title: Venom (2018 film)

text: The film underwent reshoots in Los Angeles in June 2018, which were reportedly overseen by Hardy. "Venom" was one of the first films to take advantage of the new post-production facilities at Sony Pictures' Stage 6 building in Culver City, California, with two new theaters equipped for sound design using Dolby Atmos technology, two new stages for sound mixing with Avid Technology's Pro Tools workstations, and a theater set-up for remote visual effects and color grading review. Maryann Brandon and Alan Baumgarten served as editors for the film. Fleischer's focus during the editing process was to "cultivate" the relationship between Brock and Venom, which he felt was the core of the film. The opening of the film went through several iterations, but Fleischer always wanted it to "start with a bang", which led to a spaceship crash in the opening scene. The Venom symbiote is shown shortly after as an introduction of the film's "hero", before the villain's plot begins and becomes the focus of the scene.


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: DNEG provided the visual effects for the film, with Paul Franklin serving as visual effects supervisor on the project, and Paolo Giandoso drawing concept art for the DNEG design team. Giandoso helped design Venom and Riot, and provided a sequence of 158 drawings for the film's final battle between the two characters.


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: The visual effects team's first step was to define the look of the different symbiotes in the film, which do not have a defined body shape. Franklin explained that they wanted the creatures to be "predatory and threatening", and looked at slime molds, jellyfish, and time-lapse photography of amoeba for inspiration. The final models were blobs that could move and change shape, with soft tissue simulated on top to give the creatures an "interesting abstract quality". The symbiote is combined with Brock by adding "tentacles" to Hardy, which was done through a hybrid of practical and visual effects. The tentacles were inspired by the movement of sea creatures and scientific demonstrations of non-Newtonian fluid. Additional cameras on set accurately captured Hardy's movements so the tentacles could be integrated with his performance. A detailed digital double of Hardy was also used for the integration. Other partial Venom forms include the "freak-out" form for when he is being vibrated out of Brock, for which a "ghostly" effect was created by adding an animated version of the character on top of Hardy's performance with a vibration effect; and the "wraith" Venom, where Venom's head emerges from Brock's body to talk to him—this form was closer to the raw symbiote than the final Venom design, with added tendrils and veins to an overall snake-like shape, and an emaciated take on Venom's face.


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: The humanoid Venom character was created with a digital model that included rigs and simulation for the face and muscles. Venom is portrayed as being tall and weighing , with a "smooth, oily, black" appearance. Due to the differences in the character's facial design comic-to-comic, and even panel-to-panel, the designers "distilled the essential elements" into a design that could be photorealistic. These included the character's eyes, which Franklin compared to those of a killer whale and explained had to be animated in a more exaggerated way to indicate where the character was looking since he does not have pupils. The character's long tongue is also adapted from the comics, with another complex rig required so the tongue could be specifically animated, and then retract to allow the character to talk without having to speak around it, which Franklin said was "too comical". When he does speak, Venom often talks through clenched teeth. This was inspired by actors Jack Palance and Clint Eastwood. Since Venom's origin is not tied to Spider-Man in the film, it did not make sense for the filmmakers to add a version of Spider-Man's symbol to Venom's chest as he has in the comics. However, an all-black character would have been difficult to see in night scenes, so Venom has a subtle 'V' symbol on his chest instead which is formed from the white veins of the symbiote. To further help the audience see the character, the visual effects team lit him like they would a car in a commercial, using reflections to help define his body. The character model was flexible, allowing animators to scale Venom's head, adjust the length of his teeth, or even unhinge his jaw "like a trap door", depending on the pose required. Hardy initially planned to use performance capture to portray Venom on-set in addition to Brock, but this idea was abandoned due to the difference between his face and the character's. A stand-in wearing a helmet for added height was sometimes used on-set as a reference for Venom.


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: Because Riot is a minor character from the comics, the designers had more freedom to develop his film appearance. He is a foot taller than Venom, and almost twice as heavy, with a "brutal metallic look" that Franklin described as "almost reptilian". The character model for Riot was similar to the one for Venom, but had less effects layers due to Riot not having the same "rippling goo" texture. The villain also had a custom set of effects for the different weapons that he can manifest, including blades and a large wrecking ball with spikes. The final fight between the two characters was constantly changing, with Franklin, DNEG, and the previsualization team at The Third Floor working with Fleischer to develop the fight. One element that was suggested by the visual effects teams was to take advantage of the characters' liquid-like designs by having the two appear to merge and create "a swirling mass of symbiotic flesh, with the two humans revealed through the whirlpool". This was inspired by the early tests made while developing the basic symbiote look. When designing the launch pad where the fight is set, Franklin said that it needed to be "broad, colorful and exciting" to represent the more comedic and comic book-like style of the film, which he contrasted to his work on "Interstellar" (2014) and the concurrent work being done for "First Man" (2018). Additional environment work that DNEG completed included the removal of Coca-Cola signs and CNN logos from the Atlanta-shot sequences, since San Francisco does not have those. For Weying's brief time as She-Venom, Franklin said that the various depictions of the character in the comics ranged from "demonic creatures with elongated teeth through to the extreme hypertrophied female form", with the film's version trying to balance being disgusting and "a little bit sexy", particular for when she kisses Brock. In total, DNEG completed around 1,100 visual effects shots for the film.


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: Ludwig Göransson signed on to compose the score for "Venom" in March 2018, reuniting with Fleischer after the pair worked together on "30 Minutes or Less" (2011). In August, rapper Eminem teased that he had contributed a new song to the soundtrack for "Venom". His album "Kamikaze" was released at the end of that month, and features a bonus song called "Venom (Music from the Motion Picture)" that references the film. The song was released by Aftermath Records as a digital single for the film on September 23. An album featuring Göransson's score was released digitally by Sony Classical Records on October 5, with a physical release later that month.


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: For the Sony Pictures panel at Comic Con Experience 2017, Fleischer and Hardy appeared in a video from the film's set to promote it. A teaser for the film was released in February 2018. Dani Di Placido of "Forbes" called it "comically underwhelming". He felt this was a major misstep by Sony given the teaser was meant to win over uninterested Spider-Man fans, particularly after the character's portrayal in "Spider-Man 3". The fact that the teaser did not include the title character was a common criticism by commentators. Sony chairman Tom Rothman later acknowledged this, explaining that the intention had been to "heighten anticipation" for the film. In August, Fleischer revealed the trailer did not showcase Venom because the visual effects for the character were incomplete at the time.


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: Rothman presented new footage of the film at CinemaCon 2018, and acknowledged that it revealed the film's version of Venom by saying, "See, we didn't forget to put Venom in the movie!" Di Placido was more positive of this trailer, praising the appearance of and visuals for Venom, but being concerned about the dialogue. During the trailer, actress Jenny Slate pronounces the word symbiote as "SIM-bye-oht" rather than "SIM-bee-oht", as many commentators believed it should be pronounced. This led to widespread criticism and a 35,700 percent increase in searches for "symbiote pronunciation", according to Merriam-Webster, which noted both pronunciations are technically considered acceptable. Slate uses the expected "SIM-bee-oht" pronunciation in the final film, which commentators assumed was achieved through reshoots or overdubbing, but Fleischer explained that the pronunciation had been corrected on set and the marketing team had simply used a take for the trailer from before the correction was made. Hannah Shaw-Williams of "Screen Rant" noted that the trailer reused music from a major, recently released trailer for the Marvel Studios film "" (2018), questioning whether this was a coincidence or if Sony was "deliberately trying to tie "Venom" to the MCU in the minds of audiences. Whatever the reason, "Venom" will need more than just a familiar piece of trailer music in order to win over audiences". According to Fizziology, an analytics company that takes different social media platforms into account, the second trailer was watched 64.3 million times within 24 hours, a 72 percent increase over the first trailer. Fizziology said it was rare for a second trailer to get more views than the first and noted that general positive responses were up 46 percent. The majority of positive responses were directed towards the appearance and design of Venom.


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: Fleischer, Hardy, and Ahmed promoted the film at the 2018 San Diego Comic-Con, where the audience was given Venom masks and chanted "We are Venom". New footage from the film was debuted at the panel, including the reveal of the villainous symbiote Riot. A third trailer was subsequently released online. It was criticized by Scott Mendelson (also of "Forbes"), who said the film was looking comparable to "Catwoman" (2004)—"the shining example of how not to do this kind of movie". He also felt that Fleischer's decision to make to his successful film "Zombieland" before "Venom"s release was an indication that the film was not going to be good. Richard Newby, writing for "The Hollywood Reporter", felt the film was being marketed as if it was in an "earlier era", saying it "looks pre-"Iron Man" cool" and more like a cross between "An American Werewolf in London" (1981) and "Blade" (1998) than a modern superhero film. He noted that despite early fears, the latest trailer showed that Venom would be featured throughout the film, and believed that the film's lack of shared universe connections and distinct tone could help Sony prove it has "a handle on these characters after all". A tie-in comic book, serving as both a prequel and a teaser for the film and simply titled "Venom", was released digitally by Marvel Comics on September 14, with a physical version available to those who purchased tickets for the film from AMC Theatres. Written by Sean Ryan and illustrated by Szymon Kudranski, the comic establishes the film's backstory for the symbiote. SKAN provided the cover art for the comic.


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: "Venom" had its world premiere at the Regency Village Theatre in Westwood, Los Angeles on October 1, 2018, and was theatrically released in the United States and Canada on October 5 in 4,250 theaters. This followed a release in several other countries on October 3, where it was playing on 20,800 screens internationally in its opening weekend, along with 726 IMAX theaters in 60 markets.


