10 a hostile Middle East environment shaped by Israel’s overwhelming victory over the Arabs in the 1967 war, its seizure of extensive Arab territories including Syria’s Golan Heights and its subsequent close alliance with the United States, which put in place a sort of dual US- Israeli regional hegemony from which Syria and its allies have sought to free themselves ever since. The 1973 war waged by Egypt and Syria to recover lost territories and force Israel to negotiate a global peace had some initial success but failed to realise its objectives. Instead, Egypt made a separate peace with Israel in 1979 and was removed from the Arab line up. The rest of the region was then exposed to the full force of Israeli power. Looking to its defences, Syria established a partnership in 1979 with the newborn Islamic Republic of Iran. And once Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 in a bid to expel Syrian influence, destroy the PLO and bring Lebanon into its orbit, Syria found local allies among the Shia resistance movements of South Lebanon -- of which Hizbullah became the most prominent. Waging a guerrilla war, and benefiting from logistical support and weapons from Iran and Syria, Hizbullah managed to force Israel out of South Lebanon in 2000, after an 18- year occupation. From this was born the Tehran-Damascus-Hizbullah axis, which over the years grew into the principal regional challenger of the United States and Israel. Both the United States and Israel have done their utmost to disrupt this axis and prevent it acquiring any effective deterrent capability: Iran has faced constant demonisation, sanctions and threat of military attack because of its nuclear programme, while Israel has made repeated attempts to destroy Hizbullah, including its war on Lebanon in 2006. Syria, in turn, has faced intimidation, isolation, US sanctions and an Israeli attack in 2007 on its alleged nuclear facility. Bashar has had to wrestle with his own crises. He survived George W. Bush’s “global war on t