Word: assad
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...meeting brought other accomplishments. The participants agreed to "freeze" the Israeli-Lebanese accord and formally recognized Lebanon's "Arab identity." The next step comes when the Lebanese warlords are scheduled to reconvene in Geneva. Both Washington and Jerusalem want to retain the substance of the Lebanese-Israeli agreement; Assad considers it dead. If the pact is killed, according to a Western diplomat, Damascus is prepared to accept Gemayel as Lebanese President and work with him to restructure the country's government. Assad and Gemayel were scheduled to meet in Damascus in mid-November, but the Syrian leader's illness intervened...
Meanwhile Israeli troops continue to suffer casualties and antagonize local Shi'ites in southern Lebanon, and the U.S. Marines remain vulnerable in Beirut. Syria loses nothing by staying put. Says a Western diplomat in Damascus: "Assad knows that Israel is in a no-win situation that saps its military strength and that the Marines cannot stay in Lebanon forever. He is content to wait out both...
...rest of the Persian I Gulf oil states give Damascus ğmore than $1 billion a year in cash, partly because they deem it essential to have at least one strong Arab state confronting Israel. But the payment also serves as a form of protection money to ensure that Assad does not try to overthrow those conservative regimes. Kuwait, with its large population of Syrian guest workers, feels especially vulnerable. "Assad is a very bright man, but he also is very mean," says a United Arab Emirates official. The Syrian leader and Jordan's King Hussein always have been deeply...
Syria's ties with renegade non-Arab Iran, on the other hand, have been highly profitable for Damascus. When the Iran-Iraq war broke out in 1980, Assad, who has long been bitterly opposed to the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, rushed to support the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. Aside from giving Damascus an estimated $600 million in cheap oil, the Ayatullah has bestowed his blessing on Assad's minority Alawites, a sect that most Sunnis consider heretical. In return, Damascus has shut down the Iraqi oil pipeline that slices across Syria to the Mediterranean, thereby slowing the flow of petrodollars...
Syria's hand is more visible in the continuing campaign to destroy Arafat. Though Assad and the P.L.O. chieftain have worked together in the past, the strains were always there. As early as 1969, when Assad was Defense Minister, he tried to regulate the activities of P.L.O. guerrillas in Syria. As President, he supported Arafat's avowed enemy Abu Nidal, a rogue P.L.O. leader who ran the Black June terrorist group. After the Lebanese civil war, Assad supported Beirut's right to impose rules on the P.L.O. even though the group was far stronger than the government. While Assad...