Two former members of the Iranian parliament have highlighted the uncertainty surrounding the settlement of Syria’s “30 billion dollar” debt to Iran right before Bashar al-Assad’s regime fell to opposition forces.
Bahram Parsaei, a former member of parliament, wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on December 7: “When I was in parliament, Syria and Bashar al-Assad‘s debt to Iran was 30 billion dollars, which, contrary to Article 80 of the Constitution, had not been approved by the parliament.”
Parsaei further emphasized that this debt, “at an exchange rate of 700,000 rials per dollar, equals twenty quadrillion rials. What is the fate of this huge amount?”
Simultaneously, Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, the former head of the parliament’s National Security Commission, wrote: “In response to the profiteering entities of war and sanctions who say, ‘Stop negotiations because of unrest in Damascus!’ the Syrian war is not Iran’s war. The government has yet to clarify the billions of dollars spent on the previous war and should not put the lives and assets of Iranians at new risk.”
In May 2024, he also stated that Bashar al-Assad’s regime owed Iran “30 billion dollars.”
Part of this debt is due to oil shipments provided by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to Syria.
Data from the commodity intelligence firm Kpler indicates that in recent years, the Iranian regime has delivered an average of 70,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil daily to Syria. The annual value of this oil is estimated at around 2 to 2.5 billion dollars.
Amid the rapid advance of Bashar al-Assad’s opponents, reports suggest the beginning of the withdrawal of IRGC forces from Syria.
Kpler’s data indicates that Iran was still delivering oil to Syria as of the end of last month.
The “30 billion dollar” debt to Iran is equivalent to three times Syria’s total gross domestic product (GDP).
The risk of losing such a significant amount of debt from Syria comes at a time when the Iranian regime has spent substantial sums funding proxy forces in Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon. Recently, the Secretary-General of Hezbollah in Lebanon announced that, with financial assistance mostly provided by Iran, each household whose home was completely destroyed in Beirut by Israeli attacks would receive a total of “14,000 dollars.”
Meanwhile, Iranian citizens face poverty, rampant inflation, and a housing crisis, and Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian recently disclosed severe monetary imbalances and a massive budget deficit.
