Al Majalla obtains Damascus Documents which reveal how Iran founded Hezbollah in Lebanon in the 1980s
The story of the relationship between Damascus and Tehran over the last four decades is remarkable. Its evolution reveals much about the changing fortunes of the Middle East and the politics of its nations and alliances.
Syria was Iran’s gateway into the region as Tehran sought to establish the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and spread its influence in the wider region from its base in Lebanon.
For the last 10 years, the survival of the regime in Syria has depended on the support of Iran and Iranian militias — especially before Russia’s meddling in Syria from 2015. During this time, Syria became a conduit for Iran’s influence in the region.
In this article, Al Majalla reviews key stages in the relationship between the two countries, from the pivotal year of 1979 (the ‘Islamic’ Revolution) until present day and reveals in detail what happened at a meeting between two major political figures that would shape politics for a generation, with consequences that are being felt right up to present day.
The revelations come from official documents that the late Syrian Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam took with him in 2005 to Paris before announcing his defection. The documents detail a meeting between two key figures, who spoke to each other at a pivotal time for their respective countries, the Middle East and the world.
But first, we look at the context of those turbulent and defining times. Syria’s leader at the time, President Hafez al-Assad, sought closer ties with Tehran the moment he saw that Iran’s revolution had prevailed.
A range of various issues and circumstances were also in play during this time when the region was witnessing wider geopolitical flux.
Egypt had signed the Camp David Accords with Israel; President Saddam Hussein of Iraq had reneged on the Charter of Joint Arab Action by Syria and Iraq of 1978; and a dispute had broken out between Damascus and the Palestine Liberation Organisation led by Yasser Arafat.
Al-Assad saw a way through all this disruption for his country via Iran in 1979, taking a path which also led to the signing of a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union in the early 1980s.
At the time, al-Assad benefited from the presence of Iranian figures who opposed the Iranian Shah in Lebanon and soon assumed power in Tehran after the revolution.
Syria had already been politically active in Lebanon for years, which provided fertile ground to support the leaders of the Liberation Movement of Iran in Lebanon, via the Amal Movement — a Lebanese Shiite political organisation and former militia. Musa al-Sadr was considered to be the leader of the movement. He was also the head of the Supreme Islamic Shiite Council.
Among the movement’s key members alongside him, and the figures who were to shape the future, were the first prime minister in Iran after the revolution, Mahdi Bazarkan; his deputy, Sadiq Tabatabaei, al-Sadr’s nephew; and ministers including Ibrahim Yazdi, the foreign minister who was succeeded by Sadiq Qutbzadeh, and Mustafa Shamran, who later took over the Ministry of Defence.
But an encounter between two other men turned out to be one of the region’s most significant moments — one that would impact and shape the region’s geopolitics for decades to come.
Al Majalla has obtained the memoirs of one of these men — the late Syrian Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam. These memoirs, which came to be known as the Damascus Documents, reveal exactly what happened when he met the person chief among this cast of political figures: Ayatollah Khomeini, the force behind Iran’s revolution and the country’s first supreme leader after it.
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami welcomes Syrian Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam before their meeting in Tehran 29 September 2003.
Warm congratulations
Al-Assad seized the opportunity presented by the change wrought in Tehran in the last year of the 1970s. He took the initiative to send a “warm congratulations” message to Khomeini, in which he outlined “Syria’s keenness on comprehensive cooperation” with Iran.
Fresh out of its revolution, Tehran was thirsty for influence in the Levant. It responded with an even warmer gesture, as Khaddam’s account makes clear.
He received an invitation from Iran’s foreign minister, Ibrahim Yazdi, in early August 1979. Khaddam, who at the time was foreign minister, wasted no time. He arrived in Tehran on 15 August and was greeted by Yazdi and Sadeq Tabatabaei, the deputy prime minister.
Ahead of the encounter that would shape much of what was to follow, Khaddam was awakened at three o’clock in the morning by one of his staffers who informed him that a group of dignitaries wanted to meet him, including Sheikh Muhammad Montazeri, son of Hussein Ali Montazeri who was then Khomeini’s deputy.
The “revolutionary young man” preceded to launch a scathing critique of the ruling Baath party in Syria, then asked to pray jama’ah, in congregation with Khaddam.
Khaddam met with Mehdi Bazargan, Iran’s then prime minister, in the presence of Yazdi, the minister of foreign affairs, and Tabatabai, the deputy prime minister. The three officials told Khaddam that the revolution in Iran “will work to build strong relations with brotherly Syria.”
