Describing United States-Syrian relations as tepid is an understatement at the best of times, and even a misstatement when the volatile relationship seems to have reached the point of no return.
Things were much more pleasant in the nineties, a decade most Syrians remember rather fondly. Having chosen to oppose Iraq – while the world mostly supported it – after it launched an eight-year war on Iran, embroiled in a difficult Lebanese civil war and fighting an internal Islamic insurgency, Syria lived the eighties like a recluse, its economy crumbling and its people suffocating.
