Chapter 1251 Stepping into the chaos
The Venezuelan delegation that Chavez brought with him to China this time was unprecedentedly large, and three passenger planes were chartered.
The delegation included not only Venezuelan official dignitaries, but also Venezuelan industrial and commercial representatives, economists, representatives from the education sector, representatives from the cultural sector, and so on.
Chavez's visit to China will last for a week, and the two sides will hold dialogues in many fields.
Almost at the same time as Venezuela, the Syrian delegation also arrived in Beijing.
Assad personally led the Syrian delegation to visit China.
Although the Seventh Middle East War defended the Golan Heights and severely damaged Israel, Syria did not come without a price.
The war made Syria's economy worse.
Syria's economic sources are mainly agriculture, oil, processing industry and tourism. When the Arab Socialist Baath Party took power in Syria, it carried out socialist reforms and implemented economic reforms: declaring that natural resources belong to the state, nationalizing large private enterprises and industries, supervising all banks, insurance companies and foreign trade, announcing decrees on workers' participation in the profit distribution of state-owned enterprises, and implementing land reform.
Since the late 1960s, Syria has been producing heavy oil in its northeastern oil fields, and in the early 1980s, light oil was discovered in the east.
However, unlike oil-rich countries such as Saudi Arabia, Syria's oil reserves are not large, and the oil quality is relatively poor, and the cost of production is relatively high.
Since promoting reconciliation that year, Syria has actively integrated into the Arab League and is one of the top supporters of Arab integration. The support from Arab countries, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain and other countries has always been Syria's most important assistance.
In terms of Israel, the four-nation alliance of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine is the first front.
In the sixth and seventh Middle East wars, Israel was hit by this front.
According to Assad, Syria has nothing but fighters who are good at fighting.
Of course, Syria is not nothing. After controlling the Golan Heights, Syria earns a large amount of income every year just by selling water.
In this seventh Middle East war, Syria's performance is also remarkable and quite eye-catching.
In order to guard against the Israeli attack, Syria set up five lines of defense in the Golan Heights. Each line of defense is about 10 to 15 kilometers deep, with bunkers, shelters, barbed wire, and ambushes of tanks and artillery.
When the Israeli ground forces launched an attack, the Syrian artillery and anti-tank guns deployed in the hidden positions fired at the Israeli army, and the shells poured down on the Israeli tanks like raindrops.
At the same time, the traps full of mines and anti-tank guns caused heavy losses to the Israeli tanks.
The Israeli tanks were either penetrated by anti-tank guns, or their tracks were blown up by mines, or they fell into anti-tank traps and could not move.
In the battle for the Golan Heights, the Israeli army paid tens of thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of soldiers were injured, but in the end they failed to take the Golan Heights.
If the United States had not intervened in time and strongly asked all parties to cease fire, I am afraid Israel would have faced the situation of national destruction.
However, the war turned a large number of Israeli buildings into ruins and a large number of civilians were killed and injured.
The losses of the war to Israel are even greater than those of the Sixth Middle East War.
Syria has also played the role of the United Front.
Since the Fifth Middle East War, Syria's role has become more and more obvious. In addition, Syria has had a relatively high degree of independence from the beginning, and later chose to actively integrate into the Arab League, making Syria's united front value higher and higher.
Of course, Syria is not without troubles. The trouble Syria is facing now is the Kurdish armed forces.
There are about 1.3 million Kurds in northeastern Syria, and now these Kurds are clamoring to leave Syria and join Kurdish Germany.
The Kurdish armed forces were allocated territory because of the Iraq War and were supported by the United States. Now the territory is not large, but they have made territorial claims to Syria and Turkey.
This part of the land is about 5,000 square kilometers, and it is Syria's oil-producing area.
Syria will naturally not agree. What a joke. Syria doesn't have much oil. How can it agree to such a thing?
The Syrian delegation came this time to seek cooperation to develop oil, natural gas and water resources in the Golan Heights!
Although Saudi Arabia and other countries have money, their technology is not enough to develop the Golan Heights.
There are only a handful of countries in the world that have the Golan Heights.
Once the Golan Heights are developed, Syria will have a considerable income every year.
Of course, there is another aspect, which is to seek cooperation in security.
Turkey, Kurds, and the United States all make Syria full of security concerns.
Security comes first, development comes second!
The huge security dilemma has forced Syria to maintain a relatively large army.
Why did the seventh Middle East war stop this time? It is not because Syria and Jordan cannot stop the attack of the US military. Once the US military launches an attack, Syria and Jordan cannot stop it.
This is also very annoying to the Arab world.
The biggest contradiction in the Middle East at present is not the Palestinian-Israeli contradiction, nor the religious contradiction between Shiites and Sunnis, but the contradiction between Islam and Christianity, and the contradiction between Arab civilization and US hegemony.
Over the past two decades, with the research of Arab scholars, the people of Arab countries have become more and more aware of the United States' meddling in the affairs of the Arab world and interfering in regional peace, and they have become more and more hostile.
As early as the 1990s, not long after the Gulf War ended, the voice of "the Middle East is the Middle East of the Middle Eastern people" was very loud.
Liu Tao is naturally happy to see this situation.
A multipolar world is what everyone pursues, not one superpower and many strong countries!
The Americans thought that George Walton announced on Christmas that the joint forces led by the United States won the Iraq War, and that the Iraq War was really over.
Facts have proved that the Americans are too naive.
The Americans can decide when the war will start, but they cannot decide when and how the war will end.
The large-scale war is over, but the Americans' security war in Iraq has just begun.
The attacks every two or three days are enough to make the Americans headache.
The Americans left the Kurdish mountainous area to the Kurdish armed forces, but with the Kurdish armed forces, it is not an easy task to take over the Kurdish mountainous area, even with the air force of the joint forces providing fire support.
In addition, the Iraqi guerrillas can obtain weapons and supplies from all around.
In Iraq, it is much easier to obtain weapons and supplies than the Afghan guerrillas.
From the time the United States announced the end of the Iraq War to now, weapons and supplies from Persia to the Kurdish mountains on the border between Iran and Iraq have never been cut off. (End of this chapter)