Historic encounter
Khaddam later went with Yazdi to the Iranian city of Qom to visit with Khomeini, making him the first and only Syrian official to meet him.
The encounter began in an ordinary residential area in Qom.
“At the entrance of the house,” says Khaddam, “We greeted a Sheikh who sat at a small desk, passing into another small room, no bigger than six square meters, with an ordinary carpet on the floor.
Khomeini was there, sitting on the floor. He got up to greet us, then sat down again, and we all joined him on the floor. He understood Arabic very well and did not need translation when he spoke to Arab interlocutors. Still, he would always respond in Farsi.”
At the entrance of the house, we greeted a Sheikh who sat at a small desk, passing into another small room, no bigger than six square meters, with an ordinary carpet on the floor. Khomeini was there, sitting on the floor. He got up to greet us, then sat down again, and we all joined him on the floor. He understood Arabic very well and did not need translation when he spoke to Arab interlocutors. Still, he would always respond in Farsi.
LATE SYRIAN VICE PRESIDENT, ABDEL HALIM KHADDAM
Khomeini did not speak much, but in the short conversation, they emphasised strengthening relations, “and asked me to convey his thanks to President al-Assad, his greetings to him, and his keenness on having solid connections with Syria.”
Khaddam comments: “The interview was short and symbolic, but it was crucial for me to understand the man’s determination, which I sensed in every phrase he uttered.”
“When I returned to Damascus,” Khaddam explained, “I briefed Hafez on the visit, and we found that conditions were ripe for cooperation with the new regime in Iran.”
The founding of Hezbollah
Al-Assad had immense confidence in Musa al-Sadr. After his disappearance in Libya on 31 August 1978, this confidence was placed in Nabih Berri.
Iran did not have a political or military presence in Lebanon, or any influence in Lebanon for that matter, before 1980. The Iranian presence was symbolic, represented by a group of opposition figures who took power after the revolution.
The most effective Iranian activity in Lebanon was during the Israeli invasion of Lebanese territory in early June 1982, when the Iranian leadership took the decision to send a brigade from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) with experts to Syria, whose forces had entered the country in 1976.
The IRGC brigade arrived a few days after the fighting broke out.
Most of these troops and experts went to Lebanon, to the Sheikh Abdullah barracks, in the Baalbek-Hermel region. It was this group that established Hezbollah. Also, among the founding contributors was the Islamic Dawa Party in Lebanon.
At that stage, the IRGC focused on organisation, ideology, political preparation, and training. It also focused on selecting party members after careful and extensive vetting in order to avoid any infiltrations.
Hezbollah’s focus at that stage was fully on resistance. It did not interfere in politics. Instead, it focused on winning over the population of the southern region. In return, Iran provided Hezbollah with military aid, training, rehabilitation, armament, and funding for social services.
Hezbollah’s focus at that stage was fully on resistance. It did not interfere in politics. Instead, it focused on winning over the population of the southern region. In return, Iran provided Hezbollah with military aid, training, rehabilitation, armament, and funding for social services.
In building Hezbollah, Iran benefited from its good relationship with Syria. Tehran managed to build a political and military base in Lebanon. It became active across various fronts of the Arab-Israeli conflict and became a political player in the country and the wider region.
Problems arise
Al-Assad’s regime in Syria maintained a balance within Lebanon and within its Arab perimeter. It often mediated between Tehran and Arab countries and between various parties and factions in Lebanon.
Damascus managed to separate the forces of the Progressive Socialist Party led by Walid Jumblatt, and the Amal Movement, led by Nabih Berri, after the War of El Alamein in 1986.
But months later, problems arose between Hezbollah and military observers in the Syrian intelligence. Four Syrian observers were killed by Hezbollah, after they attacked the Fathallah Barracks in Beirut in an attempt to take over their headquarters.
In mid-February 1987, a delegation of Lebanese Islamic leaders arrived in Damascus to meet Khaddam, who had been appointed three years earlier as vice president.
The delegation issued a call for Syrian forces “to interfere and impose security in Beirut, after clashes and chaos in the city” and to confront Hezbollah with weapons.
Khaddam briefed al-Assad, who decided to send a military unit to impose security across Beirut, including the area around Hezbollah’s Fatallah Barracks.
Hours later, Syrian special forces went to the barracks and asked Hezbollah to leave and hand over their weapons. Clashes took place, which were said to be in response to the earlier killings of the Syrian observer unit personnel.
The fighting killed 22 people in total from both sides and ended with Syrian forces taking control of the barracks.