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: The film was released in China on November 9, a date that was approved by the country's film board following an unexpected drop in box office sales there earlier in 2018. China granted the film a rare extended theatrical release in December, with the film's box office success and Tencent's large investment in the film considered contributing factors in the decision. The extension added 30 days to the film's initial 30-day run.


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released a digital version of the film on December 11, 2018, with Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD versions released on December 18 in the United States. The physical releases featured deleted and extended scenes, making-of featurettes, and a way of watching the film called "Venom Mode" in which informative pop-ups appear on screen. For these home media releases, the film was framed as a romantic comedy by Sony with a focus on the relationship between Brock and Venom.


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: In April 2021, Sony signed a deal with Disney giving them access to their legacy content, including Marvel content in Sony's Spider-Man Universe, to stream on Disney+ and Hulu and appear on Disney's linear television networks. Disney's access to Sony's titles would come following their availability on Netflix.


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: "Venom" grossed $213.5 million in the United States and Canada, and $642.5 million in other territories, for a total worldwide gross of $856.1 million. With a production budget between $100–116 million, "Deadline Hollywood" reported that the film needed to gross around $450 million to break even, and later calculated the net profit to be $246.9 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues, making it the sixth-most-profitable release of 2018.


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: In the United States and Canada, "Venom" was initially projected to gross $60–70 million in its opening weekend. It made $10 million from Thursday night previews, the highest ever for an October release (beating "Paranormal Activity 3"s $8 million in 2011). After making $32.7 million on its first day, weekend estimates were raised to $80 million. It went on to gross $80.3 million, marking the best October opening weekend of all time (beating "Gravity"s $55.8 million in 2013), as well as the seventh-best opening for a Sony film. The film made $9.6 million on Columbus Day to set the record for the best Monday gross in October, again topping "Gravity". The film remained in first the following weekend, dropping 55% to $35.7 million. It finished in third place in its third and fourth weekends behind "Halloween" and "A Star Is Born". With the release of more films in its fifth and sixth weekends, "Venom" fell to, respectively, sixth and eighth place, with the latter carrying the film over $200 million total.


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: Worldwide, the film was expected to debut to $160–175 million, including $100–110 million from 58 territories outside of the U.S. and Canada. It over-performed with $125.2 million from foreign territories for a global opening weekend of $205.5 million, the highest ever in October. It finished first in all countries but one, including South Korea ($16.4 million over its five-day debut), Russia ($13.6 million), the United Kingdom ($10.5 million) and Mexico ($10.2 million, the best start for a Sony film in the country). The opening included $15.4 million from IMAX, the largest opening for October and Sony in the format; of that, $7 million was from overseas IMAX screens, the largest overseas IMAX debut. "Venom" remained the top film worldwide for its second and third weekends. In its second, the film opened at number one in France ($6.7 million), Vietnam ($3 million), and Thailand ($2.2 million), and remained number one in 51 others, including Brazil which dropped only 6% from the first weekend. The film was number one in 30 markets for the third weekend. It opened in Japan at number one with $5.2 million during its fifth weekend, taking the worldwide total to $541.6 million. The film's top overseas markets then, ahead of its release in China, were Russia ($31.6 million), South Korea ($30.1 million), the UK ($25.5 million), Mexico ($23.8 million), and France/Brazil (tied at $18.3 million).


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: The film passed $600 million and became number one worldwide again after opening in China with $111 million. It was Sony's biggest opening in China, the second-largest for a superhero film behind "Avengers: Infinity War", and the fifth-largest for any imported film to the country. $34.9 million came on the Friday, which was the biggest opening day for a solo Marvel film. The 553 IMAX screens in the country made $10 million, the largest November opening for the format in China, and the eight-largest for any month. The film held off new release "" in its second weekend, which became number one overall, to remain top in China with the best second weekend for a superhero film in the country at $51.2 million. Following this "phenomenal" performance in China, the film crossed $800 million the next weekend with another $21.3 million from 63 markets, reaching $822.5 million to become the second-biggest superhero origin film ever behind "Black Panther". At the start of December and following the film receiving an extension for its China release, Mendelson wrote that the film had made an "insane" $262 million in China, and felt that it had outperformed other films such as "Crazy Rich Asians" in the market due to being more "quirky/weird" with some "camp classic 'so bad it's good' stylings" that those other films did not have.


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: The review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 29% based on reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, ""Venom"s first standalone movie turns out to be like the comics character in all the wrong ways—chaotic, noisy, and in desperate need of a stronger attachment to Spider-Man." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 35 out of 100, based on 46 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Critics generally found the film to be dull, blaming its narrative and inconsistent tone, and had a mixed reception to Hardy's performance, though his commitment to the role was praised.


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: Reviewing the film for "Variety", Owen Gleiberman called it "a textbook case of a comic-book film that's unexciting in its ho-hum competence, and even its visual-effects bravura". He criticized Hardy's performance as acting like "a stumblebum Method goof", and felt the film spent too long on Venom's origin story when it should have been what a sequel likely will be. He added that the film may not be as bad a start to a new shared universe as "The Mummy" (2017), but it "could turn out to be a similar case of a franchise kickoff that doesn't fully attain franchise liftoff". Ty Burr of "The Boston Globe" scored the film one-and-a-half stars and said it "saps the life force of almost everyone in it" including Hardy, Williams, and Ahmed all of whose performances he criticized. He also criticized Fleischer's direction as "unfocused" and Libatique's cinematography as some of the "dingiest" of 2018, but did feel that the scenes where Hardy and Venom talk while sharing a body were "reasonably amusing". Mark Daniell at the "Toronto Sun" criticized the film's tone, effects, and characters, compared it to a rejected superhero film treatment from the 1990s, and said it was the worst Marvel film released since "Elektra" (2005).


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: Like Burr, Soren Anderson of "The Seattle Times" also gave the film one-and-a-half stars, calling it "perhaps the worst Marvel-derived origin story ever", and criticizing the "close to an hour of tedium" before Venom appears in the film. Anderson also said that Hardy was "usually excellent (but not this time)", and called the action sequences "generic". At the "Toronto Star", Peter Howell gave "Venom" two out of four stars and said that Hardy's performance prevented it from being "an unwatchable disaster", but he still thought the film was a mess with an inconsistent tone, "bog-level computer effects and washed-out colours resembling those of a 1998 sci-fi movie on a VHS tape that's been left out in the sun". Jake Coyle for the "Associated Press" found the film to be "kind of a hoot" despite it being "an incoherent mess of tones, acting styles and visual effects". He was particularly positive about the film's differences from other Marvel films, and of how Hardy pushed it to be more comedic seemingly against Fleischer's intentions. On Hardy's performance, Coyle was not sure whether it "adds up to anything in "Venom". But it's something to behold. Train wrecks like these aren't supposed to be this entertaining."


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: David Edelstein at "Vulture" said Hardy was the only reason to watch the film, and felt having Brock and Venom share a body was "a good gimmick" that was executed better by Steve Martin in "All of Me" (1984). He also thought that Williams and Slate were wasted in their respective roles in the film, and that Fleischer's direction was "competent and unmemorable". Writing for "Salon", Matthew Rozsa said that he actually liked the film, and might have loved it if not for the "sloppy and formulaic script". He felt the depiction of Venom was more worthy to be seen in a film than the version in "Spider-Man 3", and praised Hardy's performance as "wicked fun". Rozsa especially liked that the film did not take itself too seriously and did not attempt to set-up an entire shared universe on its own, positively comparing it to the sort of superhero film that would have been made before the release of the MCU's "Iron Man". "Time"s Stephanie Zacharek described the film as "neither the most super-awesome Marvel movie nor the worst", criticizing the action and small roles of Williams and Slate, but praising the design of the symbiotes as "kind of neat to look at" and Hardy's performance as "fun to watch".


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, and those at PostTrak gave it an 80% positive score, while the social media monitor RelishMix noted online responses to the film were "mixed [...] leaning positive". During the film's opening week, most audience members surveyed by Fandango wanted to see the film because it featured a Marvel antihero, because it had the potential to crossover with Spider-Man, or because they were fans of Hardy.


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: After seeing the film, Kate Gardner of The Mary Sue wondered whether it had been "queer coded", a term referring to characters appearing queer without their sexuality being a part of the story. Gardner soon noticed fan art depicting Brock and Venom as a couple appearing across social media sites. She acknowledged that there were several moments throughout the film that implied such a relationship, including Venom deciding to turn against his species because of his time spent with Brock and Venom deciding to French kiss Brock when it is transferring from Weying's body to Brock's. Gardner felt that these elements made it more logical for fans to "ship" the two characters than some similar pairings that had become popular on the internet. Many of the fans posting the art and discussing the characters' relationship online began using the name "Symbrock" to refer to them.


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: Tumblr's Fandometrics analysis team, led by Senior Content Insights Manager Amanda Brennan, looked at "original posts, likes, reblogs, and comments" across the website's 440 million blogs, and reported that Symbrock was the most used ship name during the week ending October 15. It was also the eighth most popular topic overall, while Venom itself was the most popular topic. Brennan said that fans of Symbrock existed before the film due to the nature of the comics, but the increase in popularity was undoubtedly due to the film's portrayal of the characters which she said made Venom's dialogue more "casual ... compared to how he speaks in comics, which kind of makes it more approachable and easier to turn the symbiote into something cute". Brennan added that dialogue such as "I am Venom and you are mine" was deemed to be particularly romantic by these fans, as was the idea that Venom be seen not as a parasite but as someone who "chose Eddie Brock and has a connection to Eddie Brock". According to Fandometrics, Symbrock remained the most popular shipping name on Tumblr for the weeks ending October 22, October 29, November 5, and November 12, before falling to third place during the week ending November 19. In its list of the top 100 shipping names of 2018, released on November 28, Fandometrics listed Symbrock in fourteenth place.


