A white tent, as large as a circus big-top and just as crowded, shakes and rustles to the boom of a loudspeaker.

“Hummus!” a voice bellows through a microphone. “Hummus Lubnani!”

The crowd cheers, claps, presses forward, and there, through the milling bodies, rises the ceramic contours of a giant bowl, as wide as a truck is long, its edge as high as a man’s shoulder. Around it throng an army in tall chef’s caps, stirring the bowl’s contents with giant wooden paddles. Every few minutes a chef pushes through to the bowl’s edge and empties an enormous basin of cream-like liquid into it.

Below, the digits of a huge electronic scale climb through the hundreds. The scale clicks: 2,080 kilograms weight. The crowd cheers.

“Two tons!” the loudspeaker roars. “Lebanon has just set the Guinness world record for most hummus ever assembled in one place!”

Hummus — the unassuming hors d’oeuvre that ties any Lebanese meal together — may seem an unlikely battleground for global conflict. Yet the mighty vat under the big-top sits at the center of what has become an all-out tug-of war between Lebanon — which claims to be hummus’ birthplace — and a bevy of foreign industry players marketing the dish as Greek, Turkish or Israeli cuisine.

“We first noticed our food’s piracy during international agro exhibitions, where many Lebanese products were marketed under other appellations,” said Fady Abboud, president of the Association of Lebanese Industrialists (ALI). “This results in colossal losses [for Lebanon’s economy].”

The hummus market is worth more than $1 billion globaly, with 500,000 tubs eaten every day in the United Kingdom alone, said Abboud. The international community seems to have forgotten that hummus is to the Levant what Cornish Pasty is to Cornwall, and the Lebanese want it back.

Hummus nationalists have been particularly outraged by restaurants serving hummus bi tahini, falafel and baba ghannouj as “traditional Israeli cuisine,” and are currently preparing an international lawsuit against Israel over the dishes’ ownership. 

In addition, the ALI, the Syndicate of Lebanese Food Industries, the Ministry of Industry and the Chamber of Commerce are petitioning the European Union to accord hummus, along with 24 other Lebanese national dishes, a place under its Protected Designation of Origins Act. The status assures a product can only be sold in European markets if it is produced in its country of origin.

Industry representatives stress that they are not trying to monopolize the market for chickpea dip.

“Hummus, in various forms and under various titles, is served across the Mediterranean and Middle East,” said Edward Aoun, deputy chairman of International Fairs & Promotions (IFP), the group organizing the event. “However, the name, as well as the dish in its most conventional form, are strictly Lebanese.” The first use of the term — originally hummus bi tahini — occurred in Lebanon in the 1950’s, advocates say. The first canned hummus was manufactured by the Lebanese brand Cortas.

However, thanks to rampant misappropriation by other nations, the average global consumer is more likely to associate hummus with Israel, Turkey or the Mediterranean in general, giving scant consideration to the country that first furnished the dish.

Besides potential economic gains, the fight to bring hummus back to Lebanon is a nationalistic struggle, advocates say. “This is a patriotic event on a national scale,” said Fady Jreissati, vice president of the IFP.

Whether a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records — or the  spectacle of a two-ton bowl of hummus — will be enough to gain international recognition remains to be seen. If the events of the day are any evidence, there is little doubt that the battle will go on.

At face value, the city of Hasakah in Syria’s northeast doesn’t suggest a four-year drought is underway. On the outskirts, cotton pickers work away in fields and dozens of trucks line the roads piled high with sacks bursting with raw cotton, while in the local market watermelons and vegetables are on sale, and the hotels have running bath water.

The Khabur River that runs through the city is not dry, yet hardly a river at just over ankle deep — exactly what one might expect following a hot and rainless summer, but far less than normal for early autumn.

The Hasakah area only received 100 millimeters (mm) of rain this year, well below the annual average of 200 to 250mm. As a result, an estimated 36,000 families from the Hasakah governorate have been driven off the land. In neighboring Deir e-Zour, dust storms caused by desertification were so bad this summer that, on certain days, people couldn’t see more than two meters in front of them, business ground to a halt and roads were closed off after being covered in sand.

From farming to urban poverty

Indeed, according to a United Nations report, an estimated 1.3 million people in eastern Syria have been affected by climate change and drought, while 803,000 people have lost their livelihoods. The displaced are finding their way to larger cities, living in tents and makeshift shacks, and forced to work as day laborers or even scavenge from the rubbish dumps on the edges of Damascus.