It was at this point when Iran moved to protect Hezbollah.
To this end, the Iranian ambassador in Damascus, Hasan Akhtari, met Khaddam on 3 March 1987. According to the minutes of the meeting, Akhtari told Khaddam: “In regard to the killing of a group of men, women, and children, this incident has upset officials in Iran. The impression in Iran is still that this was a reckless and irresponsible act.”
He requested that the Syrian forces not enter the southern suburbs of Beirut, which was gradually becoming Hezbollah’s stronghold.
Akhtari went on to refer to the Syrian intelligence official in Lebanon at the time: “Brigadier General Ghazi Kanaan stated that the Syrian forces will enter the southern suburb. Does the security plan include the southern suburb?” He also raised the “seizing of arms” of Iran’s supporters in Beirut.
“There is another point,” Akhtari added: “The issue of confiscating weapons from Muslim homes in West Beirut. I recall my meeting with President Hafez al-Assad while presenting my credentials. I talked about this issue, and said: This issue is not on our table. It is not a question that we take their weapons, but rather we will give them arms to struggle and fight.”
Hezbollah infiltrated
When Akhtari concluded his discourse, Khaddam stressed his country’s keenness for “the existing strong and fraternal relations” with Iran. “We feel sorry for making such statements, including the statement of Dr. Velayati and the Seminary, and part of the statement of Mousavi, who said: ‘Whoever lays his hand on Hezbollah serves Israel and America'”.
Khaddam added, “Remember that we have alerted several times to infiltration into this organisation by three parties: Yasser Arafat, the Iraqi proxies, and the Lebanese Military Second Bureau . We have warned of the dangers of these infiltrations because we were afraid that this clique that penetrated Hezbollah would carry out actions that would harm its role in Lebanon.”
Ironically, Khaddam was alluding to the fact that Arafat had “infiltrated” Hezbollah through Imad Mughniyeh, who became a prominent military leader in Hezbollah and was allegedly assassinated by the Israelis on 12 February 2008.
According to the minutes, Khaddam asked Akhtari, “Is Imad Mughniyeh in Hezbollah or not?” The ambassador replied: “I have not met with him and do not know him. To my knowledge, he is not from the formations nor from Hezbollah. Khaddam told him: “I accept your word.”
The ambassador continued to clarify the issue of Hezbollah’s infiltration, saying to Khaddam, “With regard to what you said about the fact that there is infiltration into Hezbollah, I do not deny that. Arafat could infiltrate some personnel. However, if we look at this party and its public goals, it could concur with Arafat.”
Khaddam replied: “I distinguish between Hezbollah as a leadership and some personnel,” adding: “The issue of (entering) the southern suburb is not up for discussion. While Syria does not intend to strike Hezbollah, it cannot accept its refusal to abide by the security plan… Iranian officials should not compare Hezbollah and Syria.”
Getty ImagesA key regional player
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Syria sought to strengthen its relations in the Arab world and internationally. It participated in the Gulf War and entered the peace process with Israel under American auspices in 1991. At first, talks were focused on the return of the Golan Heights in exchange for peace.
Some later initiatives also involved bartering and offering acceptance of Syria’s continued presence in Lebanon in exchange for disarming Hezbollah.
In the mid-1990s, when Saddam Hussein was under sanctions and siege, he exchanged secret messages with Hafez al-Assad, arranging a covert summit between them.
Responding to the progress between the two presidents via these means, Syria sent Khaddam to Paris in 1996 to meet with President Jacques Chirac of France, to inform him of the decision to open the Syrian-Iraqi border, which had been closed since 1982.
That meeting demonstrated the faith Damascus had in the French leader after diplomatic efforts to end the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah produced the 1996 agreement between the two sides, known as the April Understanding.
And so, Chirac met with Khaddam later that same year, on 31 July. According to the minutes, the pair touched on indirect secret talks between al-Assad and Israel’s then prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
“What interest does Israel have in having a military presence in southern Lebanon?” Chirac asked.
He continued: “If I were in Netanyahu’s shoes, I would unconditionally withdraw my forces from southern Lebanon and create a problem for everyone … This assumes the Lebanese army will guarantee the entire border and disarm Hezbollah. This, of course, is related to and concerns Syria. Syria cannot accept that for free. What is the return? Withdrawing from the Golan Heights and ensuring its military presence in Lebanon for some time.”
These statements directly linked the Syrian presence in Lebanon with the disarmament of Hezbollah. The same bargain was repeatedly floated in the years to come.
