Abdul Halim Khaddam, the former Syrian Vice President, returned to the forefront of the scene, through his memoirs, which revealed Iran’s ambitions in both Syria and Iraq, and how the Khamenei regime moved to control them.
Khaddam was a witness to pivotal events in Syria’s contemporary history, after the Baath Party took power in 1963 until it left the country and announced its split in 2005.
Over the course of decades, he moved between several positions. He was governor of Hama at the time of the conflict with the “Muslim Brotherhood” in the early sixties, governor of Quneitra and governor of Damascus. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs, then Vice President, during the basic stations in Syria’s history and its expansion into Lebanon and the region.
His life
Khaddam was born in 1932 in the coastal city of Baniyas, and studied in its schools, before studying law at the University of Damascus and joining the “Baath” Party headed by Michel Aflaq and Salah Al-Bitar. At university, he became a “comrade” of the rising pilot Hafez al-Assad, and one of the members of the “Baath” military committee that led the coup of March 1963.
When Al-Assad assumed power in 1970, he became Prime Minister, Ahmed Al-Khatib was “appointed” as Head of State, and “Friend of the Youth” Khaddam was Minister of Foreign Affairs, in February. Khaddam remained in his position when Assad ascended to the presidency... until 1984
Equinox line
In 1974, Khaddam mobilized support for the “moderation line” against opponents of the “disengagement agreement” with Israel, which was sponsored by former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, after the 1973 October War.
In April 1975, Khaddam became Assad’s special envoy to Lebanon, and mediated between the parties to the Lebanese civil war, and later in 1983, the commander of the Syrian intelligence service, Ghazi Kanaan (died in 2005), and the late intelligence official in Damascus, Muhammad Nassif Khair Bey (died in 2015), contributed with him. In the expansion of Syrian influence after the entry of the “Arab Deterrence Forces” in 1976
In 1978, Khaddam represented Assad in providing support against the initiative of the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and then contributed to strengthening relations with Iran after the fall of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in February 1979. In August 1979, he visited Tehran, and described “the revolution as the most important It happened in our contemporary history,” and contributed to building the alliance with the leader of the “revolution,” Ayatollah Khomeini.
Khaddam's role gradually emerged in “managing the Lebanon file,” and he played a role in resolving the Syrian missile crisis with Israel in Zahle in 1981. He contributed to conveying messages to Arab countries and strengthening cooperation with Saudi Arabia in Lebanon. He was also a witness to Iran’s establishment of “Hezbollah” in Lebanon after the Israeli invasion in 1982, then in directing a military strike against it at the “Fath Allah” barracks in Beirut in 1987. He interviewed the Iranians and advised them not to put Syria and “Hezbollah” on two parallel levels.
In 1985, he coordinated the “tripartite agreement,” convincing Walid Jumblatt, Nabih Berri, and Elie Hobeika to “cease fire and restore peace.” In October 1989, he contributed, on behalf of Syria, with Saudi Arabia, to formulating the “Taif Agreement” between the Lebanese parties to end the war 17 years after its outbreak. He later negotiated the exit of General Michel Aoun, the Lebanese Prime Minister, and to formulating understandings, including the “April Understanding.” After the Israeli invasion in 1996
Khaddam supported the election of Assad's "friend", President Elias Hrawi. In 1982, he introduced his “friend” Rafik Hariri to Hafez al-Assad, who later tested him in a surprising way. When Hariri passed the “test,” he became prime minister between 1992 and 2000. Throughout the 1990s, Khaddam was known as the “political ruler” in Lebanon, and Kanaan as the “ruler of Anjar,” in reference to his headquarters in the Lebanese Bekaa. The “Lebanese file” remained in Khaddam’s custody until 1998, when Assad transferred it to his son, Dr. Bashar, who returned from London after the death of Basil, his older brother, in 1994, which was not comfortable for Khaddam and his allies in Lebanon.
With the decline of his political role in Damascus, the “Baath” conference was held in June 2005, and Khaddam submitted his resignation from all his party and political positions, and held a farewell meeting with Al-Assad, about which he said he was “warm.” After that, he went into exile in Paris (Farouk Al-Sharaa became Vice President at the beginning of 2006 and was relieved of this position years ago. Walid Al-Muallem took over the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, succeeding Al-Sharaa in 2006. Al-Muallem died at the end of 2020).
His diary
Khaddam revealed aspects of what went on behind the scenes regarding his country’s relations with Lebanon, indicating that he advised Rafik Hariri to quickly leave Lebanon and resign from abroad.
Regarding the issue of the extension of General Emile Lahoud, Khaddam stated that the divided Lebanese public opinion is occupied “between an overwhelming majority opposed to the extension and a minority that supports it, in addition to comprehensive international rejection of the issue of the extension, which was reinforced by a meeting between the two presidents, the American George Bush and the Frenchman Jacques Chirac, in June of In 2004. On the occasion of the anniversary of the American landing on the Normandy coast to liberate France from Nazism, they affirmed their categorical rejection of the issue of President Lahoud’s extension, and denounced Syrian interference in Lebanese affairs. In the same context, he pointed out that the campaign of opposition to the extension expanded “Lebanese, Arab and international, and all of this was accompanied by With calls to stop Syrian intervention in Lebanon and the withdrawal of Syrian forces.”
