The Unlikely Ally

One of the first heads of state Ronald Reagan cabled for assistance in the TWA hostage standoff was not a trusted ally of the U.S. but a frequent diplomatic adversary, Syrian President Hafez Assad. As a Soviet-armed Arab state sharing a tense 50-mile border with Israel, Syria rarely, if ever, sees eye to eye with Washington on Middle East policy. But the Administration was betting that in the current crisis U.S. interests converged in many ways with Assad's. By agreeing last week to act as the mediator in the release of 39 U.S. hostages from their Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim captors, Assad proved to be a good gamble. And when Saturday's last-minute delays threw the deal into question, it was the Syrian President to whom Washington turned for fresh assistance.

A cool, cagey leader whose power base is his nation's 362,000-man armed forces, Assad has maintained his tight control through a finely honed sense of pragmatism that pursues whatever is in Syria's, and by extension Assad's, best interests. In the Beirut crisis, as it happens, Syria's interests coincided with America's. Both countries were anxious to end the hostage stalemate under terms that bolstered the position of Nabih Berri, the Amal militia leader who in effect hijacked the Americans from their original hijackers. For Assad, Berri and his Amal movement play a vital role in Assad's long campaign to become power broker and peacemaker among Lebanon's warring factions. While Amal currently commands the allegiance of most of Lebanon's estimated 1.2 million Shi'ites, its leadership has come under intense pressure from far more radical and fundamentalist Shi'ite factions, especially a group called Hizballah (Party of God), which has strong ties to Iran. Although Assad's relations with Iran are friendly, he has no desire to see Lebanon become a Shi'ite theocracy that might eventually oppose his own secular form of rule.

The U.S. has every reason to share Assad's concern over the fundamentalist Shi'ites' growing power. A permanently radicalized Lebanon would doubtless try to sow subversion among moderate Arab states throughout the Persian Gulf, many of them U.S. allies and oil suppliers.

Assad, moreover, may have acted at the urging of the Soviets. During Assad's visit to Moscow two weeks ago, Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev reportedly emphasized to him that the U.S.S.R. disapproves of hijacking and would like to see the Beirut crisis ended. The Soviets, who criticized the U.S. for massing a task force of its Sixth Fleet off Lebanon's shores, might have been concerned that Washington could be provoked into seeking a military solution that would embroil Syria.

Still another motive for Assad's cooperation was his own future standing in Middle East politics. Partly to make the point to Washington that Damascus is a useful place to do business in the area, Assad has helped out in previous prisoner situations, notably the release of downed U.S. Navy Flyer Robert Goodman in 1984 and possibly the freeing of CNN Beirut Correspondent Jeremy Levin in February. One possible U.S. favor Assad may have in mind in exchange for his latest assistance: a request for U.S. pressure on Israel to abandon its so-called security zone in southern Lebanon.

But perhaps Assad's most serious consideration of all is that for Syria to play a major role in Middle East negotiations and merit respect beyond the region, it needs to shed its image as an outlaw nation. In any case, as one U.S. diplomat put it, in the crisis atmosphere prevailing over the hostages, "Syria had everything to gain."