A memorandum of understanding

I want to say something about a MOU, but not about the one you probably have in mind. The cease fire MOU that US President Donald Trump and Iran President Masoud Pezeshkian signed in mid-June is now, all agree, defunct.

What the above headline refers to, though, is an MOU between Iraq and Syria, signed July 17. Those two countries are moving toward an agreement to restore the Kirkuk-Baiyas pipeline to functioning condition.

As the above map indicates, the pipeline in question runs from the heart of Iraq to the shore of the Mediterranean. This will enable a lot of petroleum to reach world markets whatever is going on with the Strait of Hormuz. Or the Red Sea either.

The pipeline was constructed in the period 1950-52 by Bechtel. It hasn't been operating since the period of the Iran/Iraq war in the 1980s, when Syria took Iran's side. It hasn't been operable since hits by US bombs in 2003. Collateral damage in the US/Iraq war. The bomb strikes and the maintenance issues that have built up over decades make this a huge infrastructure project.

But where there is enough money at stake, things happen.

THIS memorandum of understanding hasn't gotten a lot of play in the US, even in the financial press here. It is early, for one thing. People are naturally cautious. There isn't a lot of ringing of celebratory bells to be done.

But it could be the beginning of a very good development, the rendering-irrelevant of the now notoriously closed Strait.

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