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: When Sony began advertising the home media release of the film by presenting it as a romantic comedy focused on Brock and Venom's relationship, io9's Charles Pulliam-Moore said it was the treatment that the film deserved, and attributed the change in strategy from the studio to the audience's response to the relationship. He added that it was rare for a film studio to "get on top of a so-so ad campaign" by adjusting towards "the public's reaction to a movie", and that he believed it to have been successful. Michael Walsh at Nerdist concurred with Pulliam-Moore, describing the move as "fully embrac[ing] 'Symbrock'" and calling it "brilliant". Walsh said that though the advertisement was clearly a parody, it also "feels like a far more accurate portrayal of what the movie was really like than the initial [marketing] hinted at", and further highlighted the kissing scene.


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: In January 2019, Sony announced development on a sequel with Marcel hired as writer. Hardy, Harrelson, and Williams were confirmed to return, though a director was not set due to Fleischer's "" (2019) commitments. Andy Serkis was hired to direct in August 2019. That October, Fleischer said he was happy to let Serkis take over following the negative critical reaction that "Venom" received. Fleischer believed reviewers had been unfair to the "crowdpleasing movie", potentially due to biases against Sony and towards Marvel Studios' rival superhero films. "Venom: Let There Be Carnage" was released on October 1, 2021.


title: Venom (2018 film)

text: In December 2021, Pascal said they were in the "planning stages" of "Venom 3". Sony confirmed the film was in development at CinemaCon in April 2022.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Sodom and Gomorrah () were two legendary biblical cities destroyed by God for their wickedness. Their story parallels the Genesis flood narrative in its theme of God's anger provoked by man's sin (see Genesis 19:1–28). They are mentioned frequently in the prophets and the New Testament as symbols of human wickedness and divine retribution, and the Quran also contains a version of the story about the two cities. The legend of their destruction may have originated as an attempt to explain the remains of third-millennium Bronze Age cities in the region, and subsequent Late Bronze Age collapse.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: The etymology of the names "Sodom" and "Gomorrah" is uncertain, and scholars disagree about them. They are known in Hebrew as and . In the Septuagint, these became and ; the Hebrew ghayn was absorbed by ayin sometime after the Septuagint was transcribed, it is still pronounced as a voiced uvular fricative in Mizrahi, which is rendered in Greek by a gamma, a voiced velar stop). According to Burton MacDonald, the Hebrew term for Gomorrah was based on the Semitic root , which means "be deep", "copious (water)".


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Sodom and Gomorrah are two of the five "cities of the plain" referred in Genesis 13:12 and Genesis 19:29 subject to Chedorlaomer of Elam, which rebel against him. At the Battle of Siddim, Chedorlaomer defeats them and takes many captives, including Lot, the nephew of the Hebrew patriarch Abraham. Abraham gathers his men, rescues Lot, and frees the cities.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Later, God gives advance notice to Abraham that Sodom had a reputation for wickedness. Abraham asks God "Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?" (Genesis 18:23). Starting at 50 people, Abraham negotiates with God to spare Sodom if 10 righteous people could be found.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: God sends two angels to destroy Sodom. Lot welcomes them into his home, but all the men of the town surround the house and demand that he surrender the visitors that they may "know" them. Lot offers the mob his virgin daughters to "do to them as you please", but they refuse and threaten to do worse to Lot. The angels strike the crowd blind.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: The angels tell Lot "...the outcry against its people has become great before the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it" (Genesis 19:13). The next morning, because Lot had lingered, the angels take Lot, Lot's wife, and his two daughters by the hand and out of the city, and tell him to flee to the hills and not look back. Lot says that the hills are too far away and asks to go to Zoar instead. Then God rains sulfur and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah and all the Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground (Genesis 19:24–25). Lot and his two daughters are saved, but his wife disregards the angels' warning, looks back, and is turned into a pillar of salt.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: The Hebrew Bible contains several other references to Sodom and Gomorrah. The New Testament also contains passages of parallels to the destruction and surrounding events that pertained to these cities and those who were involved. Later deuterocanonical texts attempt to glean additional insights about these cities of the Jordan Plain and their residents. Additionally, the sins which triggered the destruction are reminiscent of the Book of Judges' account of the Levite's concubine.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: "Sodom and Gomorrah" becomes a byword for destruction and desolation. Deuteronomy 29:21–23 refers to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah:


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Isaiah 1:9–10, 3:9 and 13:19–22 address people as from Sodom and Gomorrah, associates Sodom with shameless sinning and tells Babylon that it will end like those two cities.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Jeremiah 23:14, 49:17–18, 50:39–40 and Lamentations 4:6 associate Sodom and Gomorrah with adultery and lies, prophesy the fate of Edom (south of the Dead Sea), predict the fate of Babylon and use Sodom as a comparison.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Ezekiel 16:48–50 compares Jerusalem to Sodom, saying "As I live, saith the Lord , Sodom thy sister hath not done, she nor her daughters, as thou hast done, thou and thy daughters. Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom: pride, fulness of bread, and careless ease was in her and in her daughters; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and committed abomination before Me; therefore I removed them when I saw it." He explains that the sin of Sodom was that "thy sister, Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good."


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: In Amos 4:1–11, God tells the Israelites that although he treated them like Sodom and Gomorrah, they still did not repent.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Wisdom 19:17 says that the Egyptians who enslaved the Israelites were "struck with blindness, like the men of Sodom who came to the door of that righteous man Lot. They found themselves in total darkness, as each one groped around to find his own door."


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Sirach 16:8 says "[God] did not spare the neighbors of Lot, whom he loathed on account of their insolence."


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: In 3 Maccabees 2:5, the high priest Simon says that God "consumed with fire and sulfur the men of Sodom who acted arrogantly, who were notorious for their vices; and you made them an example to those who should come afterward".


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: 2 Esdras 2:8–9 says "Woe to you, Assyria, who conceal the unrighteous in your midst! O wicked nation, remember what I did to Sodom and Gomor′rah, whose land lies in lumps of pitch and heaps of ashes. So will I do to those who have not listened to me, says the Lord Almighty."


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: 2 Esdras 5:1–13 describes signs of the end times, one of which is that "the sea of Sodom shall cast up fish".


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Chapter 12 of 1 Meqabyan, a book considered canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, references "Gemorra an Sedom".


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Romans 9:29 references Isaiah 1:9: "And as Isaiah predicted, "If the Lord of hosts had not left survivors to us, we would have fared like Sodom and been made like Gomorrah."


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: 2 Peter 2:4–10 says that just as God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and saved Lot, he will deliver godly people from temptations and punish the wicked on Judgement Day.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Jude 1:7 records that both Sodom and Gomorrah "indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural lust, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire."


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Sodom and Gomorrah, or the "cities of the plain", have been used historically and in modern discourse as metaphors for homosexuality, and are the origin of the English words "sodomite", a pejorative term for male homosexuals, and "sodomy", which is used in a legal context under the label "crimes against nature" to describe anal or oral sex (particularly homosexual) and bestiality. This is based upon exegesis of the biblical text interpreting divine judgment upon Sodom and Gomorrah as punishment for the sin of homosexual sex. A number of contemporary scholars dispute this interpretation in light of Ezekiel 16:49–50 ("This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty, and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them when I saw it."), interpreting the sin as arrogance and the lack of hospitality. The traditional view also uses the same verse claiming the term "abominable" here as a reference to Leviticus 18:22 which refers to homosexuality as an "abomination" before God. Some Islamic societies incorporate punishments associated with Sodom and Gomorrah into sharia.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: It has been suggested that if the story does have a historical basis, the cities may have been destroyed by a natural disaster. One such idea is that the Dead Sea was devastated by an earthquake between 2100 and 1900 BCE. This might have unleashed showers of steaming tar. It is possible that the towns were destroyed by an earthquake, especially as they lay along a major fault such as the Jordan Rift Valley; however, there are no known contemporary accounts of seismic activity that corroborate this theory and this and the suggestion that they were destroyed by a volcano have been deemed unlikely.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Archibald Sayce translated an Akkadian poem describing cities that were destroyed in a rain of fire, written from the view of a person who escaped the destruction but the names of the cities are not given. Sayce later mentions that the story more closely resembles the doom of Sennacherib's host.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: The ancient Greek historiographer Strabo states that locals living near Moasada (as opposed to Masada) say that "there were once thirteen inhabited cities in that region of which Sodom was the metropolis". Strabo identifies a limestone and salt hill at the southwestern tip of the Dead Sea, and Kharbet Usdum (, "Har Sedom" or , "Jabal(u) 'ssudūm") ruins nearby as the site of biblical Sodom.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: The Jewish historian Josephus identifies the Dead Sea in geographic proximity to the ancient biblical city of Sodom. He refers to the lake by its Greek name, Asphaltites.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: In 1973, Walter E. Rast and R. Thomas Schaub discovered or visited a number of possible sites of the cities, including Bab edh-Dhra, which was originally excavated in 1965 by archaeologist Paul Lapp, and later finished by Rast and Schaub following Lapp's death. Other possibilities include Numeira, al-Safi, Feifa (or Fifa, Feifah), and Khirbet al-Khanazir, which were also visited by Schaub and Rast. According to Schaub, Numeira was destroyed in 2600 BCE at a different time period than Bab edh-Dhra (2350–2067 BCE).