“Those that are really dependent, herders and small farmers, their livelihoods are being destroyed. If they are not already dependent on food aid, they will be,” said Jean-Marie Frentz, program manager of the economic cooperation section at the European Commission to Syria.

The paradox of places like Hasakah, deep in drought but yet still farming away, is that Syria has still not adapted its agricultural and farming policies in line with hydrological conditions. While crops fed by rainfall have failed, irrigation and the usage of dwindling groundwater reserves present the illusion, a veritable mirage, of an oasis of productive farming land.

For a country that has prided itself on agricultural self-sufficiency and its use of water resources — the back of the 500 Syrian pound note depicts the Assad Dam and fields being tilled — the drought is clearly bad news. Unlike past challenges the country has faced, however, the Syrian government is admitting they have a problem.

“For the first time the government is really speaking about the issue, and realizes it is an emergency situation. In the past, there was a tendency to deny or say it is Syrian business and [there is] no need for international assistance,” said Frentz.

A cry for help

The UN, along with seven non-governmental organizations and the Syrian government, have established the Syrian Drought Response Team, requesting $53.9 million from international donors. The bulk of the money — $29 million — is for food aid, while $20 million is earmarked for supporting agriculture and livelihoods. This is significantly more than Damascus asked for in 2008, some $20 million, which Syria failed to raise from donors until early this year.

The scale of the drought has put Damascus in a tough spot, as it was “bad public relations for Syria to have to feel like Ethiopia, presenting an image of people starving and sick children,” said Jihad Yazigi, editor of business publication Syria Report. “And it was quite a strange situation, as the same week the appeal was made [UAE real estate developer] Majid Al Futtaim announced the launch of a $1 billion project [just outside Damascus] in Yaafour. It says something about the new Syria.”

The government is even attributing the economic slowdown in the country to the drought, with agriculture accounting for an estimated 20 percent of gross domestic product and 10 percent of total exports.

Last year, as Executive reported, Syria experienced its worst wheat and barley harvest in recent history, producing just 2 million tons of wheat and 90 percent less barley than in 2007. The target for wheat production in 2009 was back to former levels of 4.5 million tons, but year-end projections estimate only 3.4 million tons.

Severely drought-affected population, 2009

Importing food staples

The up-tick is due to average rainfall in certain areas of the country, particularly along the coastline, and from better irrigation usage. However, in areas reliant on rainfall in the northeast and east, there was almost zero production, said Abdullah Droubi, director of Water Resources at the Arab League’s Center for the Studies of Arid Zones and Dry Lands in Damascus.

As a result, the Syrian government has increased its imports of wheat by 300,000 tons to 1.5 million tons this year to boost its reserves, crucial for keeping the populace placated via flour subsidies. Such a shortfall in agricultural output is forcing the government to rethink how water is allocated, with agriculture accounting for 90 percent of water usage.

“The government is looking over the next decade to reduce this figure by 30 percent through new irrigation techniques,” said Droubi, while the agriculture ministry is studying a plan to reduce cotton cultivation by 20 to 30 percent from the current one million tons per year.

A shift from heavy usage of groundwater reserves is also needed, said Frentz.

Rainfall in different regions of Syria

No master water plan

“The general trend is that groundwater levels are falling considerably [in recent years]. In rural [areas around] Damascus there has been a six meter per year drop, while in the Homs area the drop in groundwater levels ranges from 12 to 35 meters a year, so this is very worrying indeed and clearly not a sustainable model,” Frentz explained.

But with no master water plan and a lack of coordination between government bodies, coming up with viable solutions is problematic.

“Water is a very fragmented sector with many actors,” said Frentz. “For instance, the ministries of construction, agriculture, environment and local administration all cover different aspects of water. There needs to be an integrated water management policy, not a piecemeal approach.”

Then there is the scale of the drought and climatic changes. As Droubi pointed out droughts are often cyclical, but without scientific data it is difficult to plan ahead. And for a country of 20 million people with 2.1 percent growth per annum, such data is essential to address the needs of a rapidly growing, rapidly urbanizing population.

“We have to have a plan to combat desertification and study climate change, but there has been no research about the frequency of the drought,” said Droubi.

