Word: lebanonization
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...allies, the Lebanese Shi'ite terrorists, to allow Glass to escape, but in such a way that they would not appear to have caved in to Syrian pressure. Certainly, this was the version of events promoted by Syria, which is annoyed with Iran for challenging Damascus' prerogatives in Lebanon and which has been trying hard to repair its tattered relations with the U.S. and other Western powers...
Last week Iran's Parliament Speaker Hashemi Rafsanjani seemingly acknowledged the importance of the Syrian pressure. In an interview on NBC's Today, Rafsanjani suggested an exchange of foreign hostages held in Lebanon for Shi'ite Muslims imprisoned in Kuwait and Israel. Such deals have previously been turned down by Kuwait, Israel and, indeed, the U.S. But the Rafsanjani offer clearly implied a desire among some factions in Iran to improve Tehran's ties with the outside world and soothe Syrian irritation over the hostage taking in Lebanon...
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...
...recovering in London last week, convinced that his days in West Beirut were over, "at least for a generation." Said his wife Fiona: "The children are thrilled. He's even better than James Bond." But his departure still left eight Americans and 15 other foreigners held hostage in Lebanon. Among them was Terry Waite, special envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who disappeared in West Beirut in January while trying to negotiate the hostages' release. Last week the Beirut magazine Ash Shiraa reported that Waite would soon be freed for a $5 million ransom worked out by an unidentified Lebanese...