Reuters: Iran’s imperial ambitions in Syria revealed in secret embassy documents

Iran had a grand plan for Syria, taken straight from the playbook of the country it views as its bitter enemy.

According to a report by Reuters, just as the U.S. solidified its global dominance by investing billions in rebuilding Europe after World War II, Iran sought to do the same in the Middle East by restoring the war-ravaged Syria, per Caliber.Az.

The ambitious plan, outlined in a 33-page official Iranian study, makes several references to the “Marshall Plan,” the American initiative for the post-war reconstruction of Europe.

The document, dated May 2022 and written by Iran’s economic policy division stationed in Syria, was discovered by Reuters reporters in the looted Iranian embassy in Damascus during their visit to the building in December. It was among hundreds of other documents they found there and in various other locations across the capital—letters, contracts, and infrastructure plans—that exposed how Iran intended to recoup the billions spent on saving President Bashar al-Assad during Syria’s prolonged civil war.

The strategy document for Syria envisioned the creation of an economic empire, alongside deepening Iran's influence over its ally.

“One opportunity worth $400 billion,” one of the points in the study states.

These imperial hopes were crushed when anti-Iran rebels overthrew Assad in December. The ousted dictator fled to Russia, while Iranian militias, diplomats, and companies hastily exited the country. The Iranian embassy in Damascus was looted by Syrians celebrating Assad’s downfall. The building was left cluttered with documents that provided a new view of the doomed efforts to turn Syria into a profitable satellite state.

Reuters spoke with a dozen Iranian and Syrian businessmen, investigated a network of Iranian companies operating in the grey zones of sanctions, and visited several of Iran’s abandoned investments, which included religious sites, factories, military facilities, and more. These investments had been blocked by militant attacks, local corruption, Western sanctions, and bombings.

Among the investments was a 411-million-euro power plant in the coastal city of Latakia, being built by an Iranian engineering company. It remains dormant. A project to extract oil in the eastern Syrian desert has been abandoned. A $26-million railway bridge over the Euphrates River, constructed by an Iranian charity connected to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, collapsed due to a U.S. coalition airstrike years ago and has neither been repaired nor fully paid for.

Around 40 projects in the abandoned embassy files represent only a fraction of Iran's overall investments. But even in this collection, Reuters found that Syria’s outstanding debts to Iranian companies by the war’s end totalled at least $178 million. Former Iranian lawmakers have publicly estimated that the total debt of Assad's government to Iran exceeded $30 billion.

Ultimately, Iran’s aspirations to follow the Marshall Plan and establish an economic empire that included Syria mirrored America’s failures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran's early involvement in the civil war on Assad’s side deepened its influence over this strategic gateway to the Mediterranean. The story of squandered investments exposes the financial risks incurred and how the mutual dependence of the pariah governments of Syria and Iran ended up damaging both.

By Tamilla Hasanova