The shortfall in agricultural output is forcing the government to rethink how water is allocated, with agriculture accounting for 90 percent of usage

How to solve the global financial crisis is naturally a hot topic, sparking innumerable talks, conferences and forums. The Middle East is no exception. But while certain countries in the region like to boast that the crisis has largely passed them by, delegates at the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) Arab Employment Forum (AEF) in Beirut last month pointed out that the Middle East already had a chronic employment problem well before the financial crisis struck.

Growth without jobs

The forum therefore had a degree of urgency about it, given the challenges the region faces and the world’s highest unemployment rates set to rise further, from an average of 9.4 percent  to as high as 11 percent this year, according to the ILO. Meanwhile, aggregate growth in the region is projected to drop 2 percent this year, rising to 4 percent in 2010.

Yet growth, as Ahmad Majdalani, the Palestinian Authority’s labor minister suggested, doesn’t always mean jobs, citing statistics of 5.4 percent growth regionally over the past three years but only 1.5 percent growth in job opportunities. Indeed, as the ILO’s Director General Juan Somavia said in his opening address, “the unemployment rate is only the tip of the iceberg.”

Somavia went on to blast the neo-liberal model of development as a “dysfunctional financial economy” that “privileged the short-term profit objectives of financial operators. The end result was globalization without a moral compass.”

The ILO has set itself the task of rectifying the structural weaknesses of the capitalist system, by being that seemingly mislaid moral compass for the workers of the world. The forum was also a platform for the ILO to plug the policy paper that came out of the International Labor Conference in Geneva in June: “Recovering from the crisis: A Global Jobs Pact.” The paper, which calls for, among other things, investment in the real economy, received “recognition” at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh in September, and it looks like the outcome of the AEF will also receive such coveted “recognition” by Arab governments. For while the forum had the majority of the Arab League’s labor ministries in attendance, and plenty of hand-wringing in speeches, the AEF was essentially all talk.

Ministries without clout

The comments of Jordan’s Labor Minister, Ghazi Shbeikat, suggested  why. In discussing the financial crisis, he said part of the problem stemmed from the region’s labor ministries not being brought into governmental discussions about the economy, and that employment was seen solely as a labor ministry issue.

“The crisis is an opportunity for a change in relations,” he said, “for labor ministries to make economic policies.”

Shbeikat made an important point in that not enough resources are allocated to labor ministries as opposed to the ministries of economy and finance. But if the other ministries were not letting labor ministries through the door before, would they now? Perhaps the region’s economy and finance ministries should have attended the forum, as well as high-level representatives of the private sector, the very people that have influence on economic policy.

Expatriate workers

Arab trade unions were also there in force, but they have witnessed a prolonged erosion of their strength, their ability to rally workers and their voice to advocate for labor rights. For the constructive change that the ILO wants, strong labor ministries and trade unions are essential.

Therein lies the crux of the problem: Will governments that are heavily influenced by the financial sector remove the leash that has held back labor ministries and unions? Realpolitik would suggest not, especially given union involvement in politics and the resulting strikes and demonstrations, which invariably send shivers down the spines of the more authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and North Africa.

Indeed, some of the policies that governments have implemented in response to the crisis suggest that the needed change is not afoot. For instance, Shbeikat said the Jordanian government has adopted an initiative to help workers at the Aqaba Special Economic Zone (SEZ) and Qualifying Industrial Zone (QIZ) buy apartments. While this could boost the real estate sector, what Shbeikat did not mention is that the majority of workers at the SEZ and QIZ are expatriates, and low paid ones at that. According to a 2009 US Defense Resources Management Institute paper, the number of jobs the QIZ created from 2001 to 2004 rose by 46 percent for local workers, while the ranks of expatriate workers rose 360 percent. So instead of boosting the number of local workers, which would curb unemployment, the government is advocating real estate purchases.

Measuring the crisis

Other suggestions at the forum were not so nonsensical, particularly from Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, chair of the United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development. He said the Arab world “doesn’t need intellectuals, businessmen or politicians, but experts in vocational work.” Ghazaleh added that to understand the scale of the region’s economic problems an Arab Statistics Agency is needed.  “We cannot measure the crisis if there are no measurements,” he said. A lot of benefit could come out of implementing these two ideas alone. As for the outcome of the forum, this will depend on whether labor ministries can punch above their weight to get policies the ILO is advocating in place.