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: In 1993 Nancy Lapp, from the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, reported that Feifa had no Bronze Age occupation and merely an Early Bronze Age cemetery with Iron Age walls. She reports:


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: In 1976, Giovanni Pettinato claimed that a cuneiform tablet that had been found in the newly discovered library at Ebla contained the names of all five of the cities of the plain (Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, and Bela), listed in the same order as in Genesis. The names "si-da-mu" [TM.76.G.524] and "ì-ma-ar" [TM.75.G.1570 and TM.75.G.2233] were identified as representing Sodom and Gomorrah, which gained some acceptance at the time. However, Alfonso Archi states that, judging from the surrounding city names in the cuneiform list, "si-da-mu" lies in northern Syria and not near the Dead Sea, and "ì-ma-ar" is a variant of "ì-mar", known to represent Emar, an ancient city located near Ebla. Today, the scholarly consensus is that "Ebla has no bearing on ... Sodom and Gomorra."


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Although later Hebrew prophets named the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah as adultery, pridefulness, and uncharitableness, the vast majority of exegesis related to the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah view it as an exemplative condemnation of homosexuality. Rabbi Basil Herring, who served as head of the Rabbinical Council of America from 2003 to 2012, writes that both the rabbinic literature and modern Orthodox position consider the Torah to condemn homosexuality as an abomination. Moreover, that it "conveys its abhorrence of homosexuality through a variety of narrative settings", God's judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah being a "paradigmatic" instance of such condemnation.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Rictor Norton views classical Jewish texts as stressing the cruelty and lack of hospitality of the inhabitants of Sodom to the "stranger". Rabbinic writings affirm that the Sodomites also committed economic crimes, blasphemy, and bloodshed.Other extrabiblical crimes committed by Sodom and Gomorrah included extortion on crossing a bridge/or swimming a river, harshly punishing victims for crimes that the perpetrator committed, forcing an assault victim to pay for the perpetrator's "bleeding" and forcing a woman to marry a man who intentionally caused her miscarriage to compensate for the lost child. Because of this, the judges of the two cities were referred to as Shakrai ("Liar"), Shakurai ("Awful Liar"), Zayyafi ("Forger") and Mazle Dina ("Perverter of Justice"). Eliezer was reported to be a victim of such legally unjust conduct, after Sarah sent him to Sodom to report on Lot's welfare. The citizens also regularly tortured foreigners who sought lodging. They did this by providing the foreigners a standard-sized bed and if they saw that the foreigners were too short for the beds, they would forcibly stretch their limbs but if the foreigners were too tall, they would cut off their legs (the Greek myth of Procrustes tells a similar story). As a result, many people refrained from visiting Sodom and Gomorrah. Beggars who settled into the two cities for refuge were similarly mistreated. The citizens would give them marked coins (presumably used to purchase food) but were nonetheless forbidden, by proclamation, to provide these necessary services. Once the beggar died of starvation, citizens who initially gave the beggar the coins were permitted to retrieve them, provided that they could recognize it. The beggar's clothing was also provided as a reward for any citizen who could successfully overcome his opponent in a street fight.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: The provision of bread and water to the poor was also a capital offense (Yalḳ., Gen. 83). Two girls, one poor and the other rich, went to a well, and the former gave the latter her jug of water, receiving in return a vessel containing bread. When this became known, both were burned alive (ib.). According to the Book of Jasher, Paltith, one of Lot's daughters, was burnt alive (in some versions, on a pyre) for giving a poor man bread. Her cries went to the heavens. Another woman was similarly executed in Admah for giving a traveler, who intended to leave the town the next day, water. When the scandal was revealed, the woman was stripped naked and covered with honey. This attracted bees as the woman was slowly stung to death. Her cries then went up into the heavens, the turning point that was revealed to have provoked God to enact judgement upon Sodom and Gomorrah in the first place in Genesis 18:20. Lot's wife (who came from Sodom) had disapproved of her husband welcoming the strangers into their home; her asking for salt from neighbors had alerted the mob which came to Lot's door. As punishment she was turned into a pillar of salt.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Jon D. Levenson views a rabbinic tradition described in the Mishnah as postulating that the sin of Sodom was a violation of conventional hospitality in addition to homosexual conduct, describing Sodom's lack of generosity with the saying, "What is mine is mine; what is yours is yours" ("m. Avot" 5.10).


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Jay Michaelson proposes a reading of the story of Sodom that emphasizes the violation of hospitality as well as the violence of the Sodomites. "Homosexual rape is the way in which they violate hospitality—not the essence of their transgression. Reading the story of Sodom as being about homosexuality is like reading the story of an ax murderer as being about an ax." Michaelson places the story of Sodom in context with other Genesis stories regarding Abraham's hospitality to strangers, and argues that when other texts in the Hebrew Bible mention Sodom, they do so without commentary on homosexuality. The verses cited by Michaelson include Jeremiah 23:14, where the sins of Jerusalem are compared to Sodom and are listed as adultery, lying, and strengthening the hands of evildoers; Amos 4:1–11 (oppressing the poor and crushing the needy); and Ezekiel 16:49–50, which defines the sins of Sodom as "pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and did "toevah" before me, and I took them away as I saw fit." Michaelson uses "toevah" in place of "abomination" to emphasize the original Hebrew, which he explains as being more correctly translated as "taboo".


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Two areas of contention have arisen in modern Christian scholarship concerning the story of Sodom and Gomorrah:


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: The first contention focuses primarily upon the meaning of the Hebrew verb ("yada"), translated as "know" in the King James Version:


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: "Yada" is used to refer to sexual intercourse in various instances, such as in Genesis 4:1 between Adam and Eve:


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Some Hebrew scholars believe that "yada", unlike the English word "know", requires the existence of a "personal and intimate relationship". For this reason, many of the most popular of the 20th century translations, including the New International Version, the New King James Version, and the New Living Translation, translate "yada" as "have sex with" or "know ... carnally" in Genesis 9:5.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Those who favor the non-sexual interpretation argue against a denotation of sexual behavior in this context, noting that while the Hebrew word for "know" appears over 900 times in the Hebrew Bible, only 1% (13–14 times) of those references are clearly used as a euphemism for realizing sexual intimacy. Instead, those who hold to this interpretation see the demand to know as demanding the right to interrogate the strangers.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Countering this is the observation that one of the examples of "know" meaning to know sexually occurs when Lot responds to the Genesis 19:5 request, by offering his daughters for rape, only three verses later in the same narrative:


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: This reference to "going after strange flesh" is understood in different ways to include something akin to bestiality, having illicit sex with strangers, having sex with angels, but most often God's destruction of the populations of the four cities is interpreted to mean homosexual (same-sex) relations.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Many who interpret the stories in a non-sexual context contend that as the word for "strange" is akin to "another", "other", "altered" or even "next", the meaning is unclear, and if the condemnation of Sodom was the result of sexual activities perceived to be perverse, then it is likely that it was because women sought to commit fornication with "other than human" angels, perhaps referring to Genesis 6:1–4 or the apocryphal Book of Enoch. Countering this, it is pointed out that Genesis 6 refers to angels seeking women, not men seeking angels, and that both Sodom and Gomorrah were engaged in the sin Jude describes before the angelic visitation, and that, regardless, it is doubtful that the Sodomites knew they were angels. In addition, it is argued the word used in the King James Version of the Bible for "strange", can mean unlawful or corrupted (eg. in Romans 7:3, Galatians 1:6), and that the apocryphal Second Book of Enoch condemns "sodomitic" sex (2 Enoch 10:3; 34:1), thus indicating that homosexual relations was the prevalent "physical" sin of Sodom.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Both the non-sexual and the homosexuality view invoke certain classical writings as well as other portions of the Bible.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Here the nonsexual view focuses on the inhospitality aspect, while the other notes the description "detestable" or "abomination", the Hebrew word for which often denotes moral sins, including those of a sexual nature.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: In the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus warns of a worse judgment for some cities than Sodom, inhospitality is perceived by some as the sin, while others see it fundamentally being impenitence:


