Even before the fall of the shah of Iran in 1979, Syria supported the exiled opposition leader, Ayatollah Khomeini. Syria was the first Arab country to recognize the new Islamic revolutionary government, which it regarded as an important partner against Israel.
Asad and Iraqi president Saddam Hussein were rivals for leadership in Arab world. When Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, Syria extended political, economic, and military support to Iran, especially by shutting down Iraq's oil pipeline across Syria. This support of Iran isolated Syria in the Arab world, and no Arab states aided Syria against Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
After 1988 Syria expanded its two-track policy toward Israel. Syria offered Israel peace in return for Israel's full withdrawal from occupied territories and rights for the Palestinian people. At the same time, Syria developed its military to gain a strategic balance with Israel and continued its anti-Israeli propaganda campaign. Israel, though, remained unwilling to give up the Golan, even in exchange for peace.
Because of Syria's isolation in the Arab world, peace between Egypt and Israel, and the collapse of its superpower backer the Soviet Union, Syria slowly began to adopt a more flexible policy toward Israel and to improve relations with the United States. The United States did not, however, remove Syria from the State Department's list of countries that sponsored terrorism.
When Hussein invaded Kuwait in August, 1990, Syria was the first Arab country to condemn the invasion and call for the removal of Iraqi forces. From the beginning of the crisis, Syria backed all United Nations resolutions and led Arab countries in pledging and sending troops to join the U. N. coalition to defend Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War in early 1991.
At home Asad faced opposition for his support of the U. N. action. Many Syrians objected to fighting a war against another Arab country and especially fighting alongside the United States, which Syria usually condemned for its support of Israel. Participation in the anti-Iraq coalition strengthened Syria's position and prestige with the Arab Persian Gulf states. It also weakened the domestic opposition, strengthened Syria's control over 90 percent of Lebanon without objection from the West, and improved Syria's relations with the United States.
When the United States began to call for renewed international intervention in Iraq in 2002, it seemed unlikely that Syria would support a second anti-Iraqi action. Anew invasion had little support throughout the Middle East and Syrian relations with Iraq had improved considerably in the late 1990's. Moreover, some in the United States maintained that Syria itself was a major part of the problem of world terrorism. In September, 2002, the chairman of the U. S. Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham, declared that Syria and Iran were greater threats than Iraq. Graham argued that forces of the al-Qaeda network from Afghanistan had taken refuge in Syria and in Syrian-controlled areas of Lebanon.
World History
