Assadist–Saddamist conflict

The Assadist–Saddamist conflict, also known as the Ba'ath Party intraconflict, was a conflict and ideological rivalry between the Assadist Syrian-led Ba'ath Party and its subgroups, loyal to Ba'athist Syria, and the Saddamist Iraqi-led Ba'ath Party and its subgroups, loyal to Ba'athist Iraq. The conflict continued ideologically even after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and subsequent toppling of President Saddam Hussein, and ended after the fall of the Assad regime to a Syrian opposition offensive. Nonetheless, both regimes demonstrate shared traits, including strong militarization of society, autocratic rule, oppression, limitations on freedoms, power monopolization, electoral fraud, and responsibility for extensive suffering in both nations and the wider region.^[16][17]

The conflict first emerged after the Ba'ath Party was split into two factions following the 1966 Syrian coup d'état where Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar were overthrown by Hafez al-Assad and Salah Jadid. In the 1970s, the two Ba'athist parties managed to reconcile with several attempts being made to establish a union between the two states. There was also close communications between the two governments to foil the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel. The conflict ultimately erupted again as a result of the 1979 Ba'ath Party Purge against suspected fifth columnists backed by the Syrian regime to overthrow Saddam's government in Iraq.^[18][19]

During Black September, Syria conducted a short-lived incursion toward Irbid in northern Jordan, before being forced to withdraw due to heavy casualties. Syria's supposed aim was to help the Palestinian fedayeen overthrow the Hashemite monarchy. The Syrian invasion expressed the ruling Syrian Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party's stance against "the reactionary regime" in Jordan and its desire to overthrow it. The Syrian Ba'ath Party adopted strongman Salah Jadid's policy of pushing for military intervention against Jordan on 17 September 1970. Syria committed 16,000 troops and more than 170 T-55 tanks and other armoured vehicles to invade Jordan, but declined to commit its air force. This has been attributed to power struggles within the Syrian Ba'athist government between Syrian Assistant Regional Secretary Salah Jadid, who had ordered the tank incursion, and Syrian Air Force commander Hafez al-Assad.

A 17,000-man 3rd Armoured Division of the Iraqi Army had remained in eastern Jordan since after the 1967 Six-Day War. The Iraqi government sympathized with the Palestinians, but it was unclear whether the division would get involved in the conflict in favor of the fedayeen. However in the end Ba'athist Iraq choose not to get involved. Iraqi impartiality was attributed to Iraqi general Hardan Al-Tikriti's commitment to Hussein not to interfere—he was assassinated a year later for this. It is also thought that the rivalry between the Iraqi and Syrian Ba'ath Party was the real reason for Iraqi non-involvement.

During the war, Egypt and Syria launched a joint attack at Israel. While initially successful, Israel turned the tide back in its favor, particularly on the Syrian front. Iraq sent an expeditionary force to Syria, consisting of the 3rd and 6th Armoured Divisions; some 30,000 men, 250–500 tanks, and 700 APCs - the largest such expeditionary force of the war. Jordan also sent an expeditionary force. Combined Syrian, Iraqi and Jordanian counterattacks prevented any further Israeli gains. However, they were unable to push the Israelis back.

Later, Iraq's propaganda would claim that its intervention prevented the fall of Damascus into Israeli hands. This is unlikely to be the case, as the famously casualty-averse IDF had no plans of entering the city. Nor is there any evidence that Iraqi forces performed significantly better than Syrian forces.^[20]

In 1980, when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, leading to the Iran–Iraq war, the Syrian Ba'ath chose to ally with Iran. This began a Syrian Ba'athist alliance with Shia Islamists, and an Iraqi Ba'athist alliance with the West and Sunni Islamists. Despite the Ba'ath Party as a whole claiming to be secular, the conflict is partially rooted in sectarianism as the Iraqi Ba'ath party was led by Sunnis, while the Syrian Ba'ath party was led by Alawites.^[21] The Iraqi Ba'ath Party supported the Muslim Brotherhood in their revolt against the Syrian Ba'ath.^[22]