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: The nonsexual view focuses on the cultural importance of hospitality, which this biblical story shares with other ancient civilizations, such as Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, where hospitality was of singular importance and strangers were under the protection of the gods. James L. Kugel, Starr Professor of Hebrew Literature at Harvard University suggests the story encompasses the sexual and non-sexual: the Sodomites were guilty of stinginess, inhospitality and sexual license, homo- and heterosexual in contrast to the generosity of Abraham, and Lot whose behavior in protecting the visitors but offering his daughters suggests he was "scarcely better than his neighbors" according to some ancient commentators, The Bible As It Was, 1997, pp. 179–197.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Within the Christian churches that agree on the possible sexual interpretation of "know" ("yada") in this context, there is still a difference of opinion on whether homosexuality is important. On its website, the Anglican Communion presents the argument that the story is "not even vaguely about homosexual love or relationships", but is instead "about dominance and rape, by definition an act of violence, not of sex or love". This argument that the violence and the threat of violence towards foreign visitors is the true ethical downfall of Sodom (and not homosexuality), also observes the similarity between the Sodom and Gomorrah and the Battle of Gibeah Bible stories. In both stories, an inhospitable mob demands the homosexual rape of a foreigner or foreigners. As the mob instead settles for the rape and murder of the foreigner's female concubine in the Battle of Gibeah story, the homosexual aspect is generally seen as inconsequential, and the ethical downfall is understood to be the violence and the threat of violence towards foreigners by the mob. This Exodus 22:21–24 lesson is viewed by Anglicans as a more historically accurate way to interpret the Sodom and Gomorrah story.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: Scholar in history and gender studies Lisa McClain has claimed that the association between Sodom and Gomorrah with homosexuality emerged from the writings of 1st century Jewish philosopher Philo, and that no prior exegesis of the text suggested such a linkage.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: The Quran contains twelve references to "the people of Lut", the biblical Lot, the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah presumably, and their destruction by God which is associated primarily with their homosexual practices, which the Quran states they were the first creatures to commit such a deed. On the other hand, certain contemporary western scholars assert that the reason for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was a combination of sexual assault, breaking the hospitality law and engaging in robbery.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: The "people of Lot" transgressed consciously against the bounds of God. Lot only prayed to God to be saved from doing as they did. Then Gabriel met Lot and said that he must leave the city quickly, as God had given this command to Lot to save his life. In the Quran it was written that Lot's wife stayed behind, as she had transgressed. She met her fate in the disaster, and only Lot and his family were saved during the destruction of their city, with the understanding that the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are identified in Genesis, but "the location remains unnamed in the Qur'an"


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: A different idea is found in the Paraphrase of Shem, a Gnostic text from the literature of the Nag Hammadi library. In this narrative, the figure Shem, who is guided by a spiritual savior named Derdekeas, brings his universal teaching of secret knowledge (gnosis) to the citizens of Sodom before the city is unjustly destroyed by the base nature of the demon of human form.


title: Sodom and Gomorrah

text: The site of the present Dead Sea Works, a large operation for the extraction of Dead Sea minerals, is called ""Sdom"" (סדום) according to its traditional Arab name, "Khirbet as-sudūm" (خربت السدوم). Nearby is Mount Sodom (הר סדום in Hebrew and جبل السدوم in Arabic) which consists mainly of salt. In the Plain of Sdom (מישור סדום) to the south there are a few springs and two small agricultural villages, Neot HaKikar and Ein Tamar.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: Bashar Hafez al-Assad (, born 11 September 1965) is a Syrian politician who is the 19th president of Syria, since 17 July 2000. In addition, he is the commander-in-chief of the Syrian Armed Forces and the Secretary-General of the Central Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, which espouses the ideologies of neo-Ba'athism and Assadism. His father and predecessor was General Hafez al-Assad, whose presidency between 1971 to 2000 marked the transfiguration of Syria from a republican state into a dynastic military dictatorship tightly controlled by Alawite-dominated armed forces and "Mukhabarat" (secret services) loyal to the Assad family.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: Born and raised in Damascus, Bashar al-Assad graduated from the medical school of Damascus University in 1988 and began to work as a doctor in the Syrian Army. Four years later, he attended postgraduate studies at the Western Eye Hospital in London, specialising in ophthalmology. In 1994, after his elder brother Bassel died in a car accident, Bashar was recalled to Syria to take over Bassel's role as heir apparent. He entered the military academy, taking charge of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon in 1998. Assad's regime functions as a personalist dictatorship, and several political scientists and journalists describe it as a "totalitarian" police state. Although Bashar inherited the bureaucratic structure and personality cult nurtured by Hafez al-Assad, he lacked the charisma and loyalty received by his father, which led to rising discontent against his rule.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: On 17 July 2000, Assad became president, succeeding his father, who died in office on 10 June 2000. In the 2000 and 2007 elections, he received 97.29% and 97.6% support, respectively. On 16 July 2014, Assad was sworn in for another seven-year term after another election gave him 88.7% of the vote. The election was held only in areas controlled by the Syrian government during the country's ongoing civil war and was criticised by the United Nations (UN). Assad was re-elected in 2021 with over 95% of the vote in national election. Throughout his leadership, human rights groups have characterized Syria's human rights situation as poor. The Assad government describes itself as secular, while various political scientists write that his regime exploits sectarian tensions in the country. Initially lauded in the Western press, Bashar al-Assad's economic liberalisation programme worsened inequalities and increased the socio-political centralisation of the loyalist Damascene elite; alienating the Syrian rural population, urban working classes and people from once-traditional Ba'ath strongholds. Since he lacked the respect commanded by his father, many members of the Old Guard resigned or were purged; replacing the inner-circle with staunch loyalists from Alawite clans.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: The United States (U.S.), the European Union (EU), and the majority of the Arab League called for Assad's resignation from the presidency in 2011 after he ordered a violent crackdown on Arab Spring protesters, which led to the Syrian civil war. Assad's forces launched a chemical attack in Ghouta in 21 August 2013, resulting in the deaths of 1,100-1,500 civilians. In December 2013, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay stated that findings from an inquiry by the UN implicated Assad in war crimes. The OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism concluded in October 2017 that Assad's government was responsible for the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack. In June 2014, the American Syrian Accountability Project included Assad on a list of war crimes indictments of government officials and rebels it sent to the International Criminal Court. Assad has rejected allegations of war crimes and criticised the American-led intervention in Syria for attempting regime change.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: Bashar Hafez al-Assad was born in Damascus on 11 September 1965, the second son and third child of Anisa Makhlouf and Hafez al-Assad. Al-Assad in Arabic means "the Lion". Assad's paternal grandfather, Ali Sulayman al-Assad, had managed to change his status from peasant to minor notable and, to reflect this, in 1927 he had changed the family name from Wahsh (meaning "Savage") to Al-Assad.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: Assad's father, Hafez, was born to an impoverished rural family of Alawite background and rose through the Ba'ath Party ranks to take control of the Syrian branch of the Party in the 1970 Corrective Revolution, culminating in his rise to the Syrian presidency. Hafez promoted his supporters within the Ba'ath Party, many of whom were also of Alawite background. After the revolution, Alawite strongmen were installed while Sunnis, Druze, and Ismailis were removed from the army and Ba'ath party.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: The younger Assad had five siblings, three of whom are deceased. A sister named Bushra died in infancy. Assad's youngest brother, Majd, was not a public figure and little is known about him other than he was intellectually disabled, and died in 2009 after a "long illness".


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: Unlike his brothers Bassel and Maher, and second sister, also named Bushra, Bashar was quiet, reserved and lacked interest in politics or the military. The Assad children reportedly rarely saw their father, and Bashar later stated that he only entered his father's office once while he was president. He was described as "soft-spoken", and according to a university friend, he was timid, avoided eye contact and spoke in a low voice.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: Assad received his primary and secondary education in the Arab-French al-Hurriya School in Damascus. In 1982, he graduated from high school and then studied medicine at Damascus University.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: In 1988, Assad graduated from medical school and began working as an army doctor at the Tishrin Military Hospital on the outskirts of Damascus. Four years later, he settled in London to start postgraduate training in ophthalmology at the Western Eye Hospital. He was described as a "geeky I.T. guy" during his time in London. Bashar had few political aspirations, and his father had been grooming Bashar's older brother Bassel as the future president. However, he died in a car accident in 1994 and Bashar was recalled to the Syrian Army shortly thereafter. State propaganda soon began elevating Bashar's public imagery as "the hope of the masses" to prepare him as the next patriarch in charge of Syria, to continue the rule of Assad dynasty.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: Soon after the death of Bassel, Hafez al-Assad decided to make Bashar the new heir apparent. Over the next six and a half years, until his death in 2000, Hafez prepared Bashar for taking over power. General Bahjat Suleiman, an officer in the Defense Companies, was entrusted with overseeing preparations for a smooth transition, which were made on three levels. First, support was built up for Bashar in the military and security apparatus. Second, Bashar's image was established with the public. And lastly, Bashar was familiarised with the mechanisms of running the country.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: To establish his credentials in the military, Bashar entered the military academy at Homs in 1994 and was propelled through the ranks to become a colonel of the elite Syrian Republican Guard in January 1999. To establish a power base for Bashar in the military, old divisional commanders were pushed into retirement, and new, young, Alawite officers with loyalties to him took their place.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: In 1998, Bashar took charge of Syria's Lebanon file, which had since the 1970s been handled by Vice President Abdul Halim Khaddam, who had until then been a potential contender for president. By taking charge of Syrian affairs in Lebanon, Bashar was able to push Khaddam aside and establish his own power base in Lebanon. In the same year, after minor consultation with Lebanese politicians, Bashar installed Emile Lahoud, a loyal ally of his, as the President of Lebanon and pushed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri aside, by not placing his political weight behind his nomination as prime minister. To further weaken the old Syrian order in Lebanon, Bashar replaced the long-serving de facto Syrian High Commissioner of Lebanon, Ghazi Kanaan, with Rustum Ghazaleh.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: Parallel to his military career, Bashar was engaged in public affairs. He was granted wide powers and became head of the bureau to receive complaints and appeals of citizens, and led a campaign against corruption. As a result of this campaign, many of Bashar's potential rivals for president were put on trial for corruption. Bashar also became the President of the Syrian Computer Society and helped to introduce the internet in Syria, which aided his image as a moderniser and reformer.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: After the death of Hafez al-Assad on 10 June 2000, the Constitution of Syria was amended. The minimum age requirement for the presidency was lowered from 40 to 34, which was Bashar's age at the time. Assad was then confirmed president on 10 July 2000, with 97.29% support for his leadership. In line with his role as President of Syria, he was also appointed the commander-in-chief of the Syrian Armed Forces and Regional Secretary of the Ba'ath Party.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: Immediately after he took office, a reform movement made cautious advances during the Damascus Spring, which led to the shut down of Mezzeh prison and the declaration of a wide-ranging amnesty releasing hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood affiliated political prisoners. However, security crackdowns commenced again within the year. Many analysts stated that reform under Assad had been inhibited by the "old guard", members of the government loyal to his late father.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: During the war on terror, Assad allied his country with the West. Syria was a major site of extraordinary rendition by the CIA of al-Qaeda suspects, who were interrogated in Syrian prisons.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: Soon after Assad assumed power, he "made Syria's link with Hezbollah—and its patrons in Tehran—the central component of his security doctrine", and in his foreign policy, Assad is an outspoken critic of the U.S., Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: In 2005, Rafic Hariri, the former prime minister of Lebanon, was assassinated. "The Christian Science Monitor" reported that "Syria was widely blamed for Hariri's murder. In the months leading to the assassination, relations between Hariri and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad plummeted amid an atmosphere of threats and intimidation." The BBC reported in December 2005 that an interim UN report "implicated Syrian officials", while "Damascus has strongly denied involvement in the car bomb which killed Hariri in February".


