Letter from Washington

“When the feathers hit the fan, your Egyptian and Jordanian buddies can’t help you, and I can.” That’s what Hafez al-Assad said to Bud McFarlane in less bowdlerized language, according to one Middle East insider in Washington. Why did Assad come through? “He wants to be recognized as the most important power broker in the Middle East, someone who must be dealt with if anything is to get done,” says a White House senior aide, noting that Assad had no place in the Camp David agreement or the Shultz-engineered Lebanon/Israel accord of May 1983, or in the current Hussein/Mubarak/Arafat effort.

“The press will play up Assad as a humanitarian because of this,” says a Capitol Hill expert on Lebanon. “That’s a joke. Assad wants to keep the U.S. out of Lebanon, where it would have been if the hostage crisis had lasted.” Redeployment of regional military forces tends to support that thinking. Two squadrons of F-16s were relocated to U.S. bases in Turkey (which shares a long border with Syria); U.S. servicemen’s leaves were canceled in the Mediterranean; the Pentagon let it be known that two Marine divisions would be sent to the Middle East for potential major military action; and reconnaissance satellites were shifted to target the Lebanese town of Baalbek, the focus of terrorist training and activity. The U.S. was counting on Soviet intelligence to relay these developments to Syria, which, according to a CIA source is in fact what happened.

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“When the feathers hit the fan, your Egyptian and Jordanian buddies can’t help you, and I can.” That’s what Hafez al-Assad said to Bud McFarlane in less bowdlerized language, according to one Middle East insider in Washington. Why did Assad come through? “He wants to be recognized as the most important power broker in the Middle East, someone who must be dealt with if anything is to get done,” says a White House senior aide, noting that Assad had no place in the Camp David agreement or the Shultz-engineered Lebanon/Israel accord of May 1983, or in the current Hussein/Mubarak/Arafat effort.

“The press will play up Assad as a humanitarian because of this,” says a Capitol Hill expert on Lebanon. “That’s a joke. Assad wants to keep the U.S. out of Lebanon, where it would have been if the hostage crisis had lasted.” Redeployment of regional military forces tends to support that thinking. Two squadrons of F-16s were relocated to U.S. bases in Turkey (which shares a long border with Syria); U.S. servicemen’s leaves were canceled in the Mediterranean; the Pentagon let it be known that two Marine divisions would be sent to the Middle East for potential major military action; and reconnaissance satellites were shifted to target the Lebanese town of Baalbek, the focus of terrorist training and activity. The U.S. was counting on Soviet intelligence to relay these developments to Syria, which, according to a CIA source is in fact what happened.