, the government has kept quiet about the reasons for the long queues at bakeries and puts the gasoline shortage down to maintenance work, the completion of which has been announced several times this year, at the Baniyas refinery.

But economists have been asking: what are our allies, Russia and Iran, doing about what is going in Syria? Why haven’t they intervened? Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, one economist asked: “Is a major power like Russia incapable of supplying an oil tanker or a ship loaded with grain?”

He added: “The government is silent! Is it a silence about being let down by our allies?”

In a joint press conference on September 7, during Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s visit to Damascus, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said: “The future of relations with Russia is promising, and it has positive indications for the county’s economic and political future.”

“We are optimistic that the general economic situation will improve in the coming months,” he said.

However, a month and a half later, and after a government delegation recently visited Moscow, the economic situation has yet to improve in areas under the regime’s control; indeed, it has become worse.

The crisis has been intensifying over the past month, and living conditions have become hellishly dire. Amid the grain shortage, dozens of bakeries in Damascus and its periphery shut their doors, while the large state-run bakeries in the capital have been unable to supply the quota that it had promised.

After the expected waiting time at these bakeries exceeded five hours, the price of a bundle of bread (seven loaves) surged in the black market, first going from 200 pounds to 500 before reaching 1,000 pounds on Tuesday. Subsidized bread is sold for 50 pounds. As for gas for heating, local sources claim only 10 percent of families on the ration lists have received their share.

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As It Attacks Iran's Nuclear Program, Israel Maintains Ambiguity about Its Own

FILE - This file image made from a video aired Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, by Israeli television station Channel 10, shows what the television station claims is Israel's nuclear facility in the southern Israeli town of Dimona, the first detailed video of the site ever shown to the public. (Channel 10 via AP, File)
FILE - This file image made from a video aired Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, by Israeli television station Channel 10, shows what the television station claims is Israel's nuclear facility in the southern Israeli town of Dimona, the first detailed video of the site ever shown to the public. (Channel 10 via AP, File)
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As It Attacks Iran's Nuclear Program, Israel Maintains Ambiguity about Its Own

FILE - This file image made from a video aired Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, by Israeli television station Channel 10, shows what the television station claims is Israel's nuclear facility in the southern Israeli town of Dimona, the first detailed video of the site ever shown to the public. (Channel 10 via AP, File)
FILE - This file image made from a video aired Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, by Israeli television station Channel 10, shows what the television station claims is Israel's nuclear facility in the southern Israeli town of Dimona, the first detailed video of the site ever shown to the public. (Channel 10 via AP, File)

Israel says it is determined to destroy Iran’s nuclear program because its archenemy's furtive efforts to build an atomic weapon are a threat to its existence.

What’s not-so-secret is that for decades Israel has been believed to be the Middle East’s only nation with nuclear weapons, even though its leaders have refused to confirm or deny their existence, The Associated Press said.

Israel's ambiguity has enabled it to bolster its deterrence against Iran and other enemies, experts say, without triggering a regional nuclear arms race or inviting preemptive attacks.

Israel is one of just five countries that aren’t party to a global nuclear nonproliferation treaty. That relieves it of international pressure to disarm, or even to allow inspectors to scrutinize its facilities.

Critics in Iran and elsewhere have accused Western countries of hypocrisy for keeping strict tabs on Iran's nuclear program — which its leaders insist is only for peaceful purposes — while effectively giving Israel's suspected arsenal a free pass.

On Sunday, the US military struck three nuclear sites in Iran, inserting itself into Israel’s effort to destroy Iran’s program.

Here's a closer look at Israel's nuclear program:

A history of nuclear ambiguity Israel opened its Negev Nuclear Research Center in the remote desert city of Dimona in 1958, under the country's first leader, Prime Minister David Ben Gurion. He believed the tiny fledgling country surrounded by hostile neighbors needed nuclear deterrence as an extra measure of security. Some historians say they were meant to be used only in case of emergency, as a last resort.

After it opened, Israel kept the work at Dimona hidden for a decade, telling United States’ officials it was a textile factory, according to a 2022 article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, an academic journal.

Relying on plutonium produced at Dimona, Israel has had the ability to fire nuclear warheads since the early 1970s, according to that article, co-authored by Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project with the Federation of American Scientists, and Matt Korda, a researcher at the same organization.

Israel's policy of ambiguity suffered a major setback in 1986, when Dimona’s activities were exposed by a former technician at the site, Mordechai Vanunu. He provided photographs and descriptions of the reactor to The Sunday Times of London.

Vanunu served 18 years in prison for treason, and is not allowed to meet with foreigners or leave the country.

ISRAEL POSSESSES DOZENS OF NUCLEAR WARHEADS, EXPERTS SAY

Experts estimate Israel has between 80 and 200 nuclear warheads, although they say the lower end of that range is more likely.

Israel also has stockpiled as much as 1,110 kilograms (2,425 pounds) of plutonium, potentially enough to make 277 nuclear weapons, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a global security organization. It has six submarines believed to be capable of launching nuclear cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles believed to be capable of launching a nuclear warhead up to 6,500 kilometers (4,000 miles), the organization says.

Germany has supplied all of the submarines to Israel, which are docked in the northern city of Haifa, according to the article by Kristensen and Korda.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST POSE RISKS

In the Middle East, where conflicts abound, governments are often unstable, and regional alliances are often shifting, nuclear proliferation is particularly dangerous, said Or Rabinowitz, a scholar at Jerusalem's Hebrew University and a visiting associate professor at Stanford University.

“When nuclear armed states are at war, the world always takes notice because we don’t like it when nuclear arsenals ... are available for decision makers,” she said.

Rabinowitz says Israel's military leaders could consider deploying a nuclear weapon if they found themselves facing an extreme threat, such as a weapon of mass destruction being used against them.

Three countries other than Israel have refused to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons: India, Pakistan and South Sudan. North Korea has withdrawn. Iran has signed the treaty, but it was censured last week, shortly before Israel launched its operation, by the UN's nuclear watchdog — a day before Israel attacked — for violating its obligations.

Israel's policy of ambiguity has helped it evade greater scrutiny, said Susie Snyder at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a group that works to promote adherence to the UN treaty.

Its policy has also shined a light on the failure of Western countries to rein in nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, she said.

They “prefer not to be reminded of their own complicity,” she said.