ISTANBUL, March 30. /TASS/. The US administration has begun developing Plan B to secure control over oil and gas reserves in the Persian Gulf, which could be based on the so-called Four Seas Project, Turkey’s Ekonomim business newspaper reported.

The project was mentioned by US Ambassador to Ankara and US Special Envoy for Syria Tom Barrack at a conference in Washington organized by the Syrian-American Business Council and the Atlantic Council last week, the paper said.

The Four Seas Project initiative was put forward by then Turkish President Abdullah Gul in 2009, Ekonomim noted. It envisages the development of infrastructure and transport corridors linking the Black, Marmara, Aegean and Mediterranean Seas.

Turkey and Syria are assigned a key role in supplying energy from the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean to the West within the project, the newspaper said. If implemented, its financing will likely be provided by BlackRock Inc., one of the world's largest investment firms headquartered in New York, according to the publication.

The US and Israel launched a military operation against Iran on February 28. Major Iranian cities, including Tehran, were hit. The White House justified the attack by citing alleged missile and nuclear threats from Iran. As a result of the strikes, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and several other senior figures in the leadership of the Islamic Republic were killed. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced a retaliatory operation, targeting sites in Israel. US military bases in Bahrain, Jordan, Iraq, Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Syria were also hit.