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: On 27 May 2007, Assad was approved for another seven-year term in a referendum on his presidency, with 97.6% of the votes supporting his continued leadership. Opposition parties were not allowed in the country and Assad was the only candidate in the referendum.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: Protests in Syria began on 26 January 2011 following the Arab Spring. Protesters called for political reforms and the reinstatement of civil rights, as well as an end to the state of emergency which had been in place since 1963. One attempt at a "day of rage" was set for 4–5 February, though it ended uneventfully. Protests on 18–19 March were the largest to take place in Syria for decades, and the Syrian authority responded with violence against its protesting citizens.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: The U.S. imposed limited sanctions against the Assad government in April 2011, followed by Barack Obama's executive order as of 18 May 2011 targeting Bashar Assad specifically and six other senior officials. On 23 May 2011, the EU foreign ministers agreed at a meeting in Brussels to add Assad and nine other officials to a list affected by travel bans and asset freezes. On 24 May 2011, Canada imposed sanctions on Syrian leaders, including Assad.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: On 20 June, in response to the demands of protesters and foreign pressure, Assad promised a national dialogue involving movement toward reform, new parliamentary elections, and greater freedoms. He also urged refugees to return home from Turkey, while assuring them amnesty and blaming all unrest on a small number of saboteurs. Assad blamed the unrest on "conspiracies" and accused the Syrian opposition and protestors of ""fitna"", breaking with the Syrian Ba'ath Party's strict tradition of secularism.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: In July 2011, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Assad had "lost legitimacy" as president. On 18 August 2011, Barack Obama issued a written statement that urged Assad to "step aside".


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: In August, the cartoonist Ali Farzat, a critic of Assad's government, was attacked. Relatives of the humourist told media outlets that the attackers threatened to break Farzat's bones as a warning for him to stop drawing cartoons of government officials, particularly Assad. Farzat was hospitalised with fractures in both hands and blunt force trauma to the head.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: Since October 2011, Russia, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, repeatedly vetoed Western-sponsored draft resolutions in the UN Security Council that would have left open the possibility of UN sanctions, or even military intervention, against the Assad government.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: By the end of January 2012, it was reported by Reuters that over 5,000 civilians and protesters (including armed militants) had been killed by the Syrian army, security agents and militia (Shabiha), while 1,100 people had been killed by "terrorist armed forces".


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: On 10 January 2012, Assad gave a speech in which he maintained the uprising was engineered by foreign countries and proclaimed that "victory [was] near". He also said that the Arab League, by suspending Syria, revealed that it was no longer Arab. However, Assad also said the country would not "close doors" to an Arab-brokered solution if "national sovereignty" was respected. He also said a referendum on a new constitution could be held in March.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: On 27 February 2012, Syria claimed that a proposal that a new constitution be drafted received 90% support during the relevant referendum. The referendum introduced a fourteen-year cumulative term limit for the president of Syria. The referendum was pronounced meaningless by foreign nations including the U.S. and Turkey; the EU announced fresh sanctions against key regime figures. In July 2012, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov denounced Western powers for what he said amounted to blackmail thus provoking a civil war in Syria.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: On 15 July 2012, the International Committee of the Red Cross declared Syria to be in a state of civil war, as the nationwide death toll for all sides was reported to have neared 20,000.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: On 6 January 2013, Assad, in his first major speech since June, said that the conflict in his country was due to "enemies" outside of Syria who would "go to Hell" and that they would "be taught a lesson". However, he said that he was still open to a political solution saying that failed attempts at a solution "does not mean we are not interested in a political solution."


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: After the fall of four military bases in September 2014, which were the last government footholds in the Raqqa Governorate, Assad received significant criticism from his Alawite base of support. This included remarks made by Douraid al-Assad, cousin of Bashar al-Assad, demanding the resignation of the Syrian Defence Minister, Fahd Jassem al-Freij, following the massacre by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) of hundreds of government troops captured after the ISIL victory at Tabqa Airbase. This was shortly followed by Alawite protests in Homs demanding the resignation of the governor, and the dismissal of Assad's cousin Hafez Makhlouf from his security position leading to his subsequent exile to Belarus. Growing resentment towards Assad among Alawites was fuelled by the disproportionate number of soldiers killed in fighting hailing from Alawite areas, a sense that the Assad regime has abandoned them, as well as the failing economic situation. Figures close to Assad began voicing concerns regarding the likelihood of its survival, with one saying in late 2014; "I don't see the current situation as sustainable ... I think Damascus will collapse at some point."


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: In 2015, several members of the Assad family died in Latakia under unclear circumstances. On 14 March, an influential cousin of Assad and founder of the shabiha, Mohammed Toufic al-Assad, was assassinated with five bullets to the head in a dispute over influence in Qardaha—the ancestral home of the Assad family. In April 2015, Assad ordered the arrest of his cousin Munther al-Assad in Alzirah, Latakia. It remains unclear whether the arrest was due to actual crimes.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: After a string of government defeats in northern and southern Syria, analysts noted growing government instability coupled with continued waning support for the Assad government among its core Alawite base of support, and that there were increasing reports of Assad relatives, Alawites, and businessmen fleeing Damascus for Latakia and foreign countries. Intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk was placed under house arrest sometime in April and stood accused of plotting with Assad's exiled uncle Rifaat al-Assad to replace Bashar as president. Further high-profile deaths included the commanders of the Fourth Armoured Division, the Belli military airbase, the army's special forces and of the First Armoured Division, with an errant air strike during the Palmyra offensive killing two officers who were reportedly related to Assad.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: On 4 September 2015, when prospects of Assad's survival looked bleak, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia was providing the Assad government with sufficiently "serious" help: with both logistical and military support. Shortly after the start of direct military intervention by Russia on 30 September 2015 at the formal request of the Syrian government, Putin stated the military operation had been thoroughly prepared in advance and defined Russia's goal in Syria as "stabilising the legitimate power in Syria and creating the conditions for political compromise". Putin's intervention saved Assad regime at a time when it was on the verge of a looming collapse. It also enabled Moscow to achieve its key geo-strategic objectives such as total control of Syrian airspace, naval bases that granted permanent marital reach across the Eastern Mediterranean and easier access to intervene in Libya.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: In November 2015, Assad reiterated that a diplomatic process to bring the country's civil war to an end could not begin while it was occupied by "terrorists", although it was considered by BBC News to be unclear whether he meant only ISIL or Western-supported rebels as well. On 22 November, Assad said that within two months of its air campaign Russia had achieved more in its fight against ISIL than the U.S.-led coalition had achieved in a year. In an interview with Česká televize on 1 December, he said that the leaders who demanded his resignation were of no interest to him, as nobody takes them seriously because they are "shallow" and controlled by the U.S. At the end of December 2015, senior U.S. officials privately admitted that Russia had achieved its central goal of stabilising Syria and, with the expenses relatively low, could sustain the operation at this level for years to come.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: In December 2015, Putin stated that Russia was supporting Assad's forces and was ready to back anti-Assad rebels as long as they were fighting ISIL.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: On 22 January 2016, the "Financial Times", citing anonymous "senior western intelligence officials", claimed that Russian general Igor Sergun, the director of GRU, the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, had shortly before his sudden death on 3 January 2016 been sent to Damascus with a message from Vladimir Putin asking that President Assad step aside. The "Financial Times"' report was denied by Putin's spokesman.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: It was reported in December 2016 that Assad's forces had retaken half of rebel-held Aleppo, ending a 6-year stalemate in the city. On 15 December, as it was reported government forces were on the brink of retaking all of Aleppo—a "turning point" in the civil war, Assad celebrated the "liberation" of the city, and stated, "History is being written by every Syrian citizen."


