Iakovos Alhadeff: ISIS : An Oil and Natural Gas Cartel

As soon as the Turks and the Israelis started talking about a possible détente, in order for the Turks to buy the Israeli natural gas, since the Israelis need to sell somewhere after the Zohr field was discovered in

Egypt

, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem said that ISIS is part of

Israel

’s army. The Grand Mufti also called all Muslims to fight ISIS which is an run by the Jews.

That means that if the Turks and the Israelis reach a detent, the Saudis will start saying that the Jews are behind ISIS. Now that

Israel

is working with the Saudis against the Turks and the Iranians, the Turks and the Iranians say that the Saudi King is a puppet of the Jews. That’s important in order to understand how significant the war against

Israel

is for the propaganda of the Turkish Islamists, in their effort to become the leaders of the Sunni world.

I must say once more that the Turkish Islamists do not imagine a Chaliphate under total Turkish control. They imagine it in the form of NATO i.e. the Sunni Islamists of Egypt will run Egypt, the Sunni Islamists of Syria will run Syria etc, but all of them will accept

Turkey

, the greatest military power of the Muslim world, as their leader.

That’s what we mean when we say that Erdogan wants to become the Sultan of the Chaliphate. Obviously the Saudis do not accept the Turks as the leader of the Sunni Islamist world, because they believe they are the leaders. And Saudi Arabia might not be the strongest Muslim country, since the Americans were not selling the Saudis the kind of weapons they were selling to the Turks, because they could use them against Israel, but

Saudi Arabia

is the richest Sunni country.

The Islamic Chaliphate, as envisaged by ISIS and the Islamists of Turkey, will be an oil and natural gas cartel, which will negotiate better prices with the Americans, the Europeans and the Chinese, and will fight the Russians and the Iranians if it has to. That’s more or less the dream of ISIS, i.e. an oil and natural gas cartel with a very strong army. The good news is that this is something very difficult to accomplish. Gamal Nasser tried to achieve the socialist version of this dream in the 60s and failed. And he tried it only for the Arab countries.

On the other hand, if a Chaliphate is created with Turkey on one hand, and the Sunni parts of Syria and Iraq on the other, it wouldn’t be too bad for

Turkey

. Turkey would gain access to the Persian Gulf, 100 years after her defeat during World War 1. Maybe that’s the second best for the Turkish Islamists. That’s even better given that

Qatar

accepts Erdogan as the Sultan of the Chaliphate.

The following map shows with green what was left of the Ottoman Empire (Turkey), before it was chopped by the British and the Arabs during WW1.

Map 1