In the Lion's Den_ An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria - Andrew Tabler [58]
When President Assad took the podium inside the university’s main hall, he seemed ill at ease. Obviously under pressure, Assad started in a way that his father never did: he made it personal.
Before I start this speech, I would like to say that I was asked several times last week why I look pale, and whether it was because of the pressures. I said no. In fact I was a little ill. I am saying this so that I do not get asked the same question again. Political circumstances make us more united, and when we get united we become stronger and livelier. This speech was scheduled for next week, but because of the fast pace of developments, I decided to make it today.
With that, Assad slipped back into standard “regime speak,” urging his people to remain strong in the face of “cultural and psychological warfare.” Instead of addressing the points raised in the UN investigation, Assad framed the crisis as a US or Israeli conspiracy against Syria. “We must be steadfast in facing this foreign attack,” Assad said. “We don’t want to name names, but you know who I am talking about.” The audience erupted in laughter.
Concerning Syria’s domestic scene, Assad added that the regime would extend citizenship to hundreds of thousands of Kurds in Syria whose citizenship had been stripped away in the 1960s—a key point discussed at the Baath Party conference the previous June. In a clear warning to the Syrian opposition, Assad said, “If someone in Syria raises his voice in tandem with foreigners, he is being controlled by foreigners.”
In the final lines of the speech, Assad hinted at his plan for rolling back the pressures bearing down on his regime. “This region has two options: chaos or resistance,” Assad said. “In the end, we are going to win, one way or another, even if it lasts a long time. Syria is protected by God.”2
As I watched Assad receive a standing ovation, I thought about the speech and what it all meant. Directly and indirectly, Assad had told Syrians that the Hariri investigation in Lebanon was “politicized” and part of a plot against Syria by foreign powers. He was also clearly warning the opposition not to work with “foreigners”—that is, Americans or Westerners trying to help the Syrian opposition. But what was with “Syria is protected by God”? The Assad regime never made references to God, in keeping with the Baath Party’s distinctly secular language. And what did he mean by “resistance”? Resistance to the pressures bearing down on Syria? Or resistance to Israel? When I asked the Syria Today staff what they thought it all meant, they just shrugged their shoulders.
We didn’t have to wait long for an answer. In the days following the speech, Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki arrived in Damascus for talks with Assad. After a long set of meetings with the Syrian president, Mottaki also consulted with “resistance” groups based in Syria and Lebanon, including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command (PFLP-GC) chief Ahmed Jabril, and a representative of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. A week later on November 21, Hezbollah launched an attempted kidnapping in Ghajar, a border village disputed between Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The raid marked the largest attack on Israel since the withdrawal of its forces from Lebanon in May 2000.
On January 19, the hard-line Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, made his first state visit to Damascus. The two leaders announced a bilateral alliance to confront “foreign pressures,” and President Assad publicly declared Syria’s support for Iran’s efforts to acquire nuclear technology. High-level delegations accompanying Ahmadinejad signed a number of protocols pushing economic, educational, and cultural cooperation between the two