On October 12, the first commercial flight powered by fuel from natural gas took place. From London’s Gatwick airport, it took the Qatar Airways Airbus A340-600 some six hours flying time before landing at Doha International Airport.

Developed by Shell, the company building the world’s largest gas-to-liquids (GTL) plant in Qatar in conjunction with Qatar Petroleum, the fuel used to power the jet engines was a mix blend of GTL kerosene and conventional oil-based kerosene fuel, known as GTL Jet Fuel. The flight is a promising sign for the airline given that Qatar, which holds the third largest reserves of gas in the world, is set to become the world leader in GTL kerosene if production begins on schedule in 2012. Besides the commercial advantages of using the GTL blend, the fuel also emits less sulfur dioxide than its conventional cousin making it more eco-friendly.

Many analysts however doubt that the fuel will become an effective alternative to conventional jet fuel due to the high costs involved in its production process. According to JBC Energy, a Vienna-based energy consulting firm, GTL kerosene’s  potential by 2015 is some 40,000 barrels per day, equal to approximately 0.8 percent of global demand for jet fuel. Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, David Wech, head of research at JBC Energy, said that when the full life cycle emissions are taken into account, more CO2 is emitted than when conventional jet fuel is used. “GTL economics do simply not work out,” he noted.

Publicity stunt or not, with around 1 million tons of GTL kerosene planned to be pumped out of Qatari territory — enough to fly a commercial aircraft 500 million kilometers, according to Qatar Airways — the carrier looks like it still has a long way to go and more than enough fuel to get it there.

It must rank as one of the quietest air shows in history. Despite event posters featuring a red-devil bi-wing stunt plane flying upside down, the blue sky above was clear — no helicopters, no planes and no screaming jet fighters performing the aerial acrobatics typically seen at international air shows. There weren’t even grounded aircraft at the exhibition, near though it was to the Damascus International Airport. The attraction that closest resembled aviation technology was an Iranian-made flight simulator tucked away in a corner.

Still, the first Syria Air Show International Aviation Technology Exhibition was a premiere event for the country. It signified that the Syrian aviation industry has made small but significant progress over the past few years, including the launch of two private airlines that broke the state-owned Syrian Arab Airlines’ (SAA) monopoly. United States President Barack Obama even extended an olive branch to Damascus, suggesting America may end sanctions against Syria’s aviation sector.

Nonetheless, the air show raised many a curious eyebrow. “I’m wondering: why have a show?” said Nabil Sukkar, managing director of the Syrian Consulting Bureau for Development and Investment. “Who is going to exhibit, as Syria is not buying planes?”

The post-sanctions horizon

Indeed, with American companies dominating the aviation sector worldwide, Syria is unable to purchase planes due to the sanctions and instead relies on leases and Russian- made aircraft. On the other hand, several company representatives said it was the potential of tapping into an essentially virgin market once sanctions are removed that prompted them to attend the air show.

“Syria’s not very commercial yet. We are here to feel out the market,” a spokeswoman for Moscow-based Sukhoi Civil Aircraft said. “We can’t sell in Syria as we have 10 percent American parts in our planes; it’s politics, and we don’t want to jeopardize sales elsewhere. But when the sanctions are lifted, [aviation companies] will flood in,” she added.

Sukhoi, however, was the only major international aviation player at the exhibit. Dominating half of the stands were Iranian aircraft, helicopter and aviation service companies, while the rest were made up of Syrian aviation companies, the Jordanian Royal Air Force, Jordanian pilot training academies and airport handling services from Bahrain and Egypt. Iran was over-represented, as it is in the same position as Syria when it comes to US aviation sanctions, with Syria one of the few countries Iran can viably market to.

State-owned Iranian Aviation Industries Organization (IAIO) manufactures cargo planes, small wing aircraft and civilian planes, developed in partnership with Ukrainian engineers to get around the ban on buying parts from Boeing and Airbus. Asked why the company was at the air show, Amin Salari, a member of IAIO’s board of directors, said: “It’s the first event in Syria so we had to be here.”

Other companies were of a similar mind. “We don’t provide services here yet, but we hope to and are looking to sell to private companies and individuals,” said Mohamad Khosravi, managing director of Tehran-based Navid Helicopter Services.