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: After the election of Donald Trump, the priority of the U.S. concerning Assad was unlike the priority of the Obama administration, and in March 2017 U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley stated the U.S. was no longer focused on "getting Assad out", but this position changed in the wake of the 2017 Khan Shaykhun chemical attack. Following the missile strikes on a Syrian airbase on the orders of President Trump, Assad's spokesperson described the U.S.' behaviour as "unjust and arrogant aggression" and stated that the missile strikes "do not change the deep policies" of the Syrian government. President Assad also told the Agence France-Presse that Syria's military had given up all its chemical weapons in 2013, and would not have used them if they still retained any, and stated that the chemical attack was a "100 percent fabrication" used to justify a U.S. airstrike. In June 2017, Russian President Putin said "Assad didn't use the [chemical weapons]" and that the chemical attack was "done by people who wanted to blame him for that." UN and international chemical weapons inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found the attack was the work of the Assad regime.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: On 30 August 2020, the First Hussein Arnous government was formed, which included a new Council of Ministers.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: According to ABC News, as a result of the Syrian civil war, "government-controlled Syria is truncated in size, battered and impoverished." Economic sanctions (the Syria Accountability Act) were applied long before the Syrian civil war by the U.S. and were joined by the EU at the outbreak of the civil war, causing disintegration of the Syrian economy. These sanctions were reinforced in October 2014 by the EU and U.S. Industry in parts of the country that are still held by the government is heavily state-controlled, with economic liberalisation being reversed during the current conflict. The London School of Economics has stated that as a result of the Syrian civil war, a war economy has developed in Syria. A 2014 European Council on Foreign Relations report also stated that a war economy has formed:


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: A UN commissioned report by the Syrian Centre for Policy Research states that two-thirds of the Syrian population now lives in "extreme poverty". Unemployment stands at 50 percent. In October 2014, a $50 million mall opened in Tartus which provoked criticism from government supporters and was seen as part of an Assad government policy of attempting to project a sense of normalcy throughout the civil war. A government policy to give preference to families of slain soldiers for government jobs was cancelled after it caused an uproar while rising accusations of corruption caused protests. In December 2014, the EU banned sales of jet fuel to the Assad government, forcing the government to buy more expensive uninsured jet fuel shipments in the future.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: A 2007 law required internet cafés to record all the comments users post on chat forums. Websites such as Arabic Wikipedia, YouTube, and Facebook were blocked intermittently between 2008 and February 2011.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: Human Rights groups, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have detailed how the Assad government's secret police allegedly tortured, imprisoned, and killed political opponents, and those who speak out against the government. In addition, some 600 Lebanese political prisoners are thought to be held in government prisons since the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, with some held for as long as over 30 years. Since 2006, the Assad government has expanded the use of travel bans against political dissidents. In an interview with ABC News in 2007, Assad stated: "We don't have such [things as] political prisoners," though "The New York Times" reported the arrest of 30 Syrian political dissidents who were organising a joint opposition front in December 2007, with 3 members of this group considered to be opposition leaders being remanded in custody.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: In 2010, Syria banned face veils at universities. Following the Syrian uprising in 2011, Assad partially relaxed the veil ban.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: "Foreign Policy" magazine released an editorial on Assad's position in the wake of the 2011 protests:


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: Numerous politicians, dissidents, authors and journalists have nicknamed Assad as the "butcher" of Syria for his war-crimes, anti-Sunni sectarian mass-killings, chemical weapons attacks and ethnic cleansing campaigns. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has stated that at least 10 European citizens were tortured by the Assad government while detained during the Syrian civil war, potentially leaving Assad open to prosecution by individual European countries for war crimes. Stephen Rapp, the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, has argued that the crimes committed by Assad are the worst seen since those of Nazi Germany. In March 2015, Rapp further stated that the case against Assad is "much better" than those against Slobodan Milošević of Serbia or Charles Taylor of Liberia, both of whom were indicted by international tribunals.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: In a February 2015 interview with the BBC, Assad described accusations that the Syrian Arab Air Force used barrel bombs as "childish", stating that his forces have never used these types of "barrel" bombs and responded with a joke about not using "cooking pots" either. The BBC Middle East editor conducting the interview, Jeremy Bowen, later described Assad's statement regarding barrel bombs as "patently not true". As soon as demonstrations arose in 2011-2012, Bashar al-Assad opted to implement the "Samson option", the characteristic approach of the Ba'athist regime since the era of Hafez al-Assad; wherein protests were violently suppressed and demonstrators were shot and fired at directly by the armed forces. However, unlike Hafez; Bashar had even less loyalty and was politically fragile, exacerbated by alienation of the majority of the population. As a result, Bashar chose to crack down on dissent far more comprehensively and harshly than his father; and a mere allegation of collaboration was reason enough to get assassinated.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: Nadim Shehadi, the director of The Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies, stated that "In the early 1990s, Saddam Hussein was massacring his people and we were worried about the weapons inspectors," and claimed that "Assad did that too. He kept us busy with chemical weapons when he massacred his people." Contrasting the policies of Hafiz al-Assad and that of his son Bashar, former Syrian vice-president and dissident Abdul Halim Khaddam states: "The Father had a mind and the Son has a loss of reason. How could the army use its force and the security appartus with all its might to destroy Syria because of a protest against the mistakes of one of your security officials. The father would act differently. Father Hafiz hit Hama after he encircled it, warned and then hit Hama after a long siege... But his son is different. On the subject of Daraa, Bashar gave instructions to open fire on the demonstrators."


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: In September 2015, France began an inquiry into Assad for crimes against humanity, with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius stating "Faced with these crimes that offend the human conscience, this bureaucracy of horror, faced with this denial of the values of humanity, it is our responsibility to act against the impunity of the killers".


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: In February 2016, head of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria, Paulo Pinheiro, told reporters: "The mass scale of deaths of detainees suggests that the government of Syria is responsible for acts that amount to extermination as a crime against humanity." The UN Commission reported finding "unimaginable abuses", including women and children as young as seven perishing while being held by Syrian authorities. The report also stated: "There are reasonable grounds to believe that high-ranking officers—including the heads of branches and directorates—commanding these detention facilities, those in charge of the military police, as well as their civilian superiors, knew of the vast number of deaths occurring in detention facilities ... yet did not take action to prevent abuse, investigate allegations or prosecute those responsible".


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: In March 2016, the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs led by New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith called on the Obama administration to create a war crimes tribunal to investigate and prosecute violations "whether committed by the officials of the Government of Syria or other parties to the civil war".


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: In April 2017, there was a sarin chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun that killed more than 80 people. The attack prompted U.S. President Donald Trump to order the U.S. military to launch 59 missiles at a Syrian airbase. Several months later, a joint report from the UN and international chemical weapons inspectors found the attack was the work of the Assad regime.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: In April 2018, an alleged chemical attack occurred in Douma, prompting the U.S. and its and allies to accuse Assad of violating international laws and initiating the 2018 bombing of Damascus and Homs. Both Syria and Russia denied the involvement of the Syrian government at this time.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: In June 2018, Germany's chief prosecutor issued an international arrest warrant for one of Assad's most senior military officials, Jamil Hassan. Hassan is the head of Syria's powerful Air Force Intelligence Directorate. Detention centers run by Air Force Intelligence are among the most notorious in Syria, and thousands are believed to have died because of torture or neglect. Charges filed against Hassan claim he had command responsibility over the facilities and therefore knew of the abuse. The move against Hassan marked an important milestone of prosecutors trying to bring senior members of Assad's inner circle to trial for war crimes.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: In an investigative report about the Tadamon Massacre, Professors Uğur Ümit Üngör and Annsar Shahhoud, found witnesses who attested that Assad gave orders for the Syrian Military Intelligence to direct the Shabiha to kill civilians, in what is the first known association between the regime and the militia.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: Assad opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq despite a long-standing animosity between the Syrian and Iraqi governments. Assad used Syria's seat in one of the rotating positions on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to try to prevent the invasion of Iraq.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: According to veteran U.S. intelligence officer Malcolm Nance, the Syrian government had developed deep relations with former Vice Chairman of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri. Despite the historical differences between the two Ba'ath factions, al-Douri reportedly urged Saddam to open oil pipelines with Syria, building a financial relationship with the Assad family. After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, al-Douri allegedly fled to Damascus where he organised the National Command of the Islamic Resistance which co-ordinated major combat operations during the Iraqi insurgency. In 2009, General David Petraeus, who was at the time heading the U.S. Central Command, told reporters from Al Arabiya that al-Douri was residing in Syria.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: The U.S. commander of the coalition forces in Iraq, George W. Casey Jr., accused Assad of providing funding, logistics, and training to insurgents in Iraq to launch attacks against U.S. and allied forces occupying Iraq. Iraqi leaders such as former national security advisor Mowaffak al-Rubaie and former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have accused Assad of harbouring and supporting Iraqi militants.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: At the outset of the Arab Spring, Syrian state media focused primarily upon Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, demonising him as pro-U.S. and comparing him unfavourably with Assad. Assad told "The Wall Street Journal" in this same period that he considered himself "anti-Israel" and "anti-West", and that because of these policies he was not in danger of being overthrown.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: Following the election of Muslim Brotherhood politician Mohamed Morsi as the next Egyptian president, relations became extremely strained. The Muslim Brotherhood is a banned organisation and its membership is a capital offence in Syria. Egypt severed all relations with Syria in June 2013. Diplomatic relations were restored and the embassies were reopened after the Morsi government was deposed weeks later by General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. In July 2013, the two countries agreed to reopen the Egyptian consulate in Damascus and the Syrian consulate in Cairo.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: In late-November 2016, some Arab media outlets reported Egyptian pilots arrived in mid-November to Syria to help the Syrian government in its fight against the Islamic State and Al Nusra front. This came after Sisi publicly stated he supports the Syrian military in the civil war in Syria. However, several days later, Egypt officially denied it has a military presence in Syria.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: Although Egypt has not been vocal in support for any sides of Syria's ongoing civil war, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said in 2016 that his nation's priority is "supporting national armies", which he said included the Syrian Armed Forces. He also said regarding Egypt's stance in the conflict: "Our stance in Egypt is to respect the will of the Syrian people, and that a political solution to the Syrian crisis is the most suitable way, and to seriously deal with terrorist groups and disarm them". Egypt's support for a political solution was reaffirmed in February 2017. Egypt's Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Ahmed Abu Zeid, said that Egyptian foreign minister Sameh Shoukry, "during his meeting with UN Special Envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, on Saturday confirmed Egypt's rejection of any military intervention that would violate Syrian sovereignty and undermine opportunities of the standing political solutions."


