Word: assad
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...Thursday night to dispatch another 1,600 soldiers to the effort. Complicating matters, the Syrian government, perhaps exploiting Europe's dithering, is rejecting Resolution 1701's call for U.N. troops to police the Syrian-Lebanese border as a means of halting future arms transfers to Hizballah. Syrian President Bashar Assad this week called the proposal a "hostile act" against Syria's sovereignty...
...recent years, Nasrallah has consolidated Hizballah's ties to its powerful sponsors, Iran and Syria. The group receives as much as $300 million a year from Tehran, and Nasrallah is a confidant of Syrian President Bashar Assad, whom he visited on a weekly basis prior to the war. Lebanese sources speaking to TIME give credence to Israeli reports that the Hizballah leader has spent part of the war holed up in the Iranian embassy in Beirut--which may have secret tunnels leading to Nasrallah's now destroyed headquarters. But within Lebanon, his coziness with foreign patrons is a liability...
...Israel, facing an unexpectedly tough slog in Lebanon, wants to avoid war with Syria; the weekend moves came, officials say, because they worry Assad is too unpredictable, and his allies too radical, to ignore. (Even as Peretz announced the new bombing regime on the Lebanese-Syrian border, he insisted that the Israelis had "no intention to open a new front with Syria.") "This is not a fight Olmert is looking for at the moment," says Eyal Zisser, head of the Middle East History Department at Tel Aviv University. The IDF would undoubtedly win, he says. But badly needed resources...
...Damascus, for its part, is more than happy to avoid a punishing bout with the IDF. Despite tough talk, Syrian officials know their military is no match for the Israeli army - their antiquated weaponry and training can't compete with Israel's. That may be why Assad, in a previously scheduled speech hours after the Masnaa attacks, made no mention of the incidents. He may have insisted the "powers of hegemony" would not force Syria to "stop backing our brothers and the resistance," but his message to his own armed forces was confined to urging them to "pay more extensive...
...Assad] is very smart. Syria is not ready for war," says Syrian journalist Sami Moubayed. "But if the country is attacked, he will have no choice." Given their current limitations, Syria and Israel would certainly make for reluctant combatants - in fact, Syria is still angling to be part of any permanent Lebanese cease-fire solution. But neither of those facts would necessarily be enough to keep them from the battlefield, if there are a few more faceoffs like the one this past weekend. Experts say the odds are still against an armed clash between the two - but they aren...