Turning point
When Bashar al-Assad came to power in 2000, several attempts were made to reach a Syrian- Israeli peace agreement — one of which was mediated by Turkey between 2007 and 2008. It was an attempt to reverse Syria’s global isolation after the assassination of Rafik Hariri, Lebanon’s prime Minister, and its military withdrawal from Lebanon in 2005.
Hezbollah filled the security vacuum after Syria’s withdrawal and became a key player in Beirut.
There is no doubt that this was fundamentally the beginning of the shift in the direction of the relationship between Damascus, on the one hand, and Tehran and Hezbollah, on the other.
Hezbollah gained more prominence and instead of Hezbollah needing Syria’s backing to maintain influence in Lebanon, the Syrian regime ended up relying on Hezbollah to remain in power.
Following the assassination of Rafik Hariri and Syria’s military withdrawal from Lebanon, Hezbollah gained more prominence. Instead of Hezbollah needing Syria’s backing to maintain influence in Lebanon, the Syrian regime ended up relying on Hezbollah to remain in power.
Between April 2009 and mid-March 2011, US envoy Fred Hof mediated Syrian-Israeli talks. On 27 February 2011, Hof arrived in Damascus and met al-Assad the following day, handing him a paper.
In his book, Reaching for the Heights: The Inside Story of a Secret Attempt to Reach a Syrian-Israeli Peace, Hof quotes al-Assad as saying: “Everyone will be surprised at the speed with which Hassan Nasrallah, secretary general of Hezbollah, will commit once Syria and Israel announce a peace agreement.”
Getty ImagesHof asked al-Assad: “How will he have such a conviction, given Nasrallah’s loyalty to Iran and the Iranian ‘revolution’?” Al-Assad replied that Nasrallah was an Arab, not a Persian.
The US envoy added that then president of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, “assured me that if peace is reached with Israel, Nasrallah will not be able to maintain his current position as leader of the ‘resistance.'”
The Syrian uprising
Anti-regime protests broke out in Syria in mid-March 2011. On 18 March, Syrian security forces responded to demonstrations in Daraa with extreme violence. American mediation was subsequently suspended.
In a letter to the State Department the next day, US President Barack Obama said: “Al-Assad must lead a democratic transition or get out of the way.” On 19 August, Obama went further, saying “the time has come for President al-Assad to step aside.”
With the situation in Syria unfolding, Tehran ramped up its intervention towards the end of 2012, sending militias and experts to support al-Assad. Later, Hezbollah fought alongside forces marshalled by Damascus to crush the revolution.
With the conflict becoming protracted and Damascus in retreat, Tehran persuaded Moscow to intervene. At the end of 2015, Russia sent troops to Syria which ultimately shifted the balance in favour of al-Assad.
The escalation of the conflict turned Syria into battleground for proxies. With the established order challenged, world and regional powers clashed and battled for influence and a piece of the pie.
Syria was effectively divided into three smaller states, in which five armies were fighting — American, Russian, Iranian, Turkish, and Israeli.
Hundreds of militias and thousands of fighters were deployed to the war-torn state. Syria — once a mediator between Iran and the Arabs and a regulator of Hezbollah in Lebanon — now depended on support from Tehran and the forces within its own southern suburb.
On its part, Iran sought to make Syria a strategic base for its influence in the Levant and the rest of the Arab world.
With the situation in flux amid an escalation in troop deployments and various military presences, Israel intensified its raids on Iranian sites in Syria — whether in coordination with Russia or in agreement with America.
Getty ImagesUltimate test
It is the presence of Iran and its proxies that has become one of the main considerations of the regional and international politics centred on Damascus. Some players wish to reduce the presence of Iran and its proxies in Syria, while others have outright called for Tehran to leave the country.
These developments served as an ultimate test of the importance of the alliance between Damascus and Tehran for the survival of the regime in the last decade.
A Palestinian official with close ties to Iran and Hezbollah outlined the significance with stark clarity: “Syria is the crown jewel of Iranian influence in the region, a backyard for Iraq, a bridge to Lebanon, a corridor to the sea, and a crossing to the borders of Israel.”
Syria is the crown jewel of Iranian influence in the region, a backyard for Iraq, a bridge to Lebanon, a corridor to the sea, and a crossing to the borders of Israel. Palestinian official.
There is no doubt that any change to this alliance — whether through agreements, or as a result of domestic protests in Iran which are weakening the state — will leave shadows on this “Iranian Crescent” in the region.
Syria, once a key player in the region, has become a playground for the conflicts of others and a measure of Iran’s external influence or its retreat.