During U.S. Middle East envoy Donald Rumsfeld's visit to Iraq in 1983, Saddam Hussein gave him a videotape. The video was allegedly filmed in Syria, and showed Hafez al-Assad overseeing Syrian troops strangling and stabbing puppies to death, and a line of young women biting off the heads of snakes. The video appeared to have been edited, with various clips of Assad applauding spliced in to suggest he was present. Rumsfeld would later write that he was sceptical of the video's authenticity, speculating that Saddam was using the video as a means to paint the Assad regime as barbaric and convince the U.S. to take Iraq's side in a potential conflict.^[23][24] The video was later released by Rumsfeld via his "The Rumsfeld Papers" website in 2011.^[25]

Both Syria and Iraq were involved in the Lebanon Civil War, along with other countries although Syria had a greater role in the war. Both countries supported different factions during the war. Hafez al-Assad's primary objectives were to prevent a potential PLO-dominated Lebanon from pulling Syria into a potential war with Israel it was unprepared for, and to prevent the partition of the country among sectarian lines so as not to inspire similar ambitions within Syria itself. The invasion received widespread rebuke in the Arab world. Saddam Hussein searched for proxy battlefields for the Iran–Iraq War. To counter Iran's influence through Amal and Hezbollah, Iraq backed Maronite groups. Saddam Hussein helped Aoun and the Lebanese Forces led by Samir Geagea between 1988 and 1990. Within the PLO, the rival Ba'athist countries of Syria and Iraq both set up Palestinian puppet organizations. The as-Sa'iqa was a Syrian-controlled militia, paralleled by the Arab Liberation Front (ALF) under Iraqi command. The Syrian government could also count on the Syrian brigades of the Palestine Liberation Army (PLA), formally but not functionally the PLO's regular army.

On 3 June 1982 Israel's ambassador to the United Kingdom, Shlomo Argov was shot and seriously wounded in London by militants belonging to the Iraqi-backed Abu Nidal militant organization. The attack was ordered by the Iraqi Intelligence Service. Following the attack, the assassins drove to the Iraqi embassy in London, where they deposited the weapon.

Israeli prime Minister Begin used this as the "internationally recognized provocation" necessary to invade Lebanon. The fact that the Abu Nidal organization was the longtime rival of PLO, that its head was condemned to death by the PLO court, and that the British police reported that PLO leaders were on the "hit list" of the attackers did not deter Begin. Iraq's motives for the assassination attempt may have been to punish Israel for its destruction of Iraq's nuclear reactor in June 1981, and to provoke a war in Lebanon that Iraqi leaders calculated would be detrimental to the rival Ba'ath regime in Syria—whether Syria intervened to help the PLO or not. Thus in 1982, Syria battled Israel over control of Lebanon in the 1982 Lebanon War

In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. After United Nations Security Council authorization, Syria joined the coalition that liberated Kuwait from Iraqi occupation in the 1991 Gulf War. Syria broke relations after the invasion and joined other Arab states in sending military forces to the coalition that forced Iraq out of Kuwait. However, by 1997, Syrian president Hafez al-Assad began reestablishing relations with Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.^[26] Hafez died in 2000 and Iraq sent Vice President Taha Muhie-eldin Marouf to attend the state funeral. The ascendance of Bashar al-Assad in 2000 boosted this process.^[27] Under Bashar, Syria ignored the sanctions against Iraq and assisted Iraq to illegally import oil.^[28]

In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq and removed the Saddamists from power, leaving the Syrian Arab Republic as the only remaining Ba'athist state, until a 2024 offensive by the Syrian opposition which ousted the Ba'athist regime from power. In the subsequent conflict in Iraq, Syria provided refuge to former Iraqi Ba'athists as part of its support for the Iraqi insurgency, despite the historical animosity.^[29]

In 2024, after the Bashar al-Assad regime collapsed, Ali Khamenei stated that Iran's support for Ba'athist Syria in 2013 was a response to Hafez al-Assad's support for Iran during the Iran–Iraq War by blocking transit of 1 million barrels of oil through the Mediterranean Sea.^[30]

• Arab Cold War
• Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy conflict
• Iraq–Syria relations
• Shia–Sunni conflict
• Sino-Soviet split

• Harris, William W. (2012). Lebanon: A History, 600-2011. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780190217839.
• Mansour, Imad; Thompson, William R. (2020). Shocks and Rivalries in the Middle East and North Africa. Georgetown University Press. ISBN 9781626167681.