The presence of so many Iranian companies was perhaps indicative of the sentiment that US aviation sanctions will not end anytime soon. The Obama administration may have eased the embargo, with American companies now able to get a license for export to Syria, but so far none have. According to a well-placed source, Washington rejected an SAA request for Airbus planes.

“The US is basically saying they are easing exports, but the fact that SAA is going to [Russia’s] Tupolev [for two new aircraft] means Syria doesn’t believe this,” said Jihad Yazigi, editor of Syria Report. This was further evidenced when the US pressured Germany in late October to ground the engines of two SAA planes that were under repair, reducing the fleet to just three aircraft.

For Syria’s private airlines, Pearl Air (which has a 25 percent stake held by SAA) and Cham Wings, one of the air show’s sponsors, getting around the sanctions means leasing aircraft until they can “buy American,” said one executive off the record.  “It’s a double-edged sword, it affects us and the owner of the sanctions,” he said. “If sanctions were lifted, we’d buy more planes, technical training services, and have deals with maintenance companies. We would buy from America. Millions of dollars in deals could be made.”

The potential is certainly there, with Syria attracting a record 4 million plus tourists this year and more international carriers flying into the country.

“Services are really growing in tourism, investment and business travel, [like] private jets and VIP lounges,” said Marwan Hijazi of Sky Aviation Services. “Business is up for us in Syria.”

As recent international attention on Iran has focused on domestic unrest and talks over the nuclear program, the government now faces a major economic challenge.

Change is in the air. Inflation is at its lowest in many years, the Tehran stock exchange has handled its biggest ever privatization and parliament is discussing the phasing out of universal subsidies on everyday items like electricity, bread as well as medicines.

In a highly politicized country like Iran, commentators will assess such changes in terms of the country’s vulnerability to further international sanctions and whether they bolster or undermine the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But the deeper issue, according to Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, economics professor at Virginia Tech University and an expert in development economics, is whether the government can channel resources away from consumption, including costly subsidies, towards the investment needed for economic growth.

To benefit more fully from having the world’s second highest combined reserves of oil and gas, Iran must resist popular pressure for “redistribution.”

Promises of a revolution

But this is far from easy. A “lack of transparency in government activity and the public’s naïve view of how the economic system works” means “the politics of redistribution trump those of growth,” Salehi-Isfahani wrote earlier this year.

Ahmadinejad famously promised in his 2005 election win to put oil money on the people’s sofreh [dining table]. But pressure to distribute oil wealth has long been fostered by the 1979 Revolution’s commitment to the mostazafin (the dispossessed) and has led successive governments to keep everyday items priced as low as possible.

As a result, subsidies of gasoline and other forms of energy amount annually to $50 billion, or 15 percent of GDP. Overall subsidies are as high as $100 billion, or 30 percent of GDP.

The effects on growth are clear. While the Iranian economy has grown faster than most developing countries, it has not met the ambitious 8 percent target set by the country’s five-year plans.

Growth averaged 5.4 percent from 1996 to 2006, reached 7.8 percent in 2007 and then fell back with the world recession and weaker oil prices to 2.5 percent in 2008. The International Monetary Fund last month projected 1.5 percent growth this year and 2.2 percent in 2010.

This is not enough to provide jobs for all the baby-boomers, born in the Revolution’s early years, coming into the employment market. Officially unemployment is 12.5 percent, but many analysts say the real figure is much higher.

Salehi-Isfahani told Executive he was disappointed this year’s presidential election did not confront the challenge of increasing investment.

“I feel that redistribution has a greater hold on large sections of Iranian voters than I realized,” he said. “I had expected that after his [Ahmadinejad’s] failure to deliver [in his first term as president] that more people would turn away from populism. Instead, I heard many people say that he would have delivered on his promises [to redistribute wealth] had he been allowed to by the powers that be.”

For some years, there has been a consensus among Iran’s political class in favor of greater investment of oil revenues and the development of the private sector, especially through privatization. But in practice, politicians’ support has been lukewarm.

The previous government of Mohammad Khatami established a ringfenced Oil Stabilization Fund to collect windfall revenue, but both Khatami’s government and the parliament soon dipped into the fund to finance pet spending projects, often with an eye to elections. Under Ahmadinejad, the fund’s coffers have diminished further, to the point where its level is kept confidential.

