Word: syrian
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...East well, Glass had been seized by Muslim Shi'ite terrorists 62 days earlier in one of Beirut's southern suburbs. Having somehow escaped, he had fled to the right place: the hotel is a heavily guarded sanctuary of Lebanon's Druze community, which is closely aligned with the Syrian government of President Hafez Assad...
...receptionist promptly telephoned the Syrian army, which has 7,500 troops on duty in West Beirut, and within an hour Glass was on his way to freedom. What remained unanswered was whether Glass had slipped away from his captors unaided, as he contended, or had been allowed to escape. In either case, Glass had become a pawn in the growing power struggle in Lebanon between Syria, which for its own purposes is trying to restore order and ensure a secular, religiously diverse Lebanon, and Iran, whose fanatical revolutionary rulers are attempting to transform the country into a vessel...
...kidnapers were presumed to be members of the radical, pro-Iranian Hizballah (Party of God), the organization linked to a 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...
This was Glass's story. What was unclear was whether Iran had simply ordered its 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...
Without doubt, Syrian-Iranian tension was at the heart of the case. If the 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...