US President Trump says this is great, in reference to a WaPo piece of Syria pitching itself as an alternative to the Strait of Hormuz

US President Trump says this is great, in reference to a WaPo piece of Syria pitching itself as an alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.

Proposals to route Gulf energy across Syria to the Mediterranean rather than through the Strait of Hormuz revive a long-standing idea: overland pipelines have historically served as the structural hedge against chokepoint risk at Hormuz, with trans-Arabian and East-West routes built for precisely that purpose, and Syria itself once hosted transit lines from Iraq to the coast. What separates such pitches from existing bypass infrastructure is that they remain aspirational: capacity, security of right-of-way, and financing take years to build, so they have never altered near-term pricing of Hormuz disruption risk, which continues to be expressed through tanker rates, war-risk insurance, and the Brent-Dubai and prompt spread complex. A presidential endorsement of a press report of this kind is signalling rather than policy; the read that matters is whether it reflects movement on Syrian normalisation, sanctions relief, or Gulf funding commitments, since those are the preconditions any transit project would need. Prior episodes of headline-level enthusiasm around alternative routes have faded without follow-through unless accompanied by concrete intergovernmental agreements. The follow-ons are official statements from the parties involved, any movement in Syrian sanctions posture, and whether physical market premia for Hormuz transit show any response at all.