The US has occupied Syrian oil fields. Author: AFP

This is Iranian oil stolen by the US last April in the Persian Gulf. There are 800,000 barrels there, and U.S. federal prosecutors want to sell the cargo aboard the Greek tanker Suez Rajan, which was then bound for China and had to cross over to Galveston, Texas, as Washington assumed it could be confiscated due to the illegal and unilateral sanctions it imposed on Iran.

They do not seem to find recipients of valuable booty that would bring them full profit. According to The Wall Street Journal, companies uploading it fear possible and logical reprisals for their ships and businesses in the Persian Gulf.

This is not the first time the Americans have cashed in on Iranian fuel. In February 2021, the United States seized MT Achilleas and its two million barrels near the city of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates, alleging that the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was about to sell hydrocarbons to China. This cargo was delivered to Houston and sold in May of the same year for $110 million.

The Biden administration has argued that it is justifying the malicious and provocative takeover of the Iranian guard, which Trump has called a “terrorist organization.”

Of course, Trump did his job in 2020 by stealing Iranian fuel from four private tankers bound for Venezuela with about 1.1 million barrels. A double whammy because the Bolivarian nation has been severely affected in its manufacturing and economy by US sanctions, which are protected by the electoral classification of “terrorists”. To seize these tankers, the United States could use threat, cohesion, or bribery, as Trump advisers preferred at the time, in the face of an armed invasion proposed by others.

They also steal on the ground

With complete insolence, face to face with Humanity, and with the consent of those who turn their faces in the opposite direction so as not to see, the criminal commits a great predation.

With the same impunity, military convoys are transported to Iraq and other places in the Middle East, extracted from Syrian oil wells, to territories occupied by the United States troops or extremist groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda, which funded the CIA with millions of dollars in weapons during the Barack Obama administration, in a military operation to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, undertaken unsuccessfully, but since then claimed many lives, the destruction of cities, infrastructure and the theft of Syrian wealth by Washington.

In 2015, the US military took control of the oil fields in Hasaka. Since then, these troops have intermittently guarded caravans of oil tankers carrying stolen oil – an estimated 66,000 barrels a day – along an illegal route with an unspecified destination but pointing to Iraq.

In June, Syrian political scientist Muhammad Al-Omari explained to cgtn.com: “Pillage of oil is part of the US regional policy in Syria. This was accompanied by economic sanctions, the destruction of infrastructure and the looting of food. The main goal is to turn the Syrian people against the government and increase the country’s poverty. This leads to chaos and further encourages terrorism. And more importantly, it is blocking the Syrian government’s access to financial resources, making it difficult for Syrian refugees to return and rebuild Syria.”

And it’s not just that Syria condemns looting. Donald Trump himself, when managing US interests, – quotes the BBC, – said with complete impudence: “We are going to save oil, remember this. We want to save oil. $45 million per month.”

Trump has been shamelessly chatty about oil. He is no longer president but is keen to retake the White House, and at a GOP event in North Carolina last month he said his intention with Venezuela was to bring the country to collapse and “take all of its oil.”

Mark Esper, who was the Trump administration’s defense secretary from July 2019 to November 2020, has already said this in his book titled Sacred Oath: Memoirs of the Secretary of Defense in Extraordinary Times, Trump, ‘all he wanted was to seize Venezuelan oil’, and to do this he colluded with the leader of the coup Juan Guaidó, from whom he requested “very personal loyalty, and Guaidó offered it to him,” as the Caracas newspaper Vea recalled in an article.

Again and again the United States fills its shamelessness because it considers itself infallible and invulnerable. A good part of the world doesn’t want or dare to put a bell on a cat.

Source: Juventud Rebelde