Reducing subsidies

Progress has been slow on a privatization program launched under Khatami and given impetus by two rulings, in 2005 and 2006, from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, that 80 percent of the state sector be privatized.

Last month parliament began discussing the phasing out of subsidies. The move would be inflationary and will need careful management even though inflation fell to 9.3 percent in September this year — down from the 30 percent range topped in October 2008.

The discussion marks a shift from last year, when parliament threw out a similar plan from the Ahmadinejad government. Salehi-Isfahani feels the “political emergency” of unrest after June’s election has given the president more leeway. “The conservatives in the parliament are less likely to oppose him while he is under pressure from the reformists,” he said.

But liberalization and privatization are never straightforward in a country weaned on oil income with a powerful state and quasi-state sector.

The introduction of petrol rationing in 2007 was a state-led approach. Faced with escalating import bills — at the time, gasoline imports were 40 percent of consumption — Ahmadinejad avoided a market solution and chose to allocate motorists a set amount, through a smartcard, at a subsidized price equivalent to 10 cents a liter.

The move has been a relative success. “It has not reduced consumption in my judgment, but it has at least stopped a rise in consumption,” said Heydar Pourian, editor of the Tehran-based monthly, Iran Business.

Imports have fallen from 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2007 to around 130,000 barrels bpd  — making the economy less vulnerable to the gasoline sanctions touted in the United States and Europe.

But reducing the costs of subsidies on electricity, bread and other items cannot be done through rationing, at least not without a costly expansion in bureaucracy. Hence, the government plans to replace subsidies with targeted benefits for the poor.

Middle class discontent

Whatever the longer term benefits for the economy, it will be a huge challenge for Ahmadinejad to manage the political fallout as everyone other than the poor faces the resulting price hikes.

Another problem with liberal economic reform is that it strengthens a middle class whose numbers are already swollen by the expansion of higher education under the Islamic Republic. Iran’s middle class is largely disenchanted with the government and was the backbone of the protests against June’s presidential election results.

“In the last 10 years the middle class has doubled in size while the ranks of the poor have shrunk by two thirds,” said Salehi-Isfahani. “Now the government finds itself in an adversarial position vis-a-vis the middle class, it may adopt policies inimical to their growth and transformation into a productive class. I can see the government move more in the direction of greater control of the economy with more policies aimed at redistribution, which generally hurt growth.”

Privatization is a massive test. Iran’s capital markets are weak, while foreign capital is restricted both by domestic law and US banking sanctions. And yet quasi-state bodies, buoyed with oil revenue, are relatively liquid.

The sale in late September of a 50 percent plus one share in the state-owned Telecommunications Corporation of Iran (TCI) was the largest in the history of the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) and raised eyebrows given the economic slowdown.

Iranian subsidies as a portion of 2009 GDP

Islamic revolutionary shareholders

The winning buyer, Etemad-e Mobin, is a consortium of three Iranian firms with varying degrees of experience in the sector. But government critics attacked the sale as an extension of control by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

After the IRGC’s role was raised in the Iranian parliament, it emerged from parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani, and Finance Minister Shamseddin Hosseini, that some shares of the three companies were held by IRGC retirement funds.

The TCI sale illustrates how politics make economic reform harder. Iranian telecoms are a potentially lucrative market — cellular penetration is relatively low, for example, at 70 percent — but foreign investors are wary, because of sanctions and the suspicion of foreigners in Iran.

At the same time, IRGC pension funds hardly relish investing abroad, given the corps is targeted by sanctions and was designated a “terrorist” organization by the US Treasury in 2007.

The privatization program has tended to transfer assets from state ownership to quasi-state ownership or to powerful interests with links within the state sector, including social security funds. The IRGC is part of the mix, with its engineering arm already expanding in construction and energy.

“It’s hard to establish whether the growing economic role of the IRGC reflects a central plan or is the result of disparate groups, many with links to the IRGC, jockeying for position,” said David Butter, senior Middle East analyst at the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit.

A sign of how things might develop will come in November as Iran launches a $1.4 billion bond offer to meet a funding shortfall for the South Pars gas field. Despite the rich potential takings on offer in South Pars, international energy majors and western banks are shunning it because of US and UN sanctions.

The Iranian media has reported the bond will offer a 9 percent interest rate. If the bond finds takers domestically, or from Asia, then Iran will have cleared, or at least not fallen at, one of the many hurdles it faces.