September 15, 2023
An unconfirmed report says that Syria’s debt to Iran now totals about $50 billion and Syria has a long-standing reputation for not repaying its debts.
A large portion of Syria’s debt to Iran is for crude oil, which Iran has provided to Damascus for many years on credit. Syria is the only country other than China known to import Iranian oil.
The debt report comes from the hacktivist group “Uprising Till Overthrow,” which is affiliated with the Mojahedin-e Khalq. The group said it hacked the Iranian Foreign Ministry extracting a batch of documents, including one that discussed Syria’s debt.
The document said that the debt was “about” $50 billion, although a complete figure was still being calculated.
The debt has been building since 2012, it said.
Syria has always been an unreliable debtor. It failed to pay most of its debts to the Soviet Union. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia finally agreed to cancel 73 percent of Syria’s debts to it.