Top Highlights

• Both the regime and its opponents received external support from multiple sources but not sufficient for either to achieve military victory or force the other side to negotiate.
• After the 1973 October War nearly brought the US and USSR to war, Syria was effectively protected by its Soviet patron and there was little question of any external interference in Syrian affairs.
• leading role in Lebanon’s civil war (1975–90), deploying his own troops there from 1976,
• Turkish Kurdish separatists, the PKK, given safe haven in Lebanon and Syria by Hafez from 1979 to 1998 as a means to pressure his northern neighbour, Turkey.
• alliance with Revolutionary Iran from 1979 against shared enemies in Israel and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.