Last Saturday, Joby Warrick and Liz Sly of the Washington Post detailed Iranian involvement in the on-going Syrian crisis. Iran’s actions have complicated our efforts in the Middle East, and a look back at declassified intelligence documents from 30 years ago shows that this complication is nothing new. Syria’s al-Assad dynasty has a history of horrific violence against its own people, and the United States has been unsure how to proceed, partly because the intelligence community has not had a unified stance on Iranian motives in Syria.
In 1982 Hafez al-Assad, the current president’s father, orchestrated an attack on Hama, a city in Western Syria. The ‘scorched earth’ style attack killed between 17,000 and 40,000 – predominately Sunni – Syrians. Shortly after the attack Hafez’s brother, Syrian Army General Rifaat al-Assad, bragged that the total was 38,000 dead. The Hama Massacre is considered to be one of the worst atrocities by any dictator against his own people in modern history.
During the Hama Massacre, the Iran-Iraq War was just getting started, and Syria had initially sided with its fellow Ba’athists in Iraq, led by Saddam Hussein. This was unsurprising, as both Iraqis and Syrians had even tried briefly to combine their two countries and re-create the ancient Kingdom of Iraq. However, by 1982, Iraq was continually frustrated with al-Assad, and severed all diplomatic ties over his “brutal suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood.” Iraq’s exit from Syria in early 1982 allowed Iran to exert its influence shortly thereafter. (more…)