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: Egypt has also expressed great interest in rebuilding postwar Syria, with many Egyptian companies and businessmen discussing investment opportunities in Syria as well as participation in the reconstruction effort. Tarik al-Nabrawi, president of Egypt's Engineers Syndicate said that 2018 will witness a "boom and influential role for Egyptian construction companies in Syria and to open the door for other companies — in the electricity, building material, steel, aluminum, ceramics and sanitary material fields among others — to work in the Syrian market and participate in rebuilding cities and facilities that the war has destroyed." On 25 February 2018, Syrian state news reported that an Egyptian delegation composed of "members of the Islamic and Arab Assembly for supporting Resistance and Future Pioneers movement as well as a number of figures", including Jamal Zahran and Farouk Hassan, visited the Syrian consulate in Cairo to express solidarity with the Syrian government.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: On 5 March 2005, Assad announced that Syrian forces would begin its withdrawal from Lebanon in his address to the Syrian parliament. Syria completed its full withdrawal from Lebanon on 30 April 2005.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: Assad argued that Syria's gradual withdrawal of troops from Lebanon was a result of the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. According to testimony submitted to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, when talking to Rafic Hariri at the Presidential Palace in Damascus in August 2004, Assad allegedly said to him, "I will break Lebanon over your [Hariri's] head and over Walid Jumblatt's head" if Émile Lahoud was not allowed to remain in office despite Hariri's objections; that incident was thought to be linked to Hariri's subsequent assassination. In early 2015, journalist and "ad hoc" Lebanese-Syrian intermediary Ali Hamade stated before the Special Tribunal for Lebanon that Rafic Hariri's attempts to reduce tensions with Syria were considered a "mockery" by Assad.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: Assad's position was considered by some to have been weakened by the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon following the Cedar Revolution in 2005. There has also been pressure from the U.S. concerning claims that Syria is linked to terrorist networks, exacerbated by Syrian condemnation of the assassination of Hezbollah military leader, Imad Mughniyah, in Damascus in 2008. Interior Minister Bassam Abdul-Majeed stated that "Syria, which condemns this cowardly terrorist act, expresses condolences to the martyr family and to the Lebanese people."


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: In May 2015, Lebanese politician Michel Samaha was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in jail for his role in a terrorist bomb plot that he claimed Assad was aware of.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: The U.S., the EU, the March 14 Alliance, and France accuse Assad of providing support to militant groups active against Israel and opposition political groups. The latter category would include most political parties other than Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: In a speech about the 2006 Lebanon War in August 2006, Assad said that Hezbollah had "hoisted the banner of victory", hailing its actions as a "successful resistance."


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: In April 2008, Assad told a Qatari newspaper that Syria and Israel had been discussing a peace treaty for a year. This was confirmed in May 2008, by a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. As well as the treaty, the future of the Golan Heights was being discussed. Assad was quoted in "The Guardian" as telling the Qatari paper:


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: According to leaked American cables, Assad called Hamas an "uninvited guest" and said "If you want me to be effective and active, I have to have a relationship with all parties. Hamas is Muslim Brotherhood, but we have to deal with the reality of their presence," comparing Hamas to the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood which was crushed by his father, Hafez al-Assad. He also said Hamas would disappear if peace was brought to the Middle East.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: Assad has indicated that the peace treaty that he envisions would not be the same kind of peace treaty Israel has with Egypt, where there is a legal border crossing and open trade. In a 2006 interview with Charlie Rose, Assad said: "There is a big difference between talking about a peace treaty and peace. A peace treaty is like a permanent ceasefire. There's no war, maybe you have an embassy, but you actually won't have trade, you won't have normal relations because people will not be sympathetic to this relation as long as they are sympathetic with the Palestinians: half a million who live in Syria and half a million in Lebanon and another few millions in other Arab countries."


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: During the visit of Pope John Paul II to Syria in 2001, Assad requested an apology to Muslims for the Crusades and criticised Israeli treatment of Palestinians, stating that "territories in Lebanon, the Golan and Palestine have been occupied by those who killed the principle of equality when they claimed that God created a people distinguished above all other peoples". He also compared the suffering of Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis to the suffering endured by Jesus in Judea, and said that "they tried to kill the principles of all religions with the same mentality in which they betrayed Jesus Christ and the same way they tried to betray and kill the Prophet Muhammad". Responding to accusations that his comment was antisemitic, Assad said that "We in Syria reject the term antisemitism. ... Semites are a race and [Syrians] not only belong to this race, but are its core. Judaism, on the other hand, is a religion which can be attributed to all races." He also stated that "I was talking about Israelis, not Jews. ... When I say Israel carries out killings, it's the reality: Israel tortures Palestinians. I didn't speak about Jews," and criticised Western media outlets for misinterpreting his comments.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: In February 2011, Assad backed an initiative to restore ten synagogues in Syria, which had a Jewish community numbering 30,000 in 1947, but only 200 Jews by 2011.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: Assad met with U.S. scientists and policy leaders during a science diplomacy visit in 2009, and he expressed interest in building research universities and using science and technology to promote innovation and economic growth.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: In response to Executive Order 13769 which mandated refugees from Syria be indefinitely suspended from being able to resettle in the U.S., Assad appeared to defend the measure, stating "It's against the terrorists that would infiltrate some of the immigrants to the West... I think the aim of Trump is to prevent those people from coming," adding that it was "not against the Syrian people". This reaction was in contrast to other leaders of countries affected by the Executive Order who condemned it.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: North Korea is alleged to have aided Syria in developing and enhancing a ballistic missiles programme. They also reportedly helped Syria develop a suspected nuclear reactor in the Deir ez-Zor Governorate. U.S. officials claimed the reactor was probably "not intended for peaceful purposes", but American senior intelligence officials doubted it was meant for the production of nuclear weapons. The supposed nuclear reactor was destroyed by the Israeli Air Force in 2007 during Operation Orchard. Following the airstrike, Syria wrote a letter to Secretary-General of the UN Ban Ki-moon calling the incursion a "breach of airspace of the Syrian Arab Republic" and "not the first time Israel has violated" Syrian airspace.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: While hosting an 8 March 2015 delegation from North Korea led by North Korean Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Sin Hong Chol, Assad stated that Syria and North Korea were being "targeted" because they are "among those few countries which enjoy real independence".


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: According to Syrian opposition sources, North Korea has sent army units to fight on behalf of Assad in the Syrian civil war.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: In 2018, the UN exposed North Korea for their facilitation of Syria's development of chemical weapons. According to a report by UN investigators, North Korea provided the Syrian government with acid-resistant tiles, valves, and thermometers. Additionally, DPRK missile technicians had been seen inside various Syrian chemical weapons facilities. This series of about 40 unreported shipments between North Korea and Syria, on which were the chemical weapons materials as well as prohibited ballistic missile parts, is said to have occurred throughout 2012–2017.


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: In 2001, Assad condemned the September 11 attacks. In 2003, Assad said in an interview with a Kuwaiti newspaper that he doubted the organization of al-Qaeda even existed. He was quoted as saying, "Is there really an entity called al-Qaeda? Was it in Afghanistan? Does it exist now?" He remarked about Osama bin Laden, commenting: "[he] cannot talk on the phone or use the Internet, but he can direct communications to the four corners of the world? This is illogical."


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: Assad's relationship with al-Qaeda and the ISIL has been subject to much attention. In 2014, journalist and terrorism expert Peter R. Neumann maintained, citing Syrian records captured by the U.S. military in the Iraqi border town of Sinjar and leaked State Department cables, that "in the years that preceded the uprising, Assad and his intelligence services took the view that jihad could be nurtured and manipulated to serve the Syrian government's aims". Other leaked cables contained remarks by U.S. general David Petraeus which stated that "Bashar al-Asad was well aware that his brother-in-law 'Asif Shawqat, Director of Syrian Military Intelligence, had detailed knowledge of the activities of AQI facilitator Abu Ghadiya, who was using Syrian territory to bring foreign fighters and suicide bombers into Iraq", with later cables adding that Petraeus thought that "in time, these fighters will turn on their Syrian hosts and begin conducting attacks against Bashar al-Assad's regime itself".


title: Bashar al-Assad

text: During the Iraq War, the Assad government was accused of training jihadis and facilitating their passage into Iraq, with these infiltration routes remaining active until the Syrian civil war; U.S. General Jack Keane has stated that "Al Qaeda fighters who are back in Syria, I am confident, they are relying on much they learned in moving through Syria into Iraq for more than five years when they were waging war against the U.S. and Iraq Security Assistance Force". Iraqi president Nouri al-Maliki threatened Assad with an international tribunal over the matter, and ultimately lead to the 2008 Abu Kamal raid, and U.S. airstrikes within Syria during the Iraq War.