Reuters Report Reveals Barak's Pressure to Include Partner's Firm in Iraq-Syria Pipeline

Sources revealed that Thomas Barak, a senior American diplomat in the Middle East, pushed for the participation of a company managed by his business partner in developing an oil pipeline from Iraq to Syria.

In July, Iraq and Syria signed memoranda of understanding with a consortium comprising the company, California-based investment group TI Capital, along with Chevron and Qatari holding company UCC, to conduct technical and financial studies in preparation for rehabilitating the pipeline, which will provide an alternative route to avoid passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

Barak, the US Presidential Special Envoy to both Iraq and Syria as well as the US Ambassador to Turkey, has had a long-standing commercial relationship with TI Capital and its founder Ziad Ghandour. At the time of his 2025 confirmation hearings, he held a financial interest entitling him to up to one-fifth of the profits from a real estate project near San Francisco, California, managed by TI Capital with Ghandour as CEO, and stated he intended to retain it, according to public records.

During interactions with Syrian and Iraqi officials after the start of the war in Iran, Barak pressured for the inclusion of Ghandour's company in the project, sources told Reuters.

On June 16, a month before the agreement was signed, Barak and Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi issued a joint statement praising Iraq's decision to proceed with a memorandum of understanding with TI Capital to rehabilitate the Kirkuk-Banias pipeline. The statement did not mention Chevron or UCC regarding the pipeline.

Reuters found no evidence that Barak would profit from the pipeline or other projects, and two ethics lawyers told the agency that his relationship with Ghandour would not constitute criminal conflict of interest unless he were to directly profit from the pipeline itself.

However, Barak's relationship with Ghandour makes such advocacy a serious problem under regulations preventing officials from participating in matters raising questions about their impartiality due to personal or commercial relationships, said Richard Painter, former White House chief ethics lawyer.

The impartiality rule, which is not a criminal law, can be triggered by the involvement of a business partner in a project, regardless of whether the official has a personal financial interest, said Anne Skeet, interim executive director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, noting that the ethical concern is the appearance of conflict of interest.

Don Fox, former general counsel and acting director of the US Office of Government Ethics, said Barak's promotion of TI Capital could also violate regulations preventing officials from using their position to promote any entity or achieve private gain for associated persons.

According to a records request filed by Reuters, Barak did not submit a conflict-of-interest waiver to the US Office of Government Ethics regarding his relationship with the company during its participation in the project.

In a signed ethics agreement prior to his confirmation hearings last year, Barak committed to recusing himself from matters directly affecting the financial interests of the real estate project unless he first obtained such disclosure.

A State Department spokesperson told Reuters that Barak has no affiliation, role, or financial interest in the Kirkuk-Banias pipeline project, while acknowledging Barak's relationship with TI Capital's real estate project.

The spokesperson said his public comments on the pipeline reflect a long-standing US political interest in regional energy integration, adding that Barak was certified as compliant with ethics rules.

The historic Kirkuk-Banias pipeline, which transported Iraqi crude to the Syrian Mediterranean coast for decades, has experienced intermittent shutdowns since the early 1980s and has been out of service since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Plans to revive it gained new momentum this year when Iran, under US attack, restricted movement through Hormuz, driving up oil prices.

A third person with direct knowledge of the conversation told Reuters that the idea of introducing TI Capital into the regional project was raised by Barak in May at the Milken Global Conference in Los Angeles.

Barak has been involved in business with Ghandour since at least 2020, when the two men established a $250 million special purpose acquisition company, which was dissolved after Barak's arrest in 2021 on charges of acting as an unregistered agent for the United Arab Emirates; he was acquitted in 2022.

A person close to Barak said the ambassador trusts Ghandour to help implement US President Donald Trump's regional strategy to bring Iraq and Syria closer to the United States, adding that Ziad is the chosen man, selected by Barak himself.

Source: Reuters