As exclusively revealed to OilPrice.com some years ago by a very high-ranking official from the Kremlin: “By keeping the West out of energy deals in Iraq, the end of Western hegemony in the Middle East will become the decisive chapter in the West’s final demise.” Consequently, the push has been on from Russia and China – especially since the U.S.’s unilateral withdrawal from the ‘nuclear deal’ with Iran in 2018 – to remove all Western firms from southern Iraq and from the semi-autonomous Kurdistan…