In April 1982, the rival Ba'athist regime in Syria, one of the few nations that supported Iran, closed the Kirkuk–Baniyas pipeline that had allowed Iraqi oil to reach tankers on the Mediterranean, reducing the Iraqi budget by $5 billion per month. Journalist Patrick Brogan wrote, "It appeared for a while that Iraq would be strangled economically before it was defeated militarily." Syria's closure of the Kirkuk–Baniyas pipeline left Iraq with the pipeline to Turkey as the only means of exporting oil, along with transporting oil by tanker truck to the port of Aqaba in Jordan. However, the Turkish pipeline had a capacity of only , which was insufficient to pay for the war. However, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the other Gulf states saved Iraq from bankruptcy by providing it with an average of $60 billion in subsidies per year. Though Iraq had previously been hostile towards other Gulf states, "the threat of Persian fundamentalism was far more feared." They were especially inclined to fear Iranian victory after Ayatollah Khomeini declared monarchies to be illegitimate and an un-Islamic form of government. Khomeini's statement was widely received as a call to overthrow the Gulf monarchies. Journalists John Bulloch and Harvey Morris wrote: