Word: assad
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...produced nothing less than a "new birth" of Arab unity. The Jordanian monarch could be forgiven a bit of rhetorical excess. For while deep divisions in the Arab world remained, Hussein had indeed produced a remarkable and unexpected achievement. He had coaxed radical Syria and its inscrutable President, Hafez Assad, back into the Arab fold...
...series of spectacular terrorist acts. They released Osseiran and his bodyguard-driver a week later, but kept Glass captive. Significantly, Glass's abduction was the first since Syrian troops had arrived in February in an attempt to restore order. The kidnaping was thus a personal affront to President Assad, who had vowed that the Muslim half of Beirut would henceforth be secure from such outrages...
...Syrians had been angered by Glass's abduction, they were shocked by last month's incident in Saudi Arabia at the holy city of Mecca, where thousands of Iranian Shi'ite pilgrims staged a bloody riot against Saudi authority. This, in turn, caused other Arab leaders to urge Assad to stop supporting Iran in the gulf war -- a step that would cost him his right to buy Iranian oil at heavily discounted prices. According to Syrian diplomats, Damascus has warned Iran against widening the war to include any other Arab states...
Until now, the Shi'ite rulers of Iran have been successful in exporting their revolution to Lebanon. Assad welcomed Khomeini's Revolutionary Guards when they arrived in Lebanon in 1982 to help fight off the Israeli invasion. Some 2,000 stayed on after the war to assist Hizballah in the Shi'ite strongholds in the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon. Assad was still delighted when Lebanon's militant Shi'ites unleashed their ferocious fighting power against the Israeli occupation forces in the south and against the U.S.-led multinational peacekeeping force in Beirut. By that time Shi'ite political power...
Almost too late, Assad realized that Iran and Hizballah posed a threat to Syria's position in Lebanon. He also came to understand that an Islamic stronghold in Lebanon might eventually undermine Assad's own secular Baath ; Party government in Damascus. In 1984 Assad threw his support to Amal, the mainstream Lebanese Shi'ite organization and militia led by Nabih Berri, but Hizballah's influence continued to spread. One reason Assad sent his army into West Beirut in February was to bring the Iranians to heel...