Qutar has natural gas.
Europe relies almost solely on Russia for natgas.
The west doesn't like that at all. So they want to build a pipeline from Qutar to the med through Syria.
Assad says absolutely not.
Assad is now enemy number one for denying the pipeline which would've freed Europe from Russia's natgas stranglehold.
This is all about energy folks. It's that simple.
The gas pipelines are a huge reason, for sure. But it's not the only reason. Many different actors have many different reasons why supporting their side of the proxy war makes financial and strategic sense.
No expert on foreign policy, or the middle east I have heard give talks in the last years, considers this to be true. The only people who believe this narrative are naive leftist who don't understand the real situation.
They want to what??? You really need to look at a map before saying things like that.
I just.....
Do you realize Qatar is on the coast? Why would you need to build a pipeline to another coast?
And why go through Syria of all places? There are so many other routes you can take, and you think they want Syria so badly they triggered a war?
The proposed pipeline goes from Qatar, though Saudi Arabia, through Syria, into Turkey and then would provide Natural Gas to Europe.
There's a second proposed pipeline people often don't talk about... it would go from Iran, through Iraq, through Syria to Europe. Guess which one Europe and the United States want.
I get that it's a bit shorter to go through Syria, but a war, just for that?
There's a major station in Doğubeyazıt, you can link to that.
And no, the war is not merely about this pipeline. But it is one of the 'prizes' at stake which has gotten the support of foreign countries spending money and shipping arms into Syria proxy forces (notably, in this case, Qatar).
Take a look at the Center for Strategic and International Studies policy assessment for Gulf Countries during the Syrian Proxy Conflict: https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/1...
That's the popular 'opinion' induced by Russian propaganda and they're notorious for ignoring the reality.
Please look at the pipelines and read about the actions and incentives of the Gulf State. In particular, Qatar supported al Qaeda in Syria (Nusra as well as the Islamic State Group in addition to a number of other terrorist factions) with the pipeline project as a key aspect of its strategic calculus, even sabotaging, in a way, relations with Iran that had been started to improve.