Hafez al-Assad

Hafez al-Assad (6 October 1930 – 10 June 2000) was a Syrian politician and military officer who served as the president of Syria from 1971 until his death in 2000. He was previously the prime minister from 1970 to 1971 as well as the regional secretary of the regional command of the Syrian regional branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party and secretary general of the National Command of the Ba'ath Party from 1970 until his death. Assad was a key participant in the 1963 Syrian coup d'état, which brought the Syrian regional branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party to power. The party ruled for over six decades until it was overthrown in 2024, under the leadership of his son Bashar al-Assad.

After the 1963 coup, the new leadership appointed Assad as the commander of the Syrian Arab Air Force. In February 1966, Assad participated in a second coup, which toppled the leaders of the Ba'ath Party. Assad was appointed defense minister by the new government. Four years later Assad initiated a third coup, which ousted the quasi-Marxist regime of Salah Jadid, and appointed himself as leader of Syria. Assad imposed various changes to the Ba'athist foreign policy after seizing power, such as abandoning Jadid's policy of exporting "socialist revolution" and strengthening Syria's foreign relations with countries that his predecessor had deemed reactionary. Assad made alliances with the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War in return for among other things, opposing Israel, while maintaining ties with some Western European and Gulf states. While he officially kept the pan-Arab concept of unifying the Arab world into one "Arab nation" as he termed it, such as being part of the Federation of Arab Republics, he sought to paint Syria as the defender of the Palestinians against Israel, though his support for the Palestinians, particularly the PLO in Lebanon, was weak.