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planned Israel’s response to the Hezbollah kidnapping well in advance. The reason? To destroy Hezbollah’s ability to hit Israel during possible future US preemptive strikes on Iran, which had a UN deadline of August 31 to stop enriching uranium. As much of Iran’s program was literally underground, Hersh said that the United States wanted to understand the effectiveness of its weapons in Israel’s arsenal against such targets. The report also said that the Bush administration hoped that the raid would further democracy by strengthening the government of Lebanese premier Fouad Siniora “so that it could assert its authority over the south of the country, much of which is controlled by Hezbollah.”3

The next day, President Assad finally broke his silence in an address to a Syrian journalists’ conference in Damascus. The fire-and-brimstone speech, which featured the word “conspiracy” scores of times, dashed hopes for peace anytime soon.

“The more elusive the realization of peace becomes, the more important and necessary other ways and methods become,” Assad said. “The whole world only got interested in the Middle East after the 1973 War … [the West] only moves when Israel is in pain.” Resistance, Assad added, “is necessary for the achievement of peace.” While Assad’s pro-Hezbollah rhetoric was not unexpected, his open swipe at Europe, which supported Syrian reform efforts, was unprecedented. “The countries concerned with the peace process—and they are mostly European—are responsible for what is happening. We might wonder what motivates some officials in these countries to send messages about a sick prisoner [in a Syrian jail]…. What nobility! What humanity! What greatness! We might ask as well, where are these same officials concerning the massacres perpetrated in Lebanon?”

Assad had a few words for his fellow Arab leaders as well. “One of the other positive sides to this war is that it has completely uncovered the Arab situation. If we asked any Arab citizen about the Arab situation before this war, they will say it is bad—which is true. Arabs used to see our situation under makeup, now they see it as it is in reality. This war prevented the use of such cosmetics as it classified positions in a clear way. There was no room for half-solutions in such a war where it unveiled half-men, or people with half-positions … i.e., those who were waiting to see where the scales would tip have fallen along with their positions. This is one of the very important outcomes of this battle.”

Less than an hour after Assad’s speech, German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier canceled a trip to Damascus scheduled for later that day. He dubbed it a “negative contribution that is not in any way justified in view of the current challenges and opportunities in the Middle East.”

A few days later, in an interview with Dubai TV’s Hamdi Kandeel, Assad tried to mend fences with Arab leaders, nearly all of whom were refusing to speak with the Syrian president. Assad insisted that Iran had a strong role to play in the region.

“Iran is a country that has existed in the region for centuries,” Assad said. “It is the Arabs who are absent from the political arena, whether in decision making or in shaping the region’s future…. If strong countries play a just and positive role, this would serve stability in the region…. Iran says it wants its nuclear project for peaceful means. There is nothing to fear from Iran.”

Kandeel then asked Assad about concerns that the Islamic Republic’s influence would feed an already “growing religious current” that could undermine the regime’s pan-Arab ideological bedrock. The president responded that he could handle it. “Syria is a secular country, and has no problem cooperating with Iran. If one looks to what is happening in Iraq, it’s easy to see that the Western powers, which are propagating secularism, are working to consolidate the nonreligious radical current in the Arab world as well.”

When Kandeel asked Assad point-blank if Syria would adopt the resistance model that it was now championing in the region, Assad mapped