ABSTRACT
The Syrian involvement in Lebanon threatened to harm the positive image which Hafez al-Assad had created for himself and his regime. He personally played a crucial role in all the major Syrian decisions with regard to the Lebanese crisis. There seems to have been a great deal of truth in his remark to a senior French politician about his feelings at the time of the civil war. The first five years of his regime were marked by impressive achievements of Syrian foreign policy which were unprecedented since Syria gained its independence. In the eyes of American policymakers, Syria's image as a key state in the Middle East declined as the Syrian political failures in Lebanon accumulated. Syria's military weakness and the deployment of its army in Lebanon have prevented it from exerting military pressures on Israel as a means of achieving its political objectives, as it did in the past.
