Word: assad
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Although it would run into unexpected delays, the arrangement had been settled on by Friday night. Assad by then had emerged as the intermediary who would take custody of the hostages from Berri and quickly set them free. Berri had agreed to hand over the Americans without any prior or even simultaneous release of the prisoners in Atlit. That would save face for the U.S. and Israel; both countries had insisted that any outright swap would constitute a payoff for terrorism. It was assumed that Israel would begin "unilaterally" setting the Atlit prisoners free as soon as the American hostages...
...first heads of state Ronald Reagan cabled for assistance in the TWA hostage standoff was not a trusted ally of the U.S. but a frequent diplomatic adversary, Syrian President Hafez Assad. As a Soviet-armed Arab state sharing a tense 50-mile border with Israel, Syria rarely, if ever, sees eye to eye with Washington on Middle East policy. But the Administration was betting that in the current crisis U.S. interests converged in many ways with Assad's. By agreeing last week to act as the mediator in the release of 39 U.S. hostages from their Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim...
...cool, cagey leader whose power base is his nation's 362,000-man armed forces, Assad has maintained his tight control through a finely honed sense of pragmatism that pursues whatever is in Syria's, and by extension Assad's, best interests. In the Beirut crisis, as it happens, Syria's interests coincided with America's. Both countries were anxious to end the hostage stalemate under terms that bolstered the position of Nabih Berri, the Amal militia leader who in effect hijacked the Americans from their original hijackers. For Assad, Berri and his Amal movement play a vital role...
...every reason to share Assad's concern over the fundamentalist Shi'ites' growing power. A permanently radicalized Lebanon would doubtless try to sow subversion among moderate Arab states throughout the Persian Gulf, many of them U.S. allies and oil suppliers...
...Assad, moreover, may have acted at the urging of the Soviets. During Assad's visit to Moscow two weeks ago, Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev reportedly emphasized to him that the U.S.S.R. disapproves of hijacking and would like to see the Beirut crisis ended. The Soviets, who criticized the U.S. for massing a task force of its Sixth Fleet off Lebanon's shores, might have been concerned that Washington could be provoked into seeking a military solution that would embroil Syria...