Despite Iranian officials’ claims about recouping Syria-related expenses, the Director General of West Asia Trade Development Organization announced a 50% decline in Tehran’s exports to Damascus.
This comes after a video surfaced on the Telegram channel ‘Navad Eghtesadi’ showing Abdol Amir Rabihawi stating that Iran’s exports to Syria plummeted from $244 million in 2022 to $120 million in 2023. Rabihawi emphasized, “This is not a statistic worthy of economic cooperation between the two countries.”
Previously, ‘Navad Eghtesadi’ published a video of Shah Hosseini, head of the Syria desk at Iran’s Foreign Ministry, calling the $100 million export figure “low” and urging Iranian businessmen to find independent ways to do business with Syria.
This decline contradicts repeated assurances from Iranian authorities about recovering the billions spent supporting Assad’s regime. Notably, Yahya Rahim Safavi, a top military aide to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, declared in 2017 that Iran would recoup its expenses through Syrian “oil, gas and phosphate mines.”
However, published reports and documents paint a different picture. A December 2020 Mehr news agency report revealed that agreements signed in 2017 for Iranian involvement in Syria’s housing, transportation, and banking sectors “have not been realized economically.”
The most recent information regarding economic ties comes from a “secret” document leaked from the Iranian presidency in May 2023.
The document, published by the dissident group Uprising Until Overthrow, suggests that of the estimated $50 billion spent by Iran in the Syrian civil war, only $18 billion is designated for repayment, not in cash, but through projects of unclear technical and economic feasibility with no guaranteed implementation.
Furthermore, the document outlines a total investment of $947 million required by Iran for Syrian projects, supposedly part of the $17.932 billion debt owed by the Assad regime. Most remarkably, the report predicts a 50-year repayment period after Iran invests in these Syrian projects.
