Why Saudi Arabia Just Moved Into Syria’s Oil And Gas Fields

Saudi Arabia’s recent agreements with the Syrian Petroleum Company to help revive and develop Syria’s long-neglected oil and gas fields are not a benevolent Gulf gesture but the latest step in a carefully sequenced post-Assad strategy shaped in Washington and London. The removal of Bashar al-Assad last December -- driven as much by Syria’s pivotal geography and Mediterranean frontage as by the desire of the new U.S. administration to demonstrate its willingness to unseat entrenched autocrats -- created a vacuum that Western planners…