“If oil falls to $20 a barrel, Russia will look to get out of Syria. We won’t be able to afford it.” One Russian government adviser on the conflict took a gloomy view of his country’s financial resilience—but one that might seem to suggest that cheaper oil will raise the chance of a ceasefire.
If only. The apparently endless slide in the oil price is just one nagging thought— and far from the most important—in the minds of ministers in Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran, the main countries in what has become a proxy war fought out through roaming bands of jihadists whose identity and allegiances constantly shift and reform. Their actions are shaped far more by old, deep rivalries and